A songwriting comeback that's simultaneously over and underdressed

“He’s so talented he can do anything!” That’s the gist of what’s typically said about Justin Timberlake, and for the most part it’s absolutely true. He’s an exceptionally nimble and unfettered singer/dancer, an extraordinary mimic with a drummer’s sense of timing. These gifts have helped him tremendously in comedy as well as drama, and despite the increasing maturity of his music and acting pursuits, he hasn’t let go of his ample boyish charm: This ex-Mouseketeer, ex-’N Sync-er still radiates mischievous yet all-American fun. And unlike so many stars who attain thoroughly mainstream saturation, he takes genuine risks that have actually increased his popularity: His last album, 2007′s FutureSex/LoveSounds, packs way more sonic, rhythmic and compositional quirks than most records that sell more than 10 million copies.

These are the stats that have empowered Timberlake to make a supremely — and, at times, foolishly — confident 20/20 Experience. The first of two full albums released six months apart is 70 minutes but only 10 songs long. Most are straightforward from a songwriting standpoint: “Tunnel Vision,” “That Girl” and several others see-saw back and forth between two chords for extended and sometimes relatively static periods with minimal contrasts between verses and choruses. But most are also complex in arrangement and texture, adding and subtracting rhythm and tempo as they smoothly groove along. Although some like “Don’t Hold the Wall” accelerate into dance tracks, the overriding vibe is more bedroom/strip club than dancefloor, as if Timberlake envisioned a Prince album almost entirely comprised of deep cut ballads. Aside from the singles “Suit & Tie” and “Mirrors,” which both draw from the opposing worlds of blatant chart pop and PBR&B, there’s little indication that anyone tried terribly hard to write hooks. Instead, this feels like a deservedly rich guy’s willfully anti-commercial fantasy of bohemian retro-futurist soul mother lode.

As such, Frank Ocean’s Channel ORANGE looms large over 20/20. But where Ocean employed complex chords and fearlessly soul-searched, this uncomplicatedly happy guy simply riffs on sex, status and his favorite records. He’s still in cahoots with Timbaland, the super-producer who practically invented these lurching, squelchy electro slow jams decades ago with Aaliyah and Ginuwine. Symphonic string swells and big band horn blasts may punctuate the otherwise slinky likes of “Pusher Love Girl,” but Timbaland doesn’t take Timberlake too far from Southern hip-hop: 20/20 is mixed to favor jeep-bumping bass that tends to blur the tony details that have been showcased far more successfully in the entertainer’s televised performances of this material. As such, it already feels more like a stepping-stone for multi-million-dollar tours, endorsement deals and general world domination than an entirely satisfying autonomous listening experience. Suit and tie aside, it’s simultaneously over and underdressed.

The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 combines outtakes with newly-recorded material. That suggests that much of 2 of 2 is not a whole lot different from what came immediately before it, and in one way that’s true: Also created with Timbaland and his studio sidekick Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, 2 of 2 is heavy on protracted, deluxe arrangements just like its predecessor. Featuring a slightly shorter average composition length, it is nevertheless still an album of jumbo cuts: 74-and-a-half minutes distributed among 12 tracks. Be sure to wait for “Pair of Wings,” the blissful acoustic ballad that’s hidden at the end of “Not a Bad Thing.”

But as its first single, the breezy, Off the Wall-flavored disco jam “Take Back the Night” suggests, 2 of 2 is faster and more dancefloor-friendly than much of the first 20/20, and therefore strikes with far greater instant impact: Opener “Gimme What I Don’t Know (I Want)” proves Timberlake remains the only superstar who can spit human beat-boxing ticks and tocks while keeping his tongue firmly in his cheek. He’s only a randy euphemism away from his SNL self-parodying self. A song about putting on a private show for one’s paramour, “Cabaret” boasts the naughtiest, most blasphemous line he’s ever dared sing: “I got you saying ‘Jesus’ so much it’s like we’re lying in a manger.”

The big difference is that these rigorous and rhythmic cuts are better suited the substantial song size: The longest one, “True Blood,” pumps from start to finish with a slew of breakdowns, buildups, contractions and expansions. Aside from the hard-rocking grinder “Only When I Walk Away,” there are few surprises. “Amnesia” has a sweet symphonic left-turn after the song’s main body fades — just like some of the first half of 20/20. Mostly, this is just Timberlake and Timbaland doing what they do best: Laying down the heavenly beats, ramping up the devilish charm and trouncing most mainstream contenders.

Faster and more dancefloor-friendly than much of its predecessor

When Justin Timberlake’s last album, The 20/20 Experience, arrived last March, it struck many as both over- and underwhelming. Lengthy, with few songs under six minutes, but shorter on hooks and forward propulsion than much of the singer’s catalog, this languid, elaborate album has, over the last few months, aged rather well. It’s a meticulous record, rich with atmosphere, one that reveals the subtleties of its sensuality with repeated plays.

Now comes The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2, a sequel that combines outtakes with newly-recorded material. That suggests that much of 2 of 2 is not a whole lot different from what came immediately before it, and in one way that’s true: Also created with Timbaland and his studio sidekick Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, 2 of 2 is heavy on protracted, deluxe arrangements just like its predecessor. Featuring a slightly shorter average composition length, 2 of 2 is nevertheless still an album of jumbo cuts: The standard edition features 74-and-a-half minutes distributed among 12 tracks. Be sure to wait for “Pair of Wings,” the blissful acoustic ballad that’s hidden at the end of “Not a Bad Thing.”

