As much as we praise and enjoy virtuosity in any single musical skill, be it writing lyrics that resonate with millions or shredding an electric guitar to bits, we really like it when someone is a double or triple threat. Eyes hesitated to blink as Beyoncé dished out gritty live vocals, popping choreography, and a general sense of drop-dead fierceness during the Super Bowl halftime show. P!nk already showed us she could sing live and twirl upside-down on silks on the Grammys a few year back, so for the 2012 AMAs she performed a shoulder-balancing, body-throwing dance routine fit for So You Think You Can Dance... while singing live, of course.

UK-born Florrie Arnold has her own intriguing set of aces up her stylish sleeves. She’s a drummer, singer-songwriter, guitarist… and she models for fragrances and jeans. Furthermore, her songs, all co-writes across three independently released EPs, straddle a beguiling mix of pop and anti-pop that manages to be catchy but strange.

Sadly, I do not have 20/20 vision. That has literally nothing to do with this discussion of Justin Timberlake’s recently released album The 20/20 Experience, but I just wanted to get it out there.

In all seriousness, I don’t see a lot of myself in JT (in fact, I don’t see very much at all out of my bum right eye, but that’s another story). I am, though, fascinated by him. As a number of reviews of The 20/20 Experience have pointed out, the 2002 single “Cry Me a River” was the song that propelled Timberlake out of the B-league and into the “next Michael Jackson” position that he currently occupies. Although there were a few other singles from the… “cleverly” titled Justified, none of them had the musical and cultural impact of that one, the video for which moved him carefully and deliberately out of the space occupied by Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and the boy bands, one of which he obviously used to be a part of. Over the past decade, building on the sonic template of “Cry Me a River”, Timberlake has gained even more fame, critical success, and cultural omnipresence. Amazingly, he has accomplished this despite releasing only one album between 2002 and 2013.

I first discovered Hannah Marcus’ music nearly ten years back. Hearing the opening strains of “Laos”, a track off her last album, Desert Farmers, I was nearly frozen in place. I wasn’t sure how or why, but something in the song called to me on a deeper, more private level than any other song I had heard. It seemed to invade such a personal space within me where I held deeper, undisclosed emotions and, yet, it wholly belonged in that space. After half an hour’s worth of hearing the song on repeat, it found a home in me and it has since never left.

What especially caught my attention was Marcus’ utterly strange and distressing way of turning a phrase, sounding out a word with an inflection so alien, it startled and seduced in equal measure. Her songs were like doors to other worlds that explored the ideas of situational love and lives configured by loss and abandonment. In Marcus’ songs, people struggle not to survive but to simply exist; survival and the pain endured is merely an afterthought. To be able to encapsulate the heady and emotional complexities of human drama in the span of a pop song is an achievement in itself. To pen an indelible melody to accompany her striking visionary world is leaps and bounds over the moons of many songwriters.

First he was alone. Then he was crowded out by the ant-marching of city life. Now, our narrator is somewhere else, a place that’s near-indescribable. From the sound of “The City in a Hundred Ways”, the only instrumental track on Together We’re Stranger, he is in a sort of fugue or comatose state. Viewed in context—specifically as the precursor to “Things I Want to Tell You”—this seems like the intention of Tim Bowness and Steven Wilson in crafting this piece. The latter song is about awakening to a world of pain; correspondingly, the former is a hazy depiction of a mind clouded by unprocessed thoughts, rising emotions, and better-forgotten memories. The narrator’s plight is now similar to that of Leonard Shelby’s in Christopher Nolan’s reverse-narrative masterpiece Memento: “I can’t remember to forget you”. It’s a fitting parallel for more reasons than one: this little song is cinematic in how it mentally evokes a dreamlike montage of blurry remembrances of a love not so long lost.

In the grand scheme of Together We’re Stranger, “The City in a Hundred Ways” seems like a throwaway initially. At 2:23, it’s the shortest thing here (barely beating the vinyl-exclusive “Bluecoda” by 13 seconds), and its instrumentation is comprised of nothing more than slowly played horns and electronics—the latter provided by guest contributor David Picking. Compositionally it bears a noticeable likeness to the act of an orchestra tuning up, trying to find that perfect pitch. But in the case of this piece, it doesn’t quite get to that perfection. As a piece it sounds almost floating; whereas cuts like “All the Blue Changes”—while undoubtedly interpretive—make a fairly clear point, “The City in a Hundred Ways” is the most ethereal part of this LP, no small feat considering the myriad meanings one can draw from Bowness’ lyrics. Considering the plight of the narrator, this foggy quality is best described as the result of the transition shock from being left all alone to being thrust back into the ever-shuffling world of the city. As the listener follows along in this man’s plunge into the world of heartbreak, they becomes just as disoriented as he is.

Klinger: Gram Parsons. There are few words in the English language that conjure up as much critical saliva as those two right there. Gram Parsons. From a critic’s perspective, this was a guy who had it all: the perfect backstory, the right look, the impeccable taste, the ability to blend in easily with rock royalty, and of course the tragic demise at a crucial juncture in his career. And as we see here on Grievous Angel, his first appearance on the Great List, he had an astonishing talent for songwriting and interpretation.

Of course, if you’re stumbling across Grievous Angel based mainly on its critical reputation, you might well be taken aback by the high levels of honky-tonkery found here. Parsons was steeped in country traditions like one of those jars of tea people leave out in their backyard all day. (Pro-tip: those jars are not for passers-by to wet their whistles. Trust me.) And I could see where that might be daunting. So Mendelsohn, as someone whose belt buckle is just regular sized, how did you enjoy Parsons’ final burst of Cosmic American Music?