Music Reviews

On the 2010 album Scratch My Back, Gabriel covered songs by the musicians he loves. For the follow-up, he invited those artists — who include Arcade Fire, Randy Newman, David Byrne, Regina Spektor, Lou Reed, Bon Iver and more — to cover his own material.

A new nine-hour box set, titled Sun Country Box: 1950-1959, collects Sun Records' country output.

You could look at Rosewoman's New Yor-Uba band as reuniting cousins who've drifted apart: jazz and folkloric Cuban music with its own family ties to the slave coast of West Africa.

With new songs and covers, La La Brooks' All or Nothing isn't just an attempted career comeback.

"This is it," Webb said of Fitzgerald. "I have a real singer now. That's what the public wants."

This week we're looking back at the year in music with a peek at NPR Music's 50 Favorite Albums of 2013. It's the annual list assembled by our in-house experts, including NPR music writer and editor Stephen Thompson. He tells Audie Cornish about his picks in the world of indie pop.

In 2012, the band became another rock group that was celebrating its 50th anniversary. This year, it released Made in California, an eight-hour, six-disc retrospective of their career that, perhaps inadvertently, shows how this once-great force in American popular music faded from public view.

With six concerts spread over eight discs, Wood Flute Songs documents the bassist's exhaustive and creative live output.

In 1986, the iconic jazz pianist experimented with drums, bass and electric guitar in his home studio. Decades later, he's finally released the tapes. Reviewer Banning Eyre says that on No End, Jarrett seems to cherish rediscovering a side of his younger self.

Live at Carnegie Hall captures a riveting experience with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and a beloved conductor, James Levine, who has been plagued with a variety of medical troubles.