Music Reviews

Given the ceaseless torrent of music being released, it's almost inevitable that worthy artists slip through the cracks. Rocker King Tuff and hip-hop's Brown deserve a special mention.

Stern is known for the eight years she spent as a guitarist in Seth Meyers' late-night-talk-show house band, but her own upbeat, highlight original music is unlike anything you'll ever hear on TV.

This week, Andre 3000 released an instrumental album featuring the flute instead of an expected rap album. Scott Simon asks LA Times' August Brown about the flute's decades-long role in pop music.

Sanchez's latest album, Night Creatures, features music for nine instruments that variously contrast, blend or clash — channeling the open-air feeling of the pitch-dark woods at night.

A new album of music by the 88-year-old Estonian mystic seems to put an arm around you and whisper, "In troubled times, music can help."

The Beatles' final song could never live up to the body of work that precedes it. But it could never diminish it, either.

Composer Darcy James Argue runs a jazz big band — but imagines its sound as if big bands had stayed current rather than faded away. The music's clarity, contrasts and rhythms are all impressive.

Widely considered the greatest singing actor in opera history, Callas died in 1977 at the age of 53. Now, several new releases celebrate both her singing and her acting.

Blink-182's new album is called One More Time, and it's the first for their classic lineup in 12 years — the same three members who landed those pop-punk hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The five discs in Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 3, The Asylum Years (1972-1975) represent both a summation of Mitchell's pop achievement and a harbinger of her later, more experimental work.