Amoeba Music

With a new second lead singer in Dawn Joseph (though N’Dea Davenport still contributes to several tracks), The Brand New Heavies appear somewhat brand new to their fans once again. Luckily, this change isn’t a bad thing. The band still kicks in hard, on the opening title track, spinning looped, funky sounds. Davenport helps kick things off on “Sunlight,” a disco-flavored track in which Davenport eases into the song and belts only when she needs to, letting the emphasis remain on the band’s studied interplay and those lush soul strings. Forward continues delivering jam after jam, with the aptly titled “Do You Remember” drawing up fond memories of ’70s radio disco and funk, “A Little Funk in Your Pocket” providing easy-listening bliss and the horns come on strong for the funktastic “The Way It Goes.” Longtime fans of the band and acid jazz won’t be disappointed by the Heavies’ first album in six years.

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Mice Parade and main man Adam Pierce have gone through so many guises over the years, the band is like a consistently erupting volcano, always creating new ground. That continues on their latest release, Candela, on which Pierce and his cohorts augment their indie rock with bits of afrobeat-inspired percussion (“Currents”), flamenco guitar (“Candela”) and Latin rhythms (“Las Gentes Interesantes”). Mice Parade are also often at their most inspired when they trim the hedges, as the simplicity of “Listen Hear Glide Dear’s” swooning shoegaze or “This River Has a Tide’s” paired groaning chords and floral guitar lines can attest. Of course, their weirdest moments also draw gasps, such as the metallic jazz explosion in the final passage of “Pretending.” But with Candela’s relatively reined-in approach, Mice Parade’s adventurous genre-hopping and globe-trotting as able to land on appreciative ears. Provided listeners are willing to go along for the ride, Candela delivers a mind-opening experience.

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Jared Leto is back with a new 30 Seconds to Mars record, and this time he’s getting conceptual. The four notions that make up the album title factor into the album itself, with four segments, each given its own interlude and mood. Leto goes full-throttle in the “lust” portion, imbuing “Up in the Air” with a sexual longing, while musically the band continues to experiment with electronic beats and synthesizers, landing the song somewhere between Depeche Mode, Lady Gaga and Panic! At the Disco. Leto and co. would like to take new wave doom and gloom to the arena, much as Muse did with their latest record. If the guyliner set is willing to follow, 30 Seconds to Mars should have a huge hit on their hands with Love Lust Faith + Dreams.

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Ever since the late great Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell discovered these guys in Ocean Beach S.D. while they were still in high (sic) school, and immediately signed them to his Skunk label, they've been growing and perfecting their stoney blend of folk, reggae and beach freak boogie for an ever-expanding universe of fans. Since then they've toured with fellow spirits Snoop Dogg, Dave Matthews, Damien Marley and the Roots, emanating a cosmic rainbow of acoustic slop for the people. In 2011, El Supremo Dead Muerto Bob Weir brought them into his TRI studios to record a live party, and now you're invited... it's a mega soul funk jam featuring Ivan Neville, Greyboy All-Star sax king Karl Denson, and of course, host Tommy Chong. So put on your boogie shoes and join the fun!

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Small Black’s lush Limits of Desire proves there’s more to the Brooklyn band than the limiting chillwave genre would suggest. Much as chums and genre-mates Washed Out and Toro y Moi did with their sophomore albums, Limits of Desire finds them significantly upping the ante, coming across like vintage U2 after taking muscle relaxers on opener “Free at Dawn,” with all of the epic melodicism and none of the melodrama that that implies. “Canoe” is brilliantly catchy with a high cooed melody and battling synths, bearing some resemblance to M83 but, you know, chilled out. “No Stranger” introduces a light dance beat, pushing the vocals further toward the front of the mix and giving Small Black one of their best singles yet. The reason it works is that while a song like “Sophie” might be your perfect poolside jam for the summer, it doesn’t aim to be just that. Particularly in the way “Sophie’s” romantic sophistication dissolves into whispered nothings that lead into the danceable “Breathless,” Small Black have a knack for elegant pacing and delivering the jams, while making it all sound effortless. Limits of Love is putting in an early bid for the perfect summery pop album of 2013.

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The Handsome Family’s 10th album is a sort of musical menagerie. The husband-and-wife Americana duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks consider the qualities mythical, personified and real about various members of the animal kingdom. Rennie Sparks’ lyrics paint vivid detail, describing tentacles coming out of the sea in the swinging “Octopus” or the descent into madness in “Woodpecker,” while Brett Sparks’ deep and warbling voice makes some of the more magical lyrics, such as “the butterflies and eels, they have always heard the ringing of the bells that echo through the Earth” (from the bucolic “Eels”), feel like ancient fables. Musically, they weave various strands of Americana, touching on classic country in “Owls,” which features stunning steel guitar, while their voices harmonize gloriously on the mandolin-laced “Woodpecker.” It’s music you have to pull up a chair to listen to, but paying close attention reveals layers of detail about the human condition. Wilderness reminds us we’re animals, after all.

