The fourth album by the 17-piece Christian McBride Big Band is nothing like your dad’s big band albums. Without Further Ado, Vol. 1 is as much a vocal album as a big band effort, and within those vocals lie several genres.
Now, as surprising as that may sound, it is more typical of Christian McBride’s career than not. His versatility matches his virtuosity, and the former may well be his primary trait.
The opener unites two of the three members of The Police as Sting and guitarist Andy Summers proffer one of the band’s biggest hits, “Murder by Numbers.” The song was the B-side of “Every Breath You Take” and marks the first time the two bandmates have played together since the band’s 2007-2008 reunion tour. The tune…
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The fourth album from the twice Grammy-nominated, New Orleans-based Afro-Indigenous funk collective 
Now that hardcore is as big as it’s ever been, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the genre would have become swamped with Turnstile copyists and watered-down takes of the music’s intense core tenants. However, the ‘big’ acts in the genre are not only maintaining (and sometimes upping) the savage ante, they’re also continuously finding new ways to express their own personalities within the confines of the genre’s familiar beatdowns and mosh calls. See the likes of the brutal Jesus Piece, the experimental Show Me the Body, or the thrash-channeling Mindforce. It’s a varied, eclectic scene, one that’s getting richer and richer without sacrificing any of its exhilarating (and sometimes enjoyably silly) savagery.
Battlestation, the debut album from Lucie Sue, is an energetic blend of alt-rock influences, incorporating elements from industrial metal, punk, and pop rock. The French rocker delivers head-banging riffs and pounding rhythms, meshed with melodic vocals and danceable beats. It’s party rock for the alternative scene, where the partygoers are misfits from various genres.
Raw and ferocity are words that have always described 
Black Country outfit 
Belinda Carlisle was the face and the voice of the sunny side of new wave rock as the lead singer with the Go-Go’s, and she had a semi-secret past as a punk rock firebrand and short-time drummer with the Germs. But the real skeleton in her closet was the fact she grew up on pop radio in the 1960s and ’70s, and like millions of others, she succumbed to the charms of the moody and emotive side of pop recordmaking with songs that fell outside the strict confines of rock & roll. This music certainly informed some of her post-Go-Go’s solo recordings, and on 2025’s 
In a bold move to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album, LOCAL H are proud to release 
When singer/songwriter Nicholas Krgovich and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Shabason booked a two-week tour of Japan in 2024, they enlisted Saya and Takashi of Tenniscoats to be their backing band. The pairing might have seemed a bit of a disconnect at first as the Tenniscoats sparse, loose, and lo-fi approach differs greatly from the precise, well-sculptured feel of Krgovich’s work. The concerts went well enough that the four musicians decided to make a record together. They booked a couple of days at an artist retreat housed in a century old house in Kobe and the result was a charming record titled 
The Finnish duo of Sandra Tervonen and Juuso Malin, better known for misty textures, clears that fog by embracing California’s surrealism to let in some light.
On his newest recording for ECM’s New Series, lute virtuoso Rolf Lislevand turns to the revolutionary Baroque literature for archlute and chitarrone, interpreting 17th century lute composers’ works largely found in their first printed books – their respective libri primi. In striking solo performances, the Norwegian explores the progressive nature of pieces by the Italians Johann Hieronymous Kapsberger, Giovanni Paolo Foscarini and Bernardo Gianoncelli as well as two Recerercadas of Spaniard Diego Ortiz.
A band made up of longtime players on the U.S. Northeast D.I.Y. punk and hardcore scene, Brooklyn’s 
Rarely does a band remain as grounded and unpretentious as 
Dev Hynes’s fifth studio album as Blood Orange opens with a series of unexpected musical juxtapositions. The first track, ‘Look at You’, starts out with softly sung vocals over a cushion of equally soft synthesiser chords, before stopping dead, then re-emerging as almost an entirely different song: harmonies over guitar chords strummed so slowly you can hear the plectrum hitting each individual string. The second, ‘Thinking Clean’, offers a piano over pattering hi-hats: there’s something anticipatory about it, like an intro that’s about to burst into life, but when it does – complete with dancefloor rhythm – the song swiftly falls apart. The piano becomes increasingly abstract, before everything gives way to scrabbling, apparently improvised cello.
Since forming at 
Rising from the New York punk rock/new wave scene of the 1970s, 
As the responsibilities of parenthood and academia keep Tift Merritt occupied, she’s been digging into her archives for fans eager for new music. In 2025, she released a 20th anniversary reissue of 2004’s superb Tambourine (a year late, but she’s been busy), and as a companion, she also compiled Time and Patience, a collection of unheard home recordings, demos, and live tracks. The connection to Tambourine comes in the form of five “Kitchen Recordings” of tunes that would later appear on the album, featuring just Merritt’s voice and guitar (or piano). The emotional intimacy of her songs has always been one of the most moving aspects of her music, and these bare-bones recordings are beautiful and striking; while they might be tapes she made at home, she sings…