But as its first single, the breezy, Off the Wall-flavored disco jam “Take Back the Night” suggests, 2 of 2 is faster and more dancefloor-friendly than much of the first 20/20, and therefore strikes with far greater instant impact: Opener “Gimme What I Don’t Know (I Want)” proves Timberlake remains the only superstar who can spit human beat-boxing ticks and tocks while keeping his tongue firmly in his cheek. He’s only a randy euphemism away from his SNL self-parodying self. A song about putting on a private show for one’s paramour, “Cabaret” boasts the naughtiest, most blasphemous line he’s ever dared sing: “I got you saying ‘Jesus’ so much it’s like we’re lying in a manger.”

The big difference is that these rigorous and rhythmic cuts are better suited the substantial song size: The longest one, “True Blood,” pumps from start to finish with a slew of breakdowns, buildups, contractions and expansions. Aside from the hard-rocking grinder “Only When I Walk Away,” there are few surprises. “Amnesia” has a sweet symphonic left-turn after the song’s main body fades — just like some of the original 20/20. Mostly, this is just Timberlake and Timbaland doing what they do best: Laying down the heavenly beats, ramping up the devilish charm, and trouncing most mainstream contenders.

Rock's instrumentation, chopped so finely it stutters like R&B

The Los Angeles sister band HAIM — their last name, one that rhymes with “time” — employ rock’s instrumentation, but chop it up so finely it stutters like R&B. They’re not the first to do this, of course, but HAIM’s blend, a mix of bright, brittle percussiveness and soft sisterly harmonies, feels unique, a sound that’s both nervous and resolute. It feels like youth, that knowledge that everything’s already been done before, but that you’ve nevertheless got to make your own mark. Providing most of the instrumentation as well as the singing, Este, Danielle and Alana Haim do exactly that.

There are other precedents to HAIM — Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac in the precision of the production and the assuredness of the hooks; the sunniness of the Mamas and the Papas or Wilson Phillips. But because the songwriting is as strong as the sisters’ delivery is nonchalant, there’s an immediate and assured identity here that’s striking, and it transcends its many influences.

Nearly every cut exudes the confidence of a single: There have already been four of them, and that doesn’t even count “If I Could Change Your Mind,” a soft-rock plea punctuated by handclaps and hi-hat from the disco gods. And yet there’s plenty of weirdness too: “My Song 5″ features not just Tom Waits-goes-dubstep moves and a righteous double-tracked fuzz bass solo, but also super-distorted virtual trombones that essentially fart along with the vocal. Wilson Philips never thought of that.

A retro-futurist opus with too many cameos to count

When ordinary hip-hoppers get famous, they usually bring along their new-money friends and strike while the iron’s hot. For Dan the Automator, producer of Dr. Octagon, Cornershop, Gorillaz, and other unconventional acts, success means waiting 13 years to issue a follow-up and recruiting Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Deltron 3030: Event II, the long-delayed sequel to Dan Nakamura, turntablist Kid Koala and emcee Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s 2000 debut, opens with a spoken monologue by the star, and features cameos by fellow actors David Cross, Amber Tamblyn, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and the Lonely Island. Oh, it also includes restaurant entrepreneur David Chang; MCs Black Rob and Casual; and vocals by Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha, Awolnation’s Aaron Bruno, Faith No More’s Mike Patton, Pillowfight’s Emily Wells, Blur’s Damon Albarn and, lastly, jazz smoothie Jamie Cullum.

That kind of talent roster would be utterly top-heavy in lesser hands, but Nakamura’s finely finessed aesthetic specializes in off-the-wall excess: It’s everywhere on this retro-futurist opus. It’s unclear if the jazzy cop-show grooves that appear throughout out are sampled or freshly orchestrated; they sound like the former, but feel like the latter.

Nakamura presides deftly over the affair, keeping all of its disparate parts moving without colliding. Del is similarly dexterous: His flow is easier to follow than his ornate sci-fi superhero story, which is high on details and low on narrative arc, yet his diction and drawl always remain as distinct as Nakamura’s fanciful arrangements and Koala’s equally flamboyant scratches. All three brothers, despite the long hiatus, are right on time — even if it’s more than a little warped.

On top of all that, throughout most of the ’70s he was ridiculously prolific, and although his pace has since slowed, Elton has maintained much of his monumental popularity for five decades. Although his increasingly traditional output suggests that, like most veteran rockers, he can’t be bothered with trends, Elton remains the superstar of his generation most keenly attuned to new artists and movements. After all these years in the spotlight, he remains more eager to spout off on the latest buzz acts than he is to talk about himself. He’s the only major pop composer besides Bacharach to let other lyricists — usually Bernie Taupin — speak through him.

And though he may be self-effacing, Elton is a gay ambassador to the straight world: He’s the homo in every homophobe’s record collection, the outsider who managed to get really, really inside. But, as with many mega-successful celebrities, he’s dealt with depression and addiction in a way that’s tangible in his work: Those two factors together have accounted for some spotty to downright terrible records. Not even Paul McCartney at his most pot-addled and domesticated has sunk as low as Victim of Love or Leather Jackets.

We prefer to judge him by his early-to-mid-’70s hot streak and by his 21st-century albums that quite consciously recall the timeless triumphs of that earlier era, but we’ve evaluated each of his 31 studio albums here, making note of buried treasure on otherwise shipwrecked records, and we wish you happy digging through a golden pop songbook that’s substantial in every sense of the word.

