Music Reviews

Immersive music, thy name be David Gilmour. Though Pink Floyd may be a semi-distant active memory, lead guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour has seen fit to issue some quite intriguing solo projects here and there over the past five or so decades. His fifth solo studio effort, Luck and Strange, which was released by Sony Music in multiple formats on September 6, 2024, may indeed be his best outing under his own name—most especially in its Dolby Atmos incarnation. Read Mike Mettler’s review to find out just how good that L&S Atmos mix really is. . .

A-level guests on Tee’s fifth studio album include the likes of Future, 42 Dugg, Mariah The Scientist, and even his brother, Baby Grizzley. Synth loops and loping 808s permeate some of its backing tracks—cool choices due in no small part to one of the album’s key producers, Pi’erre Bourne (Drake, Playboi Carti).

These Are the Eyes of Disarray: S&V music editor Mike Mettler evaluates multiple versions of Stone Temple Pilots’ September 1992 debut album Core, which laid the foundation for a hard-rocking rollercoaster ride steeped in the three G’s—garage, glam, and groove. . .

Machine Head is one of those perfect storm albums. As Deep Purple entered the 1970s, they undertook a creative shift from the psychedelic blues/pop of their late-’60s origins — embodied by hits like 1968’s perpetually catchy “Hush” and their cover of Neil Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman” — to move into full-on rock overdrive with June 1970’s Deep Purple in Rock and July 1971’s Fireball. With that tableau firmly set, Deep Purple ramped it up yet another notch to construct March 1972’s truly seminal Machine Head, which features enduring hardrock staples like “Smoke on the Water” (ahh, that right-of-passage guitar riff), “Highway Star” (their 8-cylinder vehicular love letter), and “Space Truckin’” (“Come on!”) among them.

Frank Zappa was a master at creating musical Venn diagrams. What do I mean by that? Well, Zappa’s compositional talents stretched well beyond the rock music idiom, so many of his releases would offer a keen intersection of doo-wop, classical orchestration, avant-jazz, progressive jams, country funk, and pure pop sensibilities (for starters). Sometimes he would even incorporate all his artistic powers into all 20-plus minutes of an album side’s lone track.