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Music inevitably lives with us as we experience our daily lives. Matthew Cooper makes music as Eluvium that seems to make the mundane more epic, the insufferable peaceful. His ambient washes of sound never feel smothering; rather, they are canvases of sound that open up new possibilities. The organ drones of “Don’t Get Any Closer” feel like a pan-religious ceremony. “Warm” lifts off from there and sends us through the clouds with angelic tones. “By the Rails” pulls us back in from drifting away with its heartbeat throb. Though Eluvium’s music favors drawn-out, slow-motion movements, there’s an emotional push-and-pull at its core that keeps it interesting as well as soothing, and Nightmare Ending is immaculately paced, such as the way the nearly nine-minute, more obscure “Unknown Variation” is followed by the short and straightforward piano piece “Caroling” — either piece might have fallen flat, if not for the other’s presence. Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo’s voice also makes a welcome appearance here on album closer “Happiness,” which will bring wide smiles to any fan of either (or both) acts. Why Cooper chose to title his latest album Nightmare Ending is anyone’s guess. It’s like a beautiful dream throughout.

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The title of Talib Kweli’s latest album might imply a heady, political rap opus, and it is in some regards. But it’s also a fun, hook-oriented album that teams the intellectually charged rapper with a smart team of young guns — Miguel, Kendrick Lamar, Curren$y and Busta Rhymes all make appearances, making up a sort of squadron of critically acclaimed performers both novice and veteran. He’s as apt here to spit flow as quickly as possible and encourage those around him to speak up (“Human Mic”) as he is to engage in a sexy, Marvin Gaye-inspired hip-hop/soul ballad (“Come Here,” featuring the great Miguel) or get into story-heavy tales (the awesome “Hamster Wheel”). Producer Oh No (of duo Gangrene) provides a bevy of psychedelic beats, while S1 produces the syrupy “Push Thru,” teaming Kweli with Lamar, Curren$y and Glen Reynolds for a laid-back jam that allows Kweli the opportunity to work with artists he’s surely inspired. Prisoner of Conscious doesn’t approach the classic-level flow of Kweli’s classic Quality debut or Black Star collaboration with Mos Def, but it reestablishes him as a talent able to shift with the times whose quick flow and brainy vocabulary hasn’t dulled a bit. More

Victoria "Little Boots" Hesketh is a thinking woman's electropop diva -- not brassy or ridiculous enough to be Kylie or Gaga, not indie or artsy enough to be Cat Power or Bjork, but just that right level of girlish sass, disco sophistication and British self-deprecation to be the next St. Etienne (not to say Donna Summer). She made a big splash in 2009 and then inexplicably faded from view. Now after some years of regrouping (and DJing), she's back with a moodier, housier record, produced by the DFA's Tim Goldsworthy. Her new sound is simpler, dancier and darker, and the change is for the better -- it lets her elegant melodies and airy choruses shine through, with a propulsive low-end and a Chicago soul clap driving them along. The tunes are lovely, timeless meditations on fantasies of escape ("Motorway"), dancefloor seduction ("Beat Beat") and rejuventating a frayed relationship ("Strangers"). They're mostly about the night life. A great, cohesive record that's equal parts dancefloor honey and lyrical liqueur; beat connoisseurs will feel it and hopefully that elusive legion of fans will give it the box office it deserves. More

For the past ten years, soul survivor Rod Stewart has been belting out the classics -- lending his unmistakeable smoky rasp to five albums of American songbooks, one of rock oldies and one of R&B oldies, and even a set of Christmas tunes. It works because like Willie Nelson or Ray Charles, he's a great interpreter: he could sing the phone book and it'd be soulful as hell. On his newest, Time, it seems he's finally gotten the oldies out of his system, and he's ready to sing about his present. As a 68-year old rock & roll barnacle, that means he's no longer the spiky-haired young hell-raiser kicking you out of his bed in the morning; he's a regular guy who's acting his age, who's glad to have enjoyed so much of life and glad to still have those simple pleasures of love, health and companionship (which aren't so easy to hold onto as it looks). On these self-penned tunes, he relates the ups and downs of his declining years in wonderfully charming cadences, and one thing he's learned in all his years of adventuring is that the good times are really timeless. Who else could give aging this much rock n' soul? More