Album

Celso Fonseca is a Brazilian singer-songwriter who has worked with the likes of Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento and Gilberto Gil, as well as appearing on Bebel Gilberto's worldwide hit Tanto Tempo. Billed as his first international album, Natural is a pleasant affair of light bossa/samba, laidback in style and chilled-out in performance. The problem is that no translation of the lyrics is provided, which makes the "international" claim puzzling Mood music at best, then, for non-Brazilians.

Parisian duo soundtrack a reading of Italian novelist's westerns

Mainstream crossover from 1992 with bonus disc of B-sides and demos

Hits and rarities from legendary soul label

Rossi and co's early hits trace their transition from psychedelic lads to headbangers

Second from retrograde avant-pop Londoners

New bands resurrecting big tech-house sounds from early to-mid-'90s

Venus Hum are heralded as the "New Sound of Nashville", but Big Beautiful Sky's first few tracks take you back to early-'80s Basildon. With Annette Strean's crystalline voice trilling over bouncy synths, you imagine Eddi Reader fronting Vince Clarke's Depeche Mode—it's sweet but unpardonably passé. Thankfully, it changes quickly, the music slowing and swelling to a Björk-style naturalistic ambience that suits Strean's wide-eyed conjuring of delicate flora and sweeping vistas.

Debut solo outing for ex-Teenage Fanclub sticksman

Live album recorded in Chicago on Independence Day 1988