Elton at his most serious

A new Elton album that sounds like an old Elton album is by now ancient news: The guy has been releasing implicitly nostalgic, explicitly self-referential discs for a dozen years. And although this is yet another installment in that series, The Diving Board deviates both from its relatively recent predecessors and his golden era output in ways both emotional and musical.

As its artwork and song titles like “My Quicksand” suggest, this is Elton at his most serious, like the world-weary elements of Blue Moves without comic relief, or The Big Picture without synths. Continuing the T Bone Burnett alliance that began with 2010′s The Union, Elton generates beaucoup ballads here but few pop tunes: His keyboard melodies are consistently far more finessed than what he’s singing. His voice is at its most ragged, but his classical piano work has rarely been better, and there’s little to distract from those facts. Soul star Raphael Saadiq plays bass on some cuts, but you wouldn’t know it without the credits, which also include Burnett regulars Jay Bellerose and Doyle Bramhall II, and veteran Motown percussionist Jack Ashford.

Although there are relatively simple declarations like “Can’t Stay Alone Tonight,” Bernie Taupin elsewhere reverts to wordy, allegorical fantasias, and so it’s difficult to fathom if “Oscar Wilde Gets Out” is about the writer, or criminal injustice in general. Despite its skeletal sound, this is not at all a relaxed album. It’s not always pleasant to hear the pair strain, but their effort is admirable: What superstars of their vintage and astronomical success try this hard?

A generously sensual record that maintains its mystery

This is not the Goldfrapp of Black Cherry, Supernature, or of any of the London duo’s club hits. Tales of Us has but one cut, “Thea,” that features muted club beats and, like the rest, it’s not particularly fast or dance-inducing. Synths on the other nine are scarce, and certainly discreet: This time around, Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory focus mostly on acoustic instrumentation — primarily guitar, strings and piano — while maintaining their exacting control over their instrumentation’s sonic impact. There’s far too much studio processing and thickly arranged orchestration on their sixth album to deem the results folky or unfinished. And all the billowing softness on display doesn’t make for straightforward easy listening; the harmonies are constructed in such a way that tension rarely dissipates.

This abrupt musical about-face isn’t unprecedented: In 2008, they followed their 2005 UK neo-disco smash Supernature with their pastoral Seventh Tree, which Tales of Us resembles in tone and texture. The additional wrinkle here is that each song is sung to a titular character. Stopping short of storytelling, singer Alison Goldfrapp gives away just enough details to suggest appearance, demeanor and hints of conflict while withholding other key details. Sometimes she puts herself in the near-narrative, as she does with “Jo,” the ominous opening track and “Drew,” one of several breathy-voiced love songs. And sometimes she watches sympathetically from nearby, like on “Annabel,” which might be about someone born intersex (“Why they couldn’t let you be both?”).

Elsewhere, Goldfrapp sings lustily to both genders as the music swells and subsides in oceanic yet generally gentle waves. The result is a generously sensual record that nevertheless maintains its mystery.

A testament to how tour and excess take over mind, body and soul

The Weeknd’s Kiss Land plays like the alternative R&B version of sophomore albums by ’70s rock bands that documented how touring has thoroughly taken over their minds, bodies and souls. It’s a regressive worldview where women are represented either by prostitutes/strippers/groupies or long-suffering hometown girlfriends; drugs are ever-present, and Nix is as necessary as toothpaste.

Such excess ordinarily lends itself to comical clichés. Yet singer/lyricist Abel Tesfaye avoids the Spinal Tap effect by emphasizing the physical and emotional brutality of his vagabond existence: Kiss Land opens with “Professional,” a typically crepuscular ballad ostensibly delivered to a pole dancer/hooker that might as well also be targeted to Tesfaye himself. “You’ve got it made/ Because your freedom was here in this cage all along,” he sings in his tortured falsetto between choruses borrowed from Emika’s similarly bleak “Professional Loving.” A sense of impending doom hangs over this and every subsequent interaction, and if you don’t get the sense that the singer sees himself mirrored in all the squalor, you’ll probably be repulsed by the moralizing that comes entwined with his seductions.

Road life may have made the singer even more cynical, but all his newfound worldliness hasn’t broadened his palate much. The sole deviation, “Wanderlust,” is essentially a remake of “Precious Little Diamond,” a mid-’80s club hit by Dutch synth-poppers Fox the Fox, here rewritten to address a woman who Tesfaye beckons to climb aboard the Weeknd train. The beat drops out long enough to clear a floor, but otherwise it’s an uptempo club anthem. The rest sticks to the Trilogy mold: Another love song/sermon to an additional call girl, “Belong to the World,” even samples Portishead — as obvious a roots move as Aerosmith covering “Train Kept A-Rollin’.” Indeed, Kiss Land is essentially that band’s Get Your Wings with most every song a trip-hop variation on “Lord of the Thighs.” May Tesfaye live long enough to find his Toys in the Attic.

Complex yet wholehearted, and dense with byzantine sparkle

Behind all the cameos, the sci-fi allegory, the eclecticism and the nearly cult-ish Wondaland collective that creates these ultra-intricate jams, Janelle Monáe specializes in generosity. Where others serve up instant-gratification earworms, this Kansas City-born, Atlanta-based dynamo delivers sprawling futuristic funk-rock operas that dazzle on impact yet sustain protracted pleasure. Three years after The ArchAndroid, a long-playing debut that’s still revealing carefully buried treasure, she now releases a sequel equally dense with byzantine sparkle.

