Globe 13 March 2017

Though Arcade Fire have always been comfortable making grand statements, they’ve also been generous with nuance. After joining forces with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy on 2013’s Reflektor, the Canadian outfit bring in a similarly impressive crew of co-producers—Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter, Pulp’s Steve Mackey—for Everything Now, an album whose jaunty, disco-indebted art-rock is weighted with haunting takes on information overload (the ABBA-esque title track) and nostalgia (“Signs of Life”). “If you can’t see the forest for the trees, just burn it all down,” frontman Win Butler sings on “We Don’t Deserve Love,” a gorgeous yet disorienting ballad at the album’s conclusion. “And bring the ashes to me.”

For the 20th anniversary of the band, TROUM invited friends and admired artists from their own history to cover, re-interpretate, re-process, collage, morph or just being inspired (by) any TROUM basic material; after one year of collecting masterial the result is a unique compilation of 19 tracks with a wide range of creative approaches - much more than your standard "remix" collection. All material was exclusively recorded for this compilation!

Following the disbandment of the short-lived synth pop group Yazoo, former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke formed Erasure in 1985 with singer Andy Bell. Like Yaz and Depeche Mode, Erasure were a synth-based group, but they had stronger dance inclinations, as well as a sharper, more accessible sense of pop songcraft, than either of Clarke's previous bands. Furthermore, Erasure had the flamboyantly eccentric Andy Bell – one of the first openly gay performers in pop music – as their focal point. Bell's keening, high voice and exaggerated sense of theatrically became the band's defining image. In their native Britain, Erasure were successful from their inception. After a few years, the duo achieved commercial success in America with 1988's "Chains of Love," but they remained, in essence, a cult band on both sides of the Atlantic, cultivating a dedicated fan base over the course of their career.

Disney s Beauty and the Beast is a live-action re-telling of the studio s animated classic which refashions the classic characters from the tale as old as time for a contemporary audience, staying true to the original music while updating the score with several new songs. Beauty and the Beast is the fantastic journey of Belle, a bright, beautiful and independent young woman who is taken prisoner by a beast in his castle. Despite her fears, she befriends the castle s enchanted staff and learns to look beyond the Beast s hideous exterior and realize the kind heart and soul of the true Prince within.

The American Dollar has been making Cinematic Instrumental music since 2005. After having their first track immediately licensed by an MTV production upon release, the band has since gone on to have music included in some of the worlds most widely viewed programs such as CSI: Miami and Discovery Networks Human Planet. In addition, they have had songs in trailers for Academy Award Winning and Nominated films such as Up In The Air and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The band has 13 releases and has performed their film-sync’d live set to adoring audiences around the globe.

Human Nature have earned their place as one of the world’s finest pop vocal groups of the modern era. Since arriving into the lives of the great Australian public back in 1996, they’ve become known around the globe for their distinctive harmonies and stellar live shows, riding waves to the top of the charts, and have won fans all over the planet.

Aimee Mann's Mental Illness, her first album in five years, will be released on March 31 via her own SuperEgo Records. The record follows 2012's Charmer, which Rolling Stone proclaimed "shows off the more pop-oriented side to her usual acoustic tendencies." With this follow-up, she returns to a more musically soft-spoken but still lyrically barbed approach, as heard in the album's lead single, "Goose Snow Cone," which is out now.