Amoeba Music

Finally breaking out of Beyonce's shadow long after the breakup of Destiny's Child, Kelly Rowland uses her captivating voice and her uninhibited sexuality to bring it on home on her fourth full-length. Working with David Guetta convinced her to dive into dance music, which she does with a passion. But the standout track for those who want to know exactly where things stand with Ms. Kelly and Bey is "Dirty Laundry", a weighty, razor-sharp slow jam drama on which Rowlands professes love, envy and schadenfreude for her ex-soul sister in equal measure. Let's face it, she's the Joker to Beyonce's Batman, the poor stepchild to Beyonce's little rich girl, and none of Mrs. Jay-Z's world-dominating exploits can be enjoyed in full without hearing the other side of the story from Ms. K. Talk a Good Game stands on its own as a powerful, well-written, sultry modern soul throwdown and equally as a real-world counterbalance to the zillionaire fantasies of her better-known sis.

The prequel to Monsters Inc., this finds the Monsters taking on higher education, with Billy Crystal's Mike Wazowski majoring in scaring and battling John Goodman's "Sully" Sullivan for top honors in the field. Grand old man of L.A. Tin Pan Alley Randy Newman lays down a classic soundtrack full of tunes wry, wondering, sentimental and delightful, taking a break just long enough to let the Swedish House Mafia guys blast off a tune appropriately titled "Roar". It's a good thing those Pixar films are suave and snappy enough to live up to a soundtrack this classy.

The minions are back and so is Pharrell Williams, once again lending his knack for absurdly bouncy pop to the blockbuster sequel. While Steve Carell's Gru gets yanked out of retirement to help the Anti-Villain League battle a nefarious new evildoer, Pharrell and Heitor Pereira whip up a technicolor froth of party beats and joyful soul, most notably Pharrell's delightful pop tune "Happy" and the explosive Cee-Lo vehicle "Scream". Pharrell is the perfect soundtrack for a kid's movie -- he's so hyperdanceable and chipper, he's like Brenton Wood, the Monkees and the Jackson 5 rolled into one. If they weren't stuck on this soundtrack, some of these tunes could even give his Daft Punk star turn "Get Lucky" some serious competition.

A soul singer's soul singer, that is, a sensuous diva par excellence respected by everyone from Stevie Wonder to Nancy Wilson, Maysa Leak has the range, the heart, the expression and the silky soul magic that make even fellow musicians lose their cool. She's sung with everyone from Wonderlove to Incognito, but her tenth solo record, Blue Velvet Soul, might just be her best. This finds her at the top of her game and she knows it, crooning everything from breakup to makeup tunes and a little sexy disco while she's at it ("Put It On Me"). Her voice can manipulate you up and down the emotional spectrum, pleading, praying, seducing, telling it like it is. If you don't wanna waste time with the amateurs, and you want to get straight to the finest, most luxurious soul technique around, the queen of that game is Maysa, and her newest one is serious plush.

“I’m too black for the m*thafuckin’ underground/The white fans barely tolerate my black ass/If I embrace them, I catch a backlash from the black fans,” Murs states plainly on “Black N White Revisited,” from his collaboration with Bad Brains guitarist/singer Darryl Jennifer and editor/artist Sacha Jenkins. For artists caught between worlds, The White Mandingos is a brilliant foray into musical freedom, combining Murs’ cerebral underground hip-hop with the hardcore ferocity of Bad Brains. Jenkins’ guitars cut, shred and destroy on tracks like “Warn a Brotha,” with a great line from Murs — “f*ck the Rolling Stones, and f*ck you, too.” As with any collaboration that slams together and creates serious sparks, some of it doesn’t work — “Wifey” and “King of New York” are a little hokey, for instance. But for a risky collaboration in a straight-up rap-rock band — how un-2013 is that? — The Ghetto Is Tryna Kill Me feels strikingly relevant. It’s a shame Murs should even have to say it, but his words still ring true: “Does this sh*t sound black/does this sh*t sound white/Can it just be sound?”