The Electric Lady is much more than a monument to maximalism, though. It’s a testimony to the power of particularly female and African-American dreams well-honed and not afraid to freak. Interspersed with radio DJ breaks that only lightly allude to the Cindi Mayweather cyborg narrative of her previous releases, The Electric Lady is nothing less than concept album about black female empowerment via love, otherness and heaps of Hendrix-kissed guitar solos courtesy of Kellindo Parker, who, together with Monáe, Nate “Rocket” Wonder, Chuck Lightning and Roman GianArthur comprise the extraordinary Wondaland posse that write, play and produce this deliciously effusive stuff.

Sometimes she’s singing of women in general, like on her Solange-enriched title track. And sometimes Monáe sings about specific women, like Sally Ride, the first female and known LGBT astronaut; or Dorothy Dandridge, the first African-American nominated for a Best Actress Oscar; or her own hard-working mom in the Stevie Wonder-esque “Ghetto Woman.”

But even in those cases, Monáe is seeing macrocosms in her microcosms: Few musicians are more obsessed with the bigger picture than this wizard of her own Oz. And although she screams like a gal not to be outclassed by her idol on “Givin Em What They Love,” her supremely slinky duet with Prince, she’s elsewhere exploring in typically more refined fashion where her clear and versatile soprano can take her — from skittering New Wave (“We Were Rock & Roll” and “Dance Apocalyptic”) to psychedelic cabaret (“Look into My Eyes”). Besides being grounded in multiple generations and permutations of ornately orchestrated R&B, Lady is ultimately soulful for the simple reason that Monáe believes in the alternate reality she’s created for herself so very deeply. It’s complex yet wholehearted because she is.

Chillwave blur meets '70s art-rock chops

Like all recent acts still working the chillwave formula, DIANA brings the blur. The quartet’s vocalist, Carmen Elle, sings softly, often smothered by wooly keyboard blankets; the sustain settings are often high, and there’s little here that’s fast or jarring. But significant variations on the familiar formula flow throughout this Toronto band’s debut album. The guitar solo on opening cut “Foreign Installation”, for one, is in no way “indie” — it burns showily in the prog-rock style of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. Elsewhere there is sax by band co-founder Joseph Shabason, whose Roxy Music-y woodwinds helped define Destroyer’s Kaputt, and prominent basslines from former Hidden Cameras contributor Paul Mathew that swing from ’80s funk (“That Feeling”) to ’70s jazz fusion: Check his mournful Jaco Pastorius-esque solo that opens the title track. No chillwave there, bro!

There are, of course, some of the genre’s defining elements at play here, and for the most part we’re not complaining: Kieran Adams’s snappy drums that reverberate through “Strange Attraction” and “Anna” could’ve been lifted from just about anything from the ’80s Factory Records catalogue (New Order, Section 25, etc.). But even “Born Again,” the band’s first synth-washed and squishy track, sports roaring guitar eruptions in its climactic final moments that are far more Adrian Belew than Bernard Sumner. Much of the album could’ve been remixed to maximize distinctions between cuts, but Perpetual Surrender serves as beguiling introduction, and the band is already working on a sequel.

File under: Electronic pop with a human heart

For fans of: MGMT, Missing Persons, Capital Cities, Niki & The Dove, Annie

Personae: Eric, Matt and Nikki

Thanks largely to their remixes of songs by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros and other indie bands that don’t ordinarily embrace dance beats, Brooklyn’s Little Daylight built a formidable internet buzz before they’d played their first show. Now longtime friends Eric, Matt and Nikki have an EP on Capitol Records featuring their blog-supported hits “Overdose,” “Name in Lights” and “Glitter and Gold.” Combining programmed elements with old-fashioned instruments, this well-educated trio is currently writing songs for their 2014 debut album, but will soon be touring in the fall. Don’t ask about their drug history: Their only overdose was on love.

On their name:

Nikki: It’s a fairytale story by George MacDonald about a princess who has a spell put on her — her moods are controlled by the moon. We responded to the idea of Little Daylight being something kinda cute and whimsical but can be kinda dark and serious.

On the band’s beginning:

Matt: We started because we had originals we wanted to record. The three of us felt like we had the same sensibility about what they should sound like. We took a studio up to a lake house that a friend of ours had lent us, and while we were there we decided to do some remixing to get some production ideas down without being too wedded to anything. We released the remixes first because the originals we were still working on; we’re somewhat perfectionists about that stuff.

On near-instant success:

Eric: The remixes — especially the Edward Sharpe and Passion Pit ones — probably got around partially because of the original artists and partially because of the remixes. And when we put out “Overdose,” it was good timing: The blogs were already paying attention to us. All we did was put it on Soundcloud.

Nikki: It got to No.1 on The Hype Machine, which was the work of the blogs, obviously, who helped put us on the map.

Matt: We’ve been lucky that a few of the blogs took an early liking to us because of the remixes. For anyone observing, it just looked like we were remix artists, and I think those people were all pleasantly surprised when we put out our originals.

Nikki: South By Southwest was our first and second live shows that we ever played, so it was a trial by fire. Luckily, because of “Overdose” there was enough word spread that people were coming to see us.

