Björk’s new album, Biophilia, is out now. Additionally, the complete Biophilia App is now available in the iTunes App Store. Biophilia is featured on this week's Science Times podcast from the New York Times. Björk spoke about the project with NPR's All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen, who says: "Björk is a visionary." CNN says the project "really takes technology, music, and even education to a new place." 

Pat Metheny brings his 20-city US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier to a close with a special week-long engagement at the Blue Note in New York City. Metheny and Grenadier launch a European tour with drummer Bill Stewart next week and reunite as a duo for a week's run at the Blue Note in Tokyo in January. All About Jazz calls Metheny's latest solo album, What's It All About, "an essential record ... [H]e has made a record that can lure the listener into emotional spaces that enchant, seduce and delight."

Björk's new album, Biophilia, is out this week. She spoke with NPR's Morning Edition about the new album and its multimedia components, including the App suite also available this week. The AP says "Biophilia's music is vintage Björk." The Financial Times calls it "a triumph," giving it a perfect five stars, as does the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Mirror calls it "a thrilling record ... Even in Björk’s catalogue there’s nothing that’s been as spectacularly unconventional and wholly successful as Biophilia." PopMatters says "she’s breaking new ground few others know is out there to begin with."

Björk's new album, Biophilia, is due out on CD next week. Also available then is the complete Biophilia App suite comprising ten components, one for each track on the album; watch a preview video here. The vinyl album will now release two weeks later, on October 24. The Guardian gives the album four stars, saying it "teems with invention ... big on moments of pure, indulgent pleasure." Daily Express says she's "outdone even herself" with Biophilia. "Eccentric and quite lovely, this is a real artist at work."

Laurie Anderson's North American fall tour continues as she brings her performance piece Delusion to Montreal for three nights of shows at Usine C, tonight through Thursday. "In Anderson we have a throwback to theatrical storytelling that's at least as old as the troubadours and Beowulf," says the Boston Phoenix in a review of last week's six-night Boston run. "The graceful way she moves about the stage and reacts to the screen images or even presides over a music stand, manipulating sounds, delivering text—all show a complete, and completely satisfying, sense of stage craft ... Anderson really delivers."

Ry Cooder's first-ever stand-alone written work, Los Angeles Stories, is out now from City Lights Books and available in the Nonesuch Store. "Cooder fans will enjoy the upbeat mix of music and murder," says the San Francisco Chronicle. "Aficionados of noir fiction will love the characters, all of whom have something to hide and all of whom are engaged in illegal activity." Cooder will discuss the book at San Francsico's Herbst Theatre on Wednesday. Blurt, reviewing his new album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, says it "ranks not only among his very best releases, but among the best socio-political albums ever made."

Björk's Biophilia is out in just over a week. In an early review, the BBC calls it "an amazing, inventive and wholly unique eighth album from an artist without peer." Stereogum says: "She brought it, once again." Crave exclaims: "Biophilia is simply a phenomenal album ... Björk represents the best idea of what a pop star truly is." Clash Music says: "An absolutely remarkable artist, for whom the terms ‘genius’ and ‘unique’ are not journalistic hyperbole but simple fact, Björk is taking music to a place where we should all gladly follow."

Pat Metheny's US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier continues this weekend with sold-out shows in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Ann Arbor. The Kansas City Star, reviewing last night's show, raves: "The idyllic concept of angels plucking on harps in heaven is overdue for an overhaul. One possible update is the image of Pat Metheny bent over a guitar ... Metheny creates extraordinarily celestial sounds, with last night's show "exceptionally rapturous even by his standards." Metheny discusses his new album, What's It All About, on today's episode of PRI's Here & Now.

Ry Cooder appeared on the latest episode of BBC Radio 2's Mike Harding show to discuss his latest album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, which Harding describes as "totally brilliant." BoingBoing places the album "in the tradition of the great titles of Woody Guthrie and Haywire Harry McClintlock ... As you'd expect from Cooder, the songs are musically tight and eminently singable and danceable."

Ry Cooder spoke with BBC Radio 4's Today about his new album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down; the interview was broadcast in the US on PRI's The Takeaway. The Philadelphia Inquirer gives the album a perfect four stars, likening it to "the scrappy populism of Woody Guthrie ... set to an incredibly rich melting pot of folk, blues, country, rock, and norteno." The Chicago Sun-Times too calls him "a modern-day Woody Guthrie." Canada's North Shore News says: "Brilliant stuff."

Randy Newman helped make this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival a success this past weekend. "We still don't know how a 67-year-old turned in our favorite set of this past weekend's Austin City Limits Festival," raves the Houston Press, "but heck if Randy Newman didn't leave us on a musical high ... Newman solo onstage with just his compositions, a smile, and an adoring crowd was one of the most magical things we would see this weekend." Newman stayed on in Austin to record his set for PBS's Austin City Limits, which will air on November 12.

Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli is out this week. The album features pieces written by each of the three musicians as well as works by Reich, Coleman, and Glass, performed by the two pianists in arrangements by Zimmerli. The New York Times says the pianists bring "a high sheen to some choice material." The Financial Times gives the album a perfect five stars. MusicOMH calls it "another fascinating and technically remarkable addition to Mehldau’s body of work." The Guardian, reviewing Mehldau's live show with Chris Thile in London on Friday, says their "musicality and sympathy for each other's emerging ideas made it an unexpected tour de force."