Körinn Traversée (2019)

The legendary Danish pop duo is celebrating their 40th anniversary with a new album. With a staggering record sale in the multimillion class and indelible classics like Sunshine Reggae, White Horse and Bakerman on the conscience, this year Laid Back can celebrate 40 years of fruitful collaboration. However, the stylish Danish pop duo looks ahead rather than back, which means that on the occasion of their anniversary they have made a brand new album entitled Healing Feeling. The new album is believed to have come to the world in Laid Back's own studio at Vesterbro in Copenhagen, where the duo, made up of the couple John Guldberg and Tim Stahl, have had their steady base ever since the beginning of their career.

Beethoven’s monumental contribution to Western classical music is celebrated here in this definitive collection marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Surveying the totality of his career and achievement, the Complete Edition spans orchestral, concerto, keyboard, chamber, music for the stage, choral and vocal works, encompassing his most familiar and iconic masterpieces, alongside rarities and recently reconstructed fragments and sketches in world premiere recordings. The roster of artists and ensembles includes some of Beethoven’s greatest contemporary exponents, in performances that have won critical acclaim worldwide.

A companion compilation to the sprawling 2019 box set The Later Years 1987-2019, this 80-minute collection distills that luxury item into something handy and affordable. In the winnowing process, it's revealed that the box indeed consists primarily of live material: all but five of the 12 tracks are live recordings, most taken from either the remixed version of the 1988 live double-LP Delicate Sound of Thunder or the full-length Live at Knebworth, which was recorded in 1990. Two cuts from the rejiggered A Momentary Lapse of Reason – which was revised to sound more like a classic Floyd album, à la The Division Bell – are here, along with an early rendition of "High Hopes" and the unheard instrumental "Marooned Jam," which also dates from 1994. None of this newer material is earthshaking, but it fits well next to the live versions of classic Floyd songs and, in turn, helps make a case for the merits of the Waters-less Floyd, even if it doesn't necessarily act as an enticing endorsement for the lavish accompanying box.

Orchestrating My Life is a clever title for an album where Rick Springfield revisits his catalog with the assistance of a 60-piece orchestra. It's a common move for veteran artist, but Springfield resists the easy impulse to make an easy listening record. Instead, he pumps Orchestrating My Life up with big, loud guitars that intentionally echo the arrangements of his original hit singles. Perhaps such a move was inevitable, as so many of his big hits – "I've Done Everything for You," "Don't Talk to Strangers," "Jessie's Girl," "Affair of the Heart," "Love Somebody," "Human Touch" – are melodic power pop fueled by massive hooks, the kind of album rock that needs its riffs as a support; remove the guitars and the whole edifice collapses.