On how remixing shapes their own music:

Eric: When we do remixes, the song is already written, so it’s all about production — reinterpreting the song that another band. So in doing that as an exercise, we figured out where we all met in the middle with production, and after the course of three or four remixes, it started to have a signature sound, where we were able to approach our own songs in the same way. It gave us training wheels.

Matt: The song isn’t completely written when you approach a remix; you have the option to change things as you see fit. That ended up being a big part of how we write our songs, too. They go through an initial output phase, where we get it down and then usually take a break. Whether we mean to or not we almost end up remixing our own work.

On prior activities that also helps define Little Daylight:

Eric: One thing that’s important for both Matt and I is that there was a period when we were creating experimental electronic music without expectations. That got us some skills although they don’t come out in obvious ways. When we’re in the studio a lot, we go off on tangents that stem from that experience of doing experimental stuff that wasn’t trying to be pop songs.

Matt: I went to Brown [University] with a lot of people doing video and graphic art and installation art. [Eric went to UPenn and Nikki attended NYU.] That kinda stuff has informed Little Daylight in a filtered but very significant way. The three of us are thinking about not only the music, but how the music is going to look when it’s being performed, what our images say about us, the poster artwork down to the font; we’re very detail-oriented. Visuals are important to all three of us.

Nikki: We do our own artwork.

On their division of labor:

Matt: Everyone has an assumption of what we each do: Eric and I, because we’re guys, do the production; Nikki, because she’s the lead singer, is doing the top line, and then coming in at the end to sing when we’re done producing. But it couldn’t be more different than that. We each do everything. It’s been funny to see the stereotypes people hold and how universal they are.

Nikki: When we’re playing live, Eric plays bass, Matt plays guitar and synths, and I play synths and sing and we have a drummer.

Eric: But in the studio, it’s kind of free-range. We set everything up, lay all our instruments out, and when inspiration hits, you grab and go. Guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion — anyone could pick them up and perform. Even the vocals, up until the point where the song is getting to be finished, are open to any of us. And that’s very important to us, that we not limit any person to doing one thing or another and not doing other things.

Nikki: We’re an oligarchy.

On creating their “Overdose” video in the immediate wake of Hurricane Sandy on Manhattan’s electricity-challenged streets:

Nikki: We had the idea that it would be really cool to go out with a camera and see what happens. We invited couple of friends who are DPs and went driving around the West Village and Soho, where it was still pretty dark. We didn’t really have a plan. We just turned on the music on our iPhones, and started dancing to it. We were on a completely dark Bleecker Street, and there’s a really bright light in the background, an emergency light on this major thoroughfare. It would’ve cost millions of dollars to create a situation like that.

Eric: The police passed by us a number of times. Finally they pulled up next to us, and said in a very strong New York brogue, “You guys better watch out and not get hit by cars or something.”

Nikki: The other interaction we had that was really funny was that someone bicycled by while we were shooting and said, “Check your white balance!”

Eric: Only in New York or L.A. would somebody harass you by talking about video production techniques.

On their influences and relationship to pop:

Eric: A friend who doesn’t listen to that much pop music asked me if it’s a formula we’re trying to emulate. And I said that if you don’t love what you’re doing it’s going to be apparent immediately. We love pop music. We also love a lot of other stuff, and I think that love of music in general is what makes us make these tracks what they are.

Nikki: People listen to our stuff and compare us to Blondie. I sometimes hear echoes of Tom Petty in some of the songwriting, and I love both those artists.

Matt: We’re working on this thing for the album that’s heavily electronic, and for some reason it reminds me of Fleetwood Mac. It doesn’t sound like Fleetwood Mac, but we love Fleetwood Mac, and maybe it’s seeped in on some weird, left-turn way.

Eric: We’re working on something that reminds me of one of my favorite albums that has nothing to do with pop music, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. We listen to indie rock, classic rock, reggae, experimental electronic stuff, and we’re all big fans of straight-up club music. We all like to go out dancing sometimes and that’s the right music for that. We’ll come into the studio after having a late night and wanna turn the kick drum up a little bit.

Nikki: We’re really into classic songwriting. All of our songs, you could strip the production away, turn it into a different song and still retain a classic element to it.

Eric: Pop music these days is very much about bold choices. The bass is in the forefront more than it ever has before. We like loud things.

On their ultimate musical goals:

Eric: I think we’re trying to make good, classic-sounding songs where the verses, the choruses and bridges have an overall horizontal and vertical integrity to them. The same way Bob Marley relates to Aphex Twin is that their songs have a flow that is natural and beautiful and give you the chills when you get to the climax of them. We just wanna do that with every track we do.

Dazzling and simple

Ernest Greene’s second full-length as Washed Out, Paracosm, finds its influences in both paracosmic literature and Greene’s own move from Atlanta to rural outer Athens. Recorded on vintage keyboards like the Mellotron and the Chamberlin (tape-based proto-samplers featured on psych/prog classics like the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever”) and augmented by occasional guitars, Paracosm plays like R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, Greene’s first-ever music purchase, reenacted by a wistful one-man-band enamored with reverb and obsessed with escape.

As suggested by the glistening introductory single “It All Feels Right” and confirmed by “All I Know,” Greene is now writing fully formed songs to go with his ever-lusher soundscapes. The results are both dazzling and simple: Remove the twittering birds, the flickering vocal effects and all the synthetic paisley do-dads, and you’ve got a guy strumming his guitar beside an imaginary campfire, reminiscing about the old times. The softly funky bitter-sweetness of P.M. Dawn, another formative favorite of the 30-year-old musician, echoes through “Don’t Give Up.”