Fans of the almost septuagenarian jazz piano wizard Keith Jarrett, and the renowned rhythm kings Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette who have ventured forth with him to new worlds nigh on 30 years, will be overjoyed at this new release, six standards reinterpreted live and long in Switzerland’s Lucerne Concert Hall. From his early years as a piano prodigy to his journeyman work with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd, and most importantly Miles Davis, Jarrett has always been idiosyncratic, crafting his own sparkling, labyrinthine journeys punctuated by his well-known shouts and grunts. Decades of serious work on Western classical composition and immersion in folk styles have tempered Jarrett’s playing to a fine finish. On Somewhere, he engages standards from West Side Story to “Stars Fell On Alabama,” and the courtship is long, inventive and tumultuous. But his impossibly agile technique and brilliant invention are undimmed, and he stretches each piece into a slow-burning opera of adagio, presto and allegro. His work often zips past easy comprehension, and repays repeat listens with expanding structures and endless revelations.

Nine albums and countless EPs in, roadside poet Joseph Arthur is finally delivering the mastepiece he’s worked towards his whole career: his Exile, his Blonde On Blonde, his Disintegration, his watershed. On The Ballad of Boogie Christ, Arthur sounds wasted and holy, angelic and down-home, as clear and rough and great-hearted as ever. The tunes and the themes are big: what is life, love and art? What’s right and wrong? Why do we do these things? Arthur belts it out with the glorious spirituality of U2, “Christ would be rockin’, Christ would be free, he’d say there’s no difference between you and me.” Rough redemption, validation of the real, something Joseph Arthur has striven for through a lifetime of music. It sounds like he’s being reborn.

Perhaps it’s a good thing singer Brent Walsh was going through a very nasty breakup when I The Mighty lurched into the studio to record their debut LP -- the vocals roar, the lyrics sting, the drums thunder and the pain is physical. Satori is a Japanese term for awakening or enlightenment, which it sounds like the band is achieving here: they blast through song after complex, vaulting song like a single organism, with impeccably meticulous drumming and snarling guitars melding seamlessly with the vast anger and frustration of the self-rending tunes. Fans of Pierce the Veil or Circa Survive will find another star in their firmament of epic rage and cinematic performance.

British siblings Guy and Howard Lawrence, just 21 and 18 respectively, are about to pulverize the dance scene with one of the biggest, hottest debuts in recent memory, and likely steal some of Daft Punk’s thunder while they’re at it. Just as Daft Punk re-inhabits classic disco, Disclosure reinvents classic UK garage, dubstep and funky house, dusting shopworn sounds with absolute pop magic. They corral an impressive set of star guest vocalists into a seamlessly commanding, hypnotic set of tunes, from Eliza Doolittle’s turn on “You and Me” to Friendly Fires’ Ed McFarlane’s “Defeated No More” to Jamie Woon and Jessie Ware. Perhaps most impressive, kicking things off and commanding center stage on “When a Fire Starts to Burn” is ‘hip-hop preacher’ Eric Thomas, whose sampled sermon becomes an unbelievably body-jackin’ jam blazing with pentacostal fire. This is what it sounds like when somebody comes along years after a style was invented and makes the record so good it becomes the reason that style ever existed. The kids are going wild for this stuff and with good reason: it’s likely the best dance-pop album of the year.

Despite the departure of guitarist Adriano Cintra last year, Brazilian party-rock band CSS soldier on. And perhaps because of his absence, fourth album Planta is a more electronically based album, eschewing some of the post-punk guitarwork that the band combined with chintzy electronics to great effect on their early material. Over glittering disco, the band seems to address their lineup change on one of the album’s strongest tracks, the Icarus-reffing “Into the Sun”: “Driving away into the sun, I’m looking forward, f*ck everyone/Leave him alone, starting a new day.” It’s a bold restatement from the band, who with the help of producer David Sitek (TV on the Radio), churn out catchy electronic pop across Planta. Rancid’s Tim Armstrong (who’s also worked with Pink, among others) co-writes single “Hangover,” which brings ska horns into the mix, doing a better No Doubt than No Doubt did on their last album. Singer Lovefoxx continues to be a driving force for the band, her accented delivery helping to carry the otherwise unremarkable “Honey,” and she shows she can actually sing pretty well behind the sass on the dreamy “Girlfriend,” channeling ’80s heroines like Cyndi Lauper and Siouxsie Sioux. And the band comes in for a good ol’ fashioned new-wave raveup on “Dynamite.” When the band is able to balance its newfound reliance on electronic shades with the charisma and energy of their early work, Planta truly shines.