All the surprise/sudden/secret release strategies in the world are meaningless if the release itself isn't worth rushing to your computer or phone for. Which is why it's a good thing that pretty much all the major press about SOLANGE's sublime A SEAT AT THE TABLE is about the album and the issues it addresses, rather than the fact that nobody knew it was coming until about 24 hours before it did. I'm not really in the business of reviewing albums, as I may have mentioned last week, but Solange's first album in nearly a decade is a gorgeous and personal R&B album, some of it forward-looking, some of it decidedly retro, that has as much to say about being black in AMERICA in 2016 as any album released this year, including her big sister's... Shoutout to SOLANGE's narrator... Agreed with JAIME WEINMAN of MACLEAN's and TOM CARSON at BILLBOARD that one of the problems with the recent deluge of failed rock and roll TV shows is that rock is no longer a major part of the cultural zeitgeist, and hasn't been in a long time. Then again, I'm not sure zombies and dragons were part of the cultural zeitgeist either until someone made good shows about them. And if anything connected ROADIES, VINYL and SEX&DRUGS&ROCK&ROLL more than the dated music they championed, it was the dramatic malaise of the shows themselves. There were missing sparks. Make a show about rock that's as good as, say, MOZART IN THE JUNGLE -- based on a book subtitled SEX, DRUGS AND CLASSICAL MUSIC -- and viewers will follow... ANIMAL COLLECTIVE are mensches... ALICIA MACHADO: the music videos... RIP SIR NEVILLE MARRINER, OSCAR BRAND and JOSH FISCHEL... CORRECTION: The photo atop Friday's newsletter that I captioned as NICOLAS JAAR was actually a photo of JAAR's DARKSIDE collaborator DAVE HARRINGTON. My apologies.