Much of Paracosm either reminisces over the past or yearns to retreat — no doubt a reaction to the pressures brought on by Washed Out’s rapid internet-enabled ascent. “We could sneak away and not come back,” Greene fantasizes in “Great Escape,” as woozy keyboards slip and slide from note to note like crying Hawaiian guitars. The album’s major musical motif is a fluttering harp, the kind that signals a dream sequence in old goofy movies and cartoons. Here it’s quaint and campy in the best way, like those fake birdcalls that hoot through the exotica classics of Martin Denny, another of the album’s aural touchstones. Nothing is real; there’s nothing to get hung about.

A slightly leaner group achieves a varied dynamic it previously lacked

The Polyphonic Spree’s most obvious asset — its awesome size — is also its most challenging obstacle: For every massive choral-symphonic climax that blasts into the psych-pop heavens, there have been many double-fortissimo thuds too big and bloated to achieve liftoff. To create the Dallas ensemble’s fourth album (not including last year’s Christmas album, a live Rocky Horror tribute and other ephemera), leader and former Tripping Daisy Tim DeLaughter has Kickstarter-funded a slightly leaner Polyphonic that here achieves a varied dynamic previous Sprees lacked. Even for a band whose membership has sprawled into the mid-20s, less is…well, you know.

This time, rainbow-hued tunes dictate the arrangements’ scope, rather than the other way around. The chugging opening title cut strikes a feisty defense against detractors with a sticky self-empowerment slogan — “There’s always more to you than there are of them” — and ringing guitar riffs that skew more U2 than Up With People. What follows certainly has its share of monolithic moments, but now they’re effectively scaled to some of DeLaughter’s most substantial and finessed compositions. He’s still rewriting one of the many pages from the Flaming Lips’ songbook, but when the results are as delicate and thoughtful as “You’re Golden,” his imitation mutually flatters.

Sleek, gently off-kilter electronic pop that is as haunting as it is hooky

The “Aluna” in AlunaGeorge is Aluna Francis, the voice behind Disclosure’s biggest and best single so far, “White Lies.” The “George” is producer George Reid. Together, the pair makes sleek, gently off-kilter electronic pop that is as haunting as it is hooky. Francis’s small voice would get her voted off TV competitions, but her self-possessed croon is perfect for Reid’s mix of minimalist UK dance grooves and American R&B.

Body Music‘s opening stretch is particularly strong, with a quartet of songs radiating childlike but slightly sinister vibes. “Outlines” offers a contemporary Anglo slant on classic Aaliyah; “You Know You Like It” weighs the risks of pleasure and commitment, likening intimacy to obsessive-compulsive disorder via a nagging, playground-like chant; UK hit “Attracting Flies” puts a playa in his place with a deceptively sweet lullaby. “Your Drums, Your Love” is essentially a symphonic soul song with studio tricks where the strings would ordinarily be, Francis holding a torch over Reid’s backward sound effects, slo-mo drum ‘n’ bass beats, and bubbling vocal samples.

Body Music feels much faster than it actually is. Drawing from UK funky, dubstep and other uptempo genres, Reid slows down their rhythms while maintaining their restlessness and upping their melodiousness; only speed-garage flashback “Lost & Found” breaks a genuine sweat. The rest suggests a club while holding you in an armchair.

After a decade in the game, he's finally delivered the whole package

Specializing in sexed-up blue-eyed soul, Robin Thicke has always been one small step removed from the character Justin Timberlake plays in SNL‘s infamous “Dick in a Box” video: His dad is Alan Thicke from Growing Pains; his mom, Gloria Loring, starred in Days of Our Lives; his wife is actress Paula Patton, and most of his music has spun minuscule variations on Marvin Gaye classics: A typical Thicke cut is his R&B chart-topper “Sex Therapy.”

So for his sixth album, named after what’s already his biggest (and, quite frankly, best) hit, the NSFW-video-boosted “Blurred Lines,” he takes that final shameless step and puts his Thicke-ness right in our faces: “I gotta big dick for you,” he boasts in the intro to his Prince-ly latest single “Give It 2 U,” preemptively silencing scholarly debate over what the “It” of that title might possibly be. This is not the only time he references the largess of his gift: As with all of his albums, Blurred Lines is basically one Magnum-sized boudoir boast.

The difference — and yes, it’s a substantial one — is that Blurred Lines mostly forgoes the belabored ballads that comprised the bulk of his previous efforts. Aside from “4 the Rest of My Life,” a fidelity-pledging slow jam seemingly oblivious to all the frisky playa vibes flaunted elsewhere, nearly every song swings hard and fast. That may be a marketing decision: Until “Blurred Lines,” Thicke’s R&B radio triumphs have rarely translated to pop success, and R&B-to-Top-40 crossovers are now rarer than they’ve been in decades.

Fortunately, Thicke’s gene-deep gift for frivolity suits these extroverted floor-fillers. Like Timberlake, he’s a gifted mimic, and this time he’s enlisted Dr. Luke, Cirkut, Pharrell Williams, will.i.am, and Timbaland to flesh out and contemporize his impressions. The resulting mix of genuine horns, strings, guitars, and drummer-played rhythms with synths and programmed effects flatteringly skews Thicke’s tendency to play everything too literally: For every retro tribute, a 21st-century texture counters: “Ooo La La” productively mines the Quincy Jones catalog while “Take It Easy on Me” delivers Timbaland’s most relentlessly banging beats yet. After a decade in the game, Thicke has finally delivered the whole package.

