Dr. John's new album, Locked Down, is out now on CD and digitally, with the vinyl to follow on April 21, and is streaming in full all week at MSN Music. Dr. John and producer Dan Auerbach perform on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight. They spoke to NPR's Morning Edition about the album's more personal side. The LA Times gives Locked Down a perfect four stars: "As Bob Dylan did with Time Out of Mind and Tom Waits did last year with Bad as Me, Dr. John does here ... creating something magical, the embodiment of everything he’s done but pushed in a clear new direction." The Seattle Times calls it "stunning." The Boston Globe says: "It's Dr. John in full splendor." The Independent on Sunday, Observer, and Financial Times all give it four stars. The Sunday Times calls it a "tour de force."

Folila, Amadou & Mariam's first studio album since 2009's acclaimed Welcome to Mali, is due out in the US next week, and is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen. The album features contributions by Santigold, TV on the Radio, Nick Zinner, Theophilus London, Bassekou Kouyate, and others. "The result is richly textured," says NPR. The Daily Telegraph gives the album five stars. The Independent says the album shows "how adeptly Amadou & Mariam straddle both local and global, with a truly 'world' music." The Sunday Times of London says the collaborations "all serve the song and all are there only to enhance the unfathomably brilliant guitar work of Amadou and the effortlessly beautiful voice of Mariam."

Dr. John, who launched his three-week residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) last night, is the subject of a feature article in the New York Times that looks at his career and the unexpected turn it takes on his new album, Locked Down, produced by Dan Auerbach. They are featured in the Wall Street Journal, which says the "incendiary new album ... both harks back to [Dr. John]'s past and breaks new musical ground." Locked Down earns four stars from the Independent and the Times of London, which says Auerbach "has brought out the best in a true American original." The Guardian gives a perfect five stars to this "inspired" album: "[N]o one makes music like this: the Night Tripper rampages inimitably through swamp blues, voodoo funk and Afrobeat, with his trademark piano ... Terrific stuff."

Dr. John can be heard across the BBC this week, on the BBC Radio 4's Front Row and the BBC World Service's The Strand; his new album, Locked Down, is the BBC 6 Music Album of the Day. It's Album of the Month in Uncut, earning a nine out of ten. "Hugely successful," the magazine exclaims. "Weird, powerful rock ‘n’ roll ... enormously funky." Rolling Stone, MOJO, and the NY Daily News all give Locked Down four stars: "Full of muscled, vintage R&B grooves, fevered soloing, psychedelic arrangements and oracular mumbo jumbo," says Rolling Stone, "it's the wildest record he's made in many years." The Daily News calls it "one of the smokiest, funkiest, sexiest works of the legend’s career." MOJO says: "Dr. John teams up with Dan Auerbach and the gumbo is bubbling once again ... This is definitely right place, right time."

With March Madness heading into the final stretch, Dr. John will play a free set in New Orleans' Woldenberg Park this Sunday as part of the NCAA Big Dance Concert Series. Dan Auerbach, the producer of his new album, Locked Down, plays on Saturday with The Black Keys. Both Dr. John and Auerbach will premiere music from the album at BAM the following weekend as part of Dr. John's three-week BAM residency, which begins tomorrow. Dr. John will be featured on BBC Radio 4's Front Row tonight.

Chris Thile joined the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for the New York premiere of his Mandolin Concerto at Carnegie Hall on Saturday. The New York Times wonders if the mandolin is "about to have its moment as a classical solo instrument" and calls Thile "the instrument’s brightest star at the moment." Thile "knows how to surprise," says the Times' Allan Kozinn. "As fresh as the music sounded, it also had an appealing naturalness." The mandolin's solo line "is built on Mr. Thile’s more subtle brand of virtuosity—a blend of fluid melody, dazzling speed and a command of timbre ..."

Timothy Andres's music was featured on a number of concert programs in Los Angeles this weekend, including a piece from his debut album, Shy and Mighty, at Beyond Baroque, and Andres himself joining the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on piano for the world premiere of his Old Keys and the West Coast premiere of his re-composition of Mozart's "Coronation" Concerto. "What is most original about Andres’ music so far is its extraordinary pianistic character," says the Los Angeles Times review. "He is a superb pianist with a highly evolved rhythmic sense and a quirky sense of humor."

In 2004, Caetano Veloso curated a week of special concerts at Carnegie Hall and invited his longtime friend and collaborator David Byrne to join him for the show captured on the new album Caetano Veloso & David Byrne: Live at Carnegie Hall. "Respected songwriters who for the last four decades have in similar ways chronicled their respective cultures, the pair trade stripped-down renditions of some of their classics on this live document and in doing so offer borderless bliss," says the Los Angeles Times. Citing Veloso's take on Byrne's "(Nothing but) Flowers," the Times concludes: "Such joy is evident throughout Live at Carnegie Hall.” MOJO gives the album four stars.

The Black Keys return to NYC for the second of two shows at Madison Square Garden tonight, following their first-ever headlining show at the venue earlier this month, which the AP says "electrified" the place. The band had a homecoming show at The Q in Cleveland Tuesday. "I’ve caught the Black Keys in a variety of settings," says the Cleveland Plain Dealer's John Soeder. "I’ve never known them to put on a bad show. And I’ve never witnessed them put on a better one than they did on this high-stakes occasion." The Chicago Tribune reports from Monday's show at the United Center that the band's sound remains full of "brawny riffs and rolling, tumbling drums that swing hard."

Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opened at London's Adelphi Theatre last night, a West End transfer of the acclaimed Chichester Festival production, directed by Jonathan Kent. The production, starring Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball, opened to rave reviews, earning five stars from the Guardian, which calls it "a superb achievement," and the Times of London, which calls it "an absolute bleedin' triumph." The Daily Telegraph says Sweeney Todd is "Stephen Sondheim’s best show and one of the greatest musicals of all time." Earlier this month in London, Sondheim was awarded the Critics' Circle Award for Distinguished Services to the Arts.

The Brad Mehldau Trio’s new album, Ode, with 11 previously unreleased songs composed by Mehldau, is out now. The album is "full of seductive melody, and in its blues and bop references and surging swing, it's explicitly jazzy, too," says the Guardian in a four-star review. "It bears a lot of replaying." The Observer calls the new songs "absorbing," noting that "Mehldau is so brilliant at 'recomposing' standards that his remarkable talent as a composer is often overlooked." The Ottawa Citizen says: "A potent combination of deep lyricism, questing creativity and bar-raising virtuosity, Ode consistently provides the frissons that Mehldau fans have come to expect and that lesser pianists wish they could evoke."

The Black Keys take their North American arena tour to Chicago for a performance at the United Center tonight. At Friday's show at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, "11,000 attendees rallied around Auerbach's flawless and precise solos and Carney's caveman beats," says the Indianapolis Star. Auerbach tells the Chicago Tribune: "There’s something about those old arenas, where it feels larger than life. It’s like walking into a (big-league) baseball or basketball game, it’s on a different level, and I love that.” At the same time, he tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "We don't change anything, whether we're playing on a small stage or a big stage."