The tragically short life of British folksinger Nick Drake left behind some of the most hauntingly beautiful music of its kind, with Drake's softly heartbroken voice guiding his songs to transcendent places over the course of just three classic, near-perfect studio albums. Virtually unknown during his life, Drake's songs have been perpetually reborn in the decades following his mysterious death in 1974. With each new generation that discovers or rediscovers his songs, there have been subsequent repackagings of his minute back catalog, and by the time of Tuckbox, one of several comprehensive discography compilations, the vaults have been combed pretty thoroughly for unreleased material to pad the studio albums. Tuckbox offers more of the same, its 71 tracks including the entirety of classic records Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and Pink Moon, as well as a bevy of tracks recorded before and after the periods that produced his studio work…

To My Queen is Walt Dickerson's crowning achievement, a perfect balance between his intellectually advanced concepts and deeply felt passion. Dickerson had always displayed a fertile imagination, but there hadn't been much indication that his vision could be as expansive as it was on To My Queen. Never before had he attempted such extended, freely structured performances, which makes the album's consistency and focus all the more impressive. Like the foreground of a canvas, the listener's attention naturally falls on the title cut, a side-long, 17-and-a-half-minute opus (written in tribute to his wife, Elizabeth) that became Dickerson's signature piece. It's deliberate, spare, and tender, with the soloists accompanied by either a gentle swing or the barest hints of support…

In the '70s, drummer Alan White was among the Yes members who recorded solo projects; the others included Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, and Rick Wakeman. Ramshackled, White's only solo album, was far from a huge seller, but some Yes fans bought it out of curiosity. Many of them were no doubt expecting to hear progressive rock, but this out of print LP is a long way from Relayer or Tales from Topographic Oceans. Instead, White turns his attention to blue-eyed soul-pop and, to a lesser degree, jazz fusion with erratic results. While the singing is unimpressive, some of the material is OK. "One Way Rag," "Giddy," and "Ooooh Baby" have more in common with Van Morrison than with Yes, King Crimson, or Genesis, and the jazz fusion instrumental "Avakak" might have worked on a CTI session of the early to mid-'70s.

The Orb virtually invented the electronic genre known as ambient house, resurrecting slower, more soulful rhythms and providing a soundtrack for early-morning ravers once the clubs closed their doors. Frontman Dr. Alex Paterson's formula was quite simple: he slowed down the rhythms of classic Chicago house and added synth work and effects inspired by '70s ambient pioneers Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream. To make the whole a bit more listenable - as opposed to danceable - obscure vocal samples were looped, usually providing a theme for tracks that lacked singing. The group popularized the genre by appearing on the British chart show Top of the Pops and hitting number one in the U.K. with the 1992 album U.F.Orb. The Orb managed to remain signed to Island Records throughout the '90s, even as they were releasing some of their most challenging work (Pomme Fritz, Orbus Terrarum)…

The Wild Life box set is three CDs and includes a remarkably generous selection of audio - 25 bonus tracks including rough mixes of the album, original single edits, B-sides, home recordings and other previously unreleased material. The packaging looks consistent with the last few, so what you have is a slipcase into which slot a few books. The "main" book is a 128-page tome written by David Fricke which tells the story of the album etc., but there is also a 48-page scrapbook of tour diaries (from the 1972 tour), lyrics, setlists, unpublished polaroids and the like.
The irony of the first Wings album is that it seems more domesticated than Ram, feeling more like a Paul McCartney 'n' Linda effort than that record. Perhaps it's because this album is filled with music that's defiantly lightweight - not just the cloying cover of "Love Is Strange" but two versions apiece of songs called "Mumbo" and "Bip Bop"…

Bob Margolin continues to pay homage to Muddy Waters with each record he cuts and this debut for Blind Pig is no exception. His slide playing is Waters to a tee while his songwriting chops stay firmly in the mold of what Waters himself would come up with, albeit less inspired. Margolin's band is a three-piece knockoff of the old Waters band with Tad Waleters blowing harp in the Little Walter tradition while drummer Wes Johnson supplies a solid Chicago beat, no frills or overplaying out of any of them. If you like your Chicago blues served up '50s style without a lot of technical niceties, this album's right up your alley.

The Valentine's Day-themed compilation Each Day Is Valentine's Day brings together many of legendary jazz trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker's most romantic recordings. Many of these are cuts Baker recorded at the height of his career for the Pacific Jazz label during the '50s. While some of these songs are more melancholy or poignant, generally the tracks are perfect for a romantic dinner or evening at home. Included are such songs as "My Funny Valentine," "My Ideal," and "Come Rain or Come Shine."

Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album, made up of keyboard-dominated instrumentals ("The Barbarian," "Three Fates") and romantic ballads ("Lucky Man") showcasing all three members' very daunting talents. This album, which reached the Top 20 in America and got to number four in England, showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly - with the exception of a few moments on "Three Fates" and perhaps "Take a Pebble," there isn't much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here. "Take a Pebble" might have passed for a Moody Blues track of the era but for the fact that none of the Moody Blues' keyboard men could solo like Keith Emerson. Even here, in a relatively balanced collection of material, the album shows the beginnings of a dark, savage, imposingly gothic edge that had scarcely been seen before in so-called "art rock"…

Brian Eno's album of instrumental pieces, Making Space, was released during his visit to Mexico City in June of 2010 - the CD comes in a digipak with fold-out artwork and is available exclusively from venues hosting his installations and lectures. All compositions by Brian Eno except "Flora and Fauna/Gleise 581d", "New Moons", "Vanadium" by Brian Eno and Leo Abrahams; "Hopeful Timean Intersect" by Brian Eno, Tim Harries, Leo Abrahams. All instruments by Brian Eno except Leo Abrahams: guitar on "Flora and Fauna/Gleise 581d", "New Moons", "Hopeful Timean Intersect"; Tim Harries: bass on "Hopeful Timean Intersect".

Capping nearly three decades on the scene, Sum 41 bid farewell the only way they really could: merging their punk and metal extremes on the sprawling double album Heaven :x: Hell. All those years of stylistic evolution collide on this 20-song collection, which is split evenly into the pop-punk Heaven side and the metal-leaning Hell side (naturally). Finding the sweet spot among Billy Talent, Green Day, and blink-182, this is standard, anthemic pop-punk goodness, designed for pogo-bops, fist-pumping, and light moshing, all centered on Deryck Whibley's acrobatic vocals. The big singalong choruses of catchy standouts like "Dopamine" and "Bad Mistake" ride Frank Zummo's freewheeling drumming, as the twin guitar attack of Dave Baksh and Tom Thacker propel this track headlong into the sunset. Heaven, according to Sum 41, sounds fun, urgent, and energetic (even when the lyrics say otherwise)…

Fresh Cream represents so many different firsts, it's difficult to keep count. Cream, of course, was the first supergroup, but their first album not only gave birth to the power trio, it also was instrumental in the birth of heavy metal and the birth of jam rock. That's a lot of weight for one record and, like a lot of pioneering records, Fresh Cream doesn't seem quite as mighty as what would come later, both from the group and its acolytes. In retrospect, the moments on the LP that are a bit unformed - in particular, the halting waltz of "Dreaming" never achieves the sweet ethereal atmosphere it aspires to - stand out more than the innovations, which have been so thoroughly assimilated into the vocabulary of rock & roll, but Fresh Cream was a remarkable shift forward in rock upon its 1966 release and it remains quite potent. Certainly at this early stage the trio was still grounded heavily in blues, only fitting given guitarist Eric Clapton's stint in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers…

Featuring performances of Great American Songbook standards "The Best Is Yet to Come," "They Can't Take That Away from Me," and "It Might as Well Be Spring" alongside classic French chansons "Ces Petits Riens," "Samba Saravah," and "Jardin d'Hiver," Dreamer in Concert is the first live album from Grammy-nominated New Jersey jazz singer Stacey Kent. Recorded at La Cigale in Paris in May 2011, the 13-track collection also includes four previously unrecorded songs, including covers of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Water of March" and "Dreamer," and two new compositions co-penned by saxophonist husband Jim Tomlinson with author Kazuo Ishiguro ("Postcard Lovers") and Portuguese poet Antonio Ladeira ("O Comboio").

An uncompromising English avant-garde rock band, Art Bears consisted of Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, and vocalist extraordinaire Dagmar Krause. Frith and Cutler were longtime members of the seminal radical art rock band Henry Cow, while Krause sang primarily with the fine German band Slapp Happy and in Henry Cow's latter years. Art Bears were intended as a short-term project, but, even so, their three-year existence resulted in three excellent albums that relied more on shorter, more traditional, almost pop-oriented song forms than huge, complex musical and lyrical extrapolations. The political tinge of the Henry Cow years never went away, and it was unsurprising that Marxist rhetoric and anti-capitalist diatribes formed much of the band's lyrical firmament. Frith, as he proved in Cow, was a guitarist of astonishing ability, combining a searing, complex technique reminiscent of the free-music improvisations…

The second installment in the Blank & Jones So 80's series, this triple disc release includes a continuous mix CD followed by two CD's of unmixed rare extended versions of hits by some of the '80's biggest artists. Features tracks by New Order, Kajagoogoo, Billy Idol, Duran Duran, Fra Lippo Lippi, OMD, Howard Jones, a-Ha, Endgames, Simple Minds, Bronski Beat, Corey Hart, KTP and many others.

In the decades since its original release, more than one writer has declared Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief the definitive British folk-rock album, a distinction it holds at least in part because it grants equal importance to all three parts of that formula. While Fairport had begun dipping their toes into British traditional folk with their stellar version of "A Sailor's Life" on Unhalfbricking, Liege & Lief found them diving head first into the possibilities of England's musical past, with Ashley Hutchings digging through the archives at the Cecil Sharp House in search of musical treasure, and the musicians (in particular vocalist Sandy Denny) eagerly embracing the dark mysteries of this music. (Only two of the album's eight songs were group originals, though "Crazy Man Michael" and "Come All Ye" hardly stand out from their antique counterparts)…