Working the Long Game

Bill Lloyd

Republic Records’ various-artists soundtrack to Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse does for state-of-the-art pop music what the film does for state-of-the-art pop cinema: prove that the hippest and coolest technological gimmickry can be put at the service of something other than low-balling tripe. Not one of its 13 cuts veers into profanity or celebrates greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, or sloth.

Wake the World: The Friends Sessions

The Beach Boys

Unlikely though it seems, given how infrequently entertainers make headlines for keeping the Ten Commandments, the former “new Dylans” Loudon Wainwright III and Bruce Springsteen devote much of their latest albums—the eponymous soundtracks to their respective Netflix one-man-shows Loudon Wainwright III: Surviving Twin and Springsteen on Broadway—to honoring their fathers.

Decca’s two-disc The Good Book: Stories from the Holy Bible in Words and Music contains 54 thematically arranged Scripture passages read by the actors David Harewood (Supergirl, Doctor Who) and Anton Lesser (Endeavour, Dickensian), the actress Imelda Staunton (Psychoville, Vera Drake), and the TV presenter Diane Louise Jordan (Songs of Praise, Blue Peter).

The Christmas Revels

Diego’s Umbrella & Friends

Would that Giles Martin, the 49-year-old son of the late Beatles producer Sir George Martin, could oversee the re-production from the ground up of every iconic rock ’n’ roll album.

His painstaking restoration of the Beatles’ Hollywood Bowl recordings and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band rendered all previous incarnations obsolete. And now he and his team of engineers have worked similar wonders with The Beatles, the Fab Four’s 30-song double album commonly referred to as The White Album.