String And Lean

Lenny Kravitz is set to release his 11th studio album, Raise Vibration, on Sept. 7 via BMG. The news arrived with the first single, "It's Enough," which a press release describes as a "a tense, decisive rumination on the global state of affairs today."

“The immediacy of expression, the dramatic tension and the vitality achieved not only by the singers but also by the full-throated chorus, the wonderful orchestra and, last but not least, Karl Böhm himself all set standards by which other performances must be judged and found wanting.” So sayeth the liner notes to this first official release of the original broadcast tapes of the Fidelio that reopened the Vienna State Opera in 1955.

Though Enrique Iglesias spent four years between albums, one would hardly know it by Sex and Love. No less than four of these 11 tracks were issued as pre-release singles in 2013. Musically, Iglesias walks the line between the dancefloor jams of 2007's Insomniac and the romantic flavor of 2010's Euphoria….

Friend Of Mine (1976). Recorded in the wake of the collapse of Stax Records in 1976, Friend of Mine brushed up against a long fallow period in Little Milton's recorded output, and was also unavailable for many years, thus making it one of his least-known albums. Produced by Milton for Henry Stone's TK Records and issued on the Glades Records imprint, this is a soulful blues workout drenched in sweaty vocals and long, sustained performances, of which perhaps the best is the five-and-a-half-minute "You're Gonna Make Me Cry," which also includes some impressive guitar. The record's strongest body of songs are the smooth soul ballads such as "Baby It Ain't No Way," the rousing "Don't Turn Away" (a song that one wishes Elvis Presley could have discovered and considered covering)…