But in Ibiza, dance music was still all over the board: Quirky recent Europop hits, New Wave oldies, early house, offbeat disco, art-rock, jazz-funk, world music, dub reggae, near-ambient cuts — nearly any ’70s/’80s style with a syncopated rhythm that felt good in warm weather and got tourists dancing — were all being played at clubs like Amnesia, which sported an open-air dancefloor that heightened the free-spirited Mediterranean vibe.

Oakenfold, Rampling and Fung then brought Ibiza’s eclectic programming philosophy back to London. Unlike other genre trends favored by the DJ cognoscenti, the resulting Balearic Beat didn’t take hold because it was intrinsically pan-genre and anti-trend — like Northern Soul, the name referred to the region that claimed certain records as its own, and not to their place of origin. Balearic’s embrace of anything-goes grooves slower and gentler than house’s pounding 120-and-up BPMs paved the way for massive international hits by Soul II Soul, Enigma and other acts that went on to inspire chillout and trip-hop. As the current wayward programming of Lindstrøm, Aeroplane and other recent EDM fusionists have proven, Balearic is arguably hipper than ever today.

We’re explaining all this because we’d like to share our enthusiasm for a ridiculously entertaining series of compilations that have been in our library since last fall but feel particularly right for this summer. Compiled in Sweden by EMI staffer Jens Peterson Hällefors, the Balearic series is arguably the most out-there digital-only collection of music ever presented by a major label. At 11 volumes specializing in house, rock, soft rock, leftfield dance, electronic, world, reggae, pop, ambient, progressive rock and “blend” (an introductory sampler), Balearic goes deep, deeeeeep into the aesthetic to embrace both familiar cuts and oddities that will delight even the most dedicated diggers. Some are bona-fide Ibiza classics while many are choice cuts presented in the same boundary-crossing spirit, yet with a Scandinavian slant: This is the first time that most of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish acts presented here alongside their American, English, German, Jamaican, Japanese, Brazilian, French, Belgian, South African, Australian and Spanish brethren have ever snagged a legitimate international release. (We’re crossing our fingers that Hällefors’s latest three Scandinavia-specific Balearic comps will sometime soon be released here.)

So pour a cool beverage, dance around the pool, throw a roof party, head to the nearest beach or simply imagine yourself on vacation with similarly inclined celebrants, and stretch out with these everything-but-the-kitchen-sink collections. If you’d just like to dip your toe (or even shake them), may we suggest our own 30-track playlist that’s sequenced like a Balearic DJ set? Prepare yourself to hear everyone from Simple Minds to Peter Tosh in a way you may never have heard before.

A Disney-raised actress uses her right to make a dubstep album

If any Disney-raised actress has earned the right to make a dubstep album, it’s Selena Gomez. The formerly squeaky clean star of Spring Breakers — Harmony Korine’s hypnotically transgressive hit film about good girls who create the vacation of a lifetime by doing very bad things — found inspiration in the form of the soundtrack’s composers Skrillex and Cliff Martinez, as well as Britney Spears, the icon of post-Mickey, post-good girls everywhere, whose music and vibe SB pays explicit tribute to in hilariously surreal fashion.

To wit, her first solo album since leaving her band the Scene starts with “Birthday,” which sounds like a Skrillex remix of a double dutch chant mashed up with every Britney hit. “Blow your dreams, blow your dreams, blow your dreams away with me,” she whines, in a voice that is more bratty than seductive.

“Birthday,” and all that follows it, boasts Spring Breakers‘ neon plastic aesthetic. “You know I’m good with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” brags Nurse Gomez in the Cataracs-produced “Slow Down,” one of several Ke$ha-eque anthems that paraphrase the film’s party-’til-you-puke dialog and glow-stick beats. There’s Bhangra, electro and oodles of effect-crazed Eurodance until the sole semi-ballad, “Love Will Remember,” an appropriately garish reminiscence of her ex, Justin Bieber. Make of it what you wish that’s it’s the most forgettable track.

A long-overdue collection from an unsung backup-singing hero

You may not recognize Merry Clayton’s name, but you sure know her voice: She’s the gospel gal who wails the “rape, murder” lines in the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” the one who lends that landmark song undeniable torment, grit and veracity. Known primarily as background singer for everyone from Ray Charles to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Clayton released four solo albums in the ’70s, but the closest she ever got to a hit was “Yes,” a 1988 Pointer Sisters-styled single from the phenomenally popular Dirty Dancing soundtrack.

Her unsung-hero status is among those celebrated in Twenty Feet from Stardom, a poignant documentary about relatively unknown but hugely skilled background singers that’s currently hitting theaters. Drawn primarily from her first two albums and filled with rare singles, this long-overdue collection indirectly answers why Clayton never earned the sales of Aretha or Chaka: She rarely had someone of similar talent writing surefire smashes for her. Nearly every cut on this collection is a cover, and although R&B albums of the era were often fleshed out with borrowed songs, those usually weren’t the hits.

