Amoeba Music

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

You could forgive Streetlight Manifesto their latest album title if you read their backstory — the ska stalwarts have been robbed of their equipment twice, crippling their ability to play. Still, the New Jersey band soldiers on, and their fifth album continues doling out energetic third-wave ska for a fervent, diehard base of ska fans. The Hands That Thieve is a dynamic collection, starting with the multipart “The Three of Us,” a battle cry of sorts for the band that seems to chronicle the band’s progression, though multiple lineup changes, mammoth tours and various challenges. The title track similarly sees an epic arrangement, starting with a simple strummed acoustic guitar and sultry horns building to pub-rock verses augmented with galloping percussion and raucous shoutalong vocals. Since the band has announced it will no longer tour as frequently, the album can’t help but feel like at least a temporary swan song for the band. If that’s the case, they leave listeners feeling like they gave it their all on the thorough The Hands That Thieve. More

With James Williamson back on guitar, who helped develop the iconic guitar sound found on the band’s classic Raw Power album, and raw production to match, Ready to Die feels like the Iggy & the Stooges reunion album fans have been hoping for. It’s clearly modeled after Raw Power, the band’s raucous third album, with acidic opener “Burn” replacing “Search and Destroy” and “Sex and Money’s” dirty groove calling to mind “Gimme Danger’s” acoustic menace. Purists may gripe at this or that; the “I want it!” calls in the background of “Sex and Money” are cheesy, but Fun House-era saxophonist Steve Mackay and Williamson’s insistent riffs, which dig further into you with each subsequent spin like a dirty hook, obliterate most of the issues listeners may take. Simple, thickheaded songs like “Job” and “Gun” pretty much sound great depending on how loudly you play them, despite unfortunate lyrics, while the ballads leave plenty to be desired — Iggy Pop’s take on Serge Gainsbourg’s vocal stylings sound awkward in this framework. Ready to Die sounds best when it looks back; the sentiment of the title track is as macabre as Stooges classics like “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell,” giving Williamson, Mackay, original drummer Scott Asheton and Mike Watt, who fills in on bass for the deceased Ron Asheton, the chance to get nasty like it’s 1970. At its best, on songs like the grimy “Dirty Deal,” Ready to Die will give fans the dose of Stooges madhouse rock ’n’ roll they’ve been clamoring for. More