Amoeba Music

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

In the U.S., Tom Jones is mainly known as the open-shirted baritone of such cheeseball classics as “It’s Not Unusual” and “She’s a Lady,” but in the U.K. he’s an institution, having been knighted, still charting and having had a No. 1 single within the past five years. Perhaps in a move to advance his legacy beyond the hit-making lothario he’s often known as, Spirit in the Room, his 40th album, is a naked collection of folk covers sung genuinely, even spiritually, covering songs by artists ranging from respected contemporaries like Leonard Cohen to antecedents like Odetta and Bob Dylan and newer acts like The Low Anthem. He tackles Paul Simon’s vibrant’s “Love and Blessings” and Blind Willie Johnson’s contemplative “Soul of a Man” with equal furor. And you haven’t heard Jones fully until you’ve heard him take on Tom Waits, making “Bad as Me” doubly theatrical. Bold, smart choices here pay off handsomely. After listening to Spirit in the Room, the next time you hear about Tom Jones, you might picture a Johnny Cash-like figure strumming an acoustic guitar rather than a rapscallion in an unbuttoned shirt. More

The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation is an aptly named trip into the other side of the human ego. It takes listeners on a dark ride, requiring several listens for its movements to sink in and rewarding the patient with a unique listening experience. Starting with deep bass drum hits on “Consumed,” it moves into the two-part “Excavation,” which at first feels like travelling at the deepest part of the ocean, drumless and with little light let in, but deep sonar blasts of bass, heartbeats and backward sound guide us as if we’re seeing the unseen. Part two opens the chasm a bit, with squelching beats you could almost dance to, were they not so brutal and irregular. “Mara” sounds like the exact moment the protagonist finds the body in film noir or a horror film, built on unseemly strings and a door-slamming beat. The two-part “The Mirror Reflecting” gets even deeper, with a beautifully decayed last quarter, and the nearly 13-minute “The Drop” actually finds The Haxan Cloak’s Bobby Krlic at his most open and easy to follow, with melodic synths that sound like a synth-pop song slowed to quarter-speed. Though it provides few easy entry points and demands much of its listener, The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation is a worthwhile journey, even just to say you made it to the other side. More

The Airborne Toxic Event continue to make unabashedly stratospheric rock ’n’ roll on their third album, Such Hot Blood. Like their brethren in The Killers, The Airborne Toxic Event make no attempts to hide their Bruce Springsteen-inspired, stadium-bound ambitions, and thus their music is allowed to be as grandiose as possible, which is not to say it’s without nuance. Sure, “Safe” has U2-sized grandeur on its mind, but it gets there via traded-off male/female verses, chugging acoustic guitars and looping, slowly building violins before achieving that climactic chorus four minutes in. “The Storm” allows frontman Mikel Jollett to really belt over a stately arrangement, displaying an ability to appeal to fans of emotional acoustic-rock bands like Mumford & Sons. “The Secret,” meanwhile, makes its choral hook the main attraction, even as Jollett tears apart his voice to get there. They’ve got stars in their eyes, but you couldn’t accuse The Airborne Toxic Event of not putting their hearts on the line on the impactful Such Hot Blood. More