With a career that spans nearly 25 years, IQ remains one of the biggest names in the world of Progressive Rock. Getting their start in Southhampton England back in 1981, IQ was often compared to two other great Prog bands from the UK, Marillion and Genesis. For years the band struggled to create their own identity. And they did so by outlasting the glory days of Fish’s Marillion and Gabriel’s Genesis. Here again is IQ with their classic line-up of Peter Nicholls, Martin Orford, Mike Holmes, John Jowitt and Paul Cook. Originally released in 1989, Are You Sitting Comfortably? features Paul Menel on vocals, coalescing in Britain's foremost prog rock groups since the '80s. There is not a bad track on this album; lush soundscapes, thought provoking lyrics, brilliant musicianship, it's all here. Take a chance on this one, it is a classic and well worth investing in!

Minstrel in the Gallery was Tull's most artistically successful and elaborately produced album since Thick as a Brick and harkened back to that album with the inclusion of a 17-minute extended piece ("Baker Street Muse"). Although English folk elements abound, this is really a hard rock showcase on a par with – and perhaps even more aggressive than – anything on Aqualung. The title track is a superb showcase for the group, freely mixing folk melodies, lilting flute passages, and archaic, pre-Elizabethan feel, and the fiercest electric rock in the group's history – parts of it do recall phrases from A Passion Play, but all of it is more successful than anything on War Child.

If Day at the Races was a sleek, streamlined album, its 1977 successor, News of the World, was its polar opposite, an explosion of styles that didn't seem to hold to any particular center. It's front-loaded with two of Queen's biggest anthems – the stomping, stadium-filling chant "We Will Rock You" and its triumphant companion, "We Are the Champions" – which are quickly followed by the ferocious "Sheer Heart Attack," a frenzied rocker that hits harder than anything on the album that shares its name (a remarkable achievement in itself). Three songs, three quick shifts in mood, but that's hardly the end of it.

Hooking up with regular Madonna collaborator Patrick Leonard as the co-producer of this album proved to be just the trick for Ferry. Bete Noire sparkles as the highlight of Ferry's post-Roxy solo career, adding enough energy to make it more than Boys and Girls part two. Here, his trademark well-polished heartache strikes a fine balance between mysterious moodiness and dancefloor energy, and Leonard adds more than a few tricks that keep the pep up. Five out of the nine songs are Ferry/Leonard collaborations; all succeed, from "Limbo"'s opening punch and flow to the cinematic (and unsurprisingly French-tinged) feeling of the title track.

This first of the two sets contains four indisputable masterpieces. In the stormy D minor Concerto K. 466, Brendel springs a mild surprise by playing his own cadenzas rather than Beethoven's, the ones most often used. I must confess to preferring Beethoven's unstylish but dramatic and imaginative cadenza to the first movement, but otherwise the performance is beyond reproach. Brendel adds some discreet and entirely appropriate ornamentation to the many repetitions of the second movement's main theme. The Olympian C major K. 467, with its incomparably beautiful slow movement, also receives some much-needed decoration: here the cadenzas are by Radu Lupu and are a bit quirkier than necessary.

Clapton is Eric Clapton’s first solo album in five years, but he hardly spent the back half of the 2000s in seclusion. After 2005’s Back Home, he went on a journey through the past, writing a 2007 autobiography – also titled Clapton, although that’s the only connection they shared – mending fences with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker for a brief Cream reunion, establishing a lasting connection with his old Blind Faith bandmate Steve Winwood, and recording a duet album with his ‘70s inspiration JJ Cale. This embrace of history isn’t directly heard on Clapton but it’s certainly felt, extending to how EC relies on old tunes – blues and country, but also pop and R&B – for the bulk of this 14-track album.

The solo violin recital is something of a black belt for violinists, as the fact of the violin playing alone tends to overwhelm in pieces that were not necessarily intended to be played together. Violinist Carolin Widmann does well here, and it's all the more impressive that there are few extended techniques of any kind, just a bit of pizzicato in one of the Three Miniatures for solo violin of George Benjamin. One thing that has attracted buyers to this commercially successful release is the presence of unusual pieces, not only the Benjamin but also the Fantaisie concertante of George Enescu.

Beat Avenue is 60-year-old Eric Andersen's most ambitious album, a 90-minute tour de force that encapsulates his musical and lyrical concerns over a lifetime. The music is often-dense rock dominated by a rhythm section led by guitarist Eric Bazilian of the Hooters. Equally dense is Andersen's highly poetic versifying, which he sings in his gruff baritone. Andersen is world-weary in these songs, roaming the globe haunted by the past and fearful of the future. He confesses to a reckless youth, but acknowledges that he can no longer afford such license. "What once was Charles Bukowski," he sings in "Before Everything Changed," referring to the free-living beat poet, "is now Emily Dickinson." The ballads and love songs "Song of You and Me," "Shape of a Broken Heart," "Under the Shadows," and "Still Looking for You" are rendered tenderly, but they are also full of regret and loss, past-tense reflections that recount memories of love long gone. The first disc of Beat Avenue is complete and formidable unto itself, but there is a second CD consisting of two lengthy songs. The title track, running more than 26 minutes, is a beat poem with jazzy accompaniment by Robert Aaron in which Andersen recalls a poetry reading he attended as a 20-year-old on the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

Matt Andersen's eighth studio album finds him featuring his own songwriting skills, and also his versatility, as the award-winning Canadian guitarist shows that there's more to his sound than the blues. Produced by Steve Berlin, Weightless branches off into R&B, reggae, and rockabilly rhythms, and with Calgary guitarist Paul Rigby on board, it's less about soaring guitar leads and more about tight, scrappy guitar arrangements that make this arguably Andersen's best, broadest, and most commercially accessible album.

This is the lone solo album by sideman Roger "Jellyroll" Troy, a consummate session player who was best known for his collaborations with blues bandleader Michael Bloomfield, including as part of a reunited mid-'70s version of Electric Flag. Troy's bona fides go back even further than that: while still a teen, he was the bassist in the novelty rock band, the Hollywood Argyles, and went on to gigs with James Brown and Freddie King. In 1969 he cut an album as the leader of the band Jellyroll (which was his nickname) and he had considerable success as a songwriter in the early '70s. This album is pretty much pure white soul, with a heavy Muscle Shoals feel: four songs were written by Troy, though tellingly he also covers Dan Penn, whose emotive vocals style is echoed in Troy's own phrasing. Among the many musicians backing him are jazz saxophonist Ernie Watts and pianist/producer Mike Lipskin… Fans of the Atlanta Rhythm Section, Joe Cocker and any number of eclectic Memphis roots/soul bands might want to check this one out.