What Clayton instead possesses are virtuoso interpretive skills that nearly rewrite the melodies of familiar songs while deepening their lyrical impact. The rockers whose classics she covers sometimes wrote in a southern soul style, but this New Orleans-born powerhouse always personifies the very thing they’re approximating. Case in point is her utterly scathing take on Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” It’s one thing for a Canadian immigrant to condemn racism and the legacy of slavery as an outraged observer, and Young did that quite well. But it’s quite another for Clayton, as a target of that hatred to directly and vengefully address it: Listen closely to this far funkier rendition and you’ll hear her own background singers vowing to shoot down their oppressor right before the fade.

Not everything here is that confrontational, although her own rollicking interpretation of “Gimme Shelter” comes close. Clayton covers the Doors (“Tell All the People”), James Taylor (“Country Road”), Bill Withers (“Grandma’s Hands,”) Bob Dylan (“The Mighty Quinn”), and Spooky Tooth (“Forget It, I Got It”) with a passion that arguably trumps the originals. Carole King, for whom Clayton sang on Tapestry, contributes “After All This Time” and “Walk on In,” and even makes a brief vocal cameo at the end of the former. Neither track is a knockout, but they do suggest that Clayton could sing more sweetly with fresh material. Even this dynamo diva could hold back if the spirit moved her.

Balancing gravity and effervescence, self-scrutiny and escape, sorrow and elation

Every artist who sticks around will have their output sorted into two categories: works that conform to the defining characteristics of their dominant style, and works that don’t. Arguably the world’s most self-aware pop act, Pet Shop Boys have preemptively done much of the sorting themselves, giving their albums names like Very and Fundamental, as in Very Pet Shop Boys. Recorded with hip-hop knob-twiddler Andrew Dawson, last year’s Elysium might as well have been titled Not Enough and Too Much, as it combines some of the duo’s lightest and least dance-inducing rhythms with lyrics that either revealed little of Neil Tennant’s trademark wit or laid it on so thickly that they suggested self-parody.

Co-produced by Madonna/Killers collaborator and obvious PSB acolyte Stuart Price, Electric began as a project featuring songs deemed too dance-y for Elysium and then evolved into a full album of mostly lengthy cuts akin to the duo’s clubbiest discs like Introspective or Disco. Its first track and single “Axis” feeds its minimal poetry through various vocoders; its last track and second single, “Vocal,” conversely comments, “Every song has a vocal and that makes a change.”

The seven songs in between are mostly quintessential Pets, which is to say they balance simultaneous opposing qualities of gravity and effervescence, self-scrutiny and escape, sorrow and elation, hope and resignation. Many pick up on previous themes: “Bolshy” continues Tennant’s Russian obsession; “Love Is a Bourgeois Construct” sets a classical-esque synth riff to a lyric in which the singer turns his back on love. He does it with comical finality until its last line, in which it’s revealed that of course he’s still carrying a torch; the result is a Eurodisco cousin to analytical ballads like “Love Comes Quickly” and “Rent.”

The sounds similarly reference the duo’s various stylistic stages: “Thursday” evokes the pair’s earliest bells and electro-funk beats; “Shouting in the Evening” suggests their more aggressive, Chris Lowe-lead techno B-sides. The most remarkable cut, “The Last to Die,” continues their tradition of borrowing material from unlikely sources. Here they tackle a Bruce Springsteen anthem most likely written about the Vietnam War. Packed with references to blood, folly and heartbreak all retrofitted here with dark disco drama, it now feels like the latest in the duo’s tradition of elegies mourning those lost to AIDS. Of all the very PSB-sy songs here, this is the PSB-sy-est.

The cheeky guy gets a bit more serious on his third album

Mayer Hawthorne doesn’t insist you take him seriously. He shoots deliberately goofy videos. His vibe is playful, not tortured and belabored. Yet his records rank among the most detailed and precise of today’s vintage soul practitioners, even if the results favor pure entertainment over profound enlightenment.

On his third album, the cheeky guy gets a bit more serious. Teaming with Pharrell Williams, Anthony Hamilton/Cee-Lo Green producer Jack Splash, Mika/Katy Perry collaborator Greg Wells and other hit-makers, he broadens his palate beyond the blueprints of the past, mixing, matching and updating styles rather than the straightforward Motown and Philly soul mimicry of his initial records. Now he alludes to Steely Dan, Frank Ocean, Hall & Oates and Pharrell himself, particularly on the Williams-produced cuts “Wine Glass Woman” “Reach Out Richard,” and “The Stars Are Ours.”

Having spent the past few years constantly touring and recording, Hawthorne sings more confidently while also doing a better job of masking his vocal limitations. Multi-tracking and other production tricks haven’t turned him into Marvin Gaye, but they help him get Doobie-smooth on “Back Seat Lover.” And although that opening song picks up where earlier cocky cuts like “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” left off, much of what follows is sincere: “Wine Glass Woman” and “Allie Jones” send reality checks to self-destructive vixens; “The Only One” and the title track ponder life’s vicissitudes, while “Reach Out Richard” addresses a father who blames himself for Hawthorne’s mistakes.

The singer takes all that heaviness and, through his newfound polish and plenty of allusions to ’70s West Coast pop, makes it all seem much lighter and sunny. Hawthorne and his producers play most of these elaborate arrangements themselves, but the buffed results suggest an all-American variant on the studio perfectionism Daft Punk rediscovered with Random Access Memories. Instead of packing tart punch lines into his falsetto love ballads, he makes the music itself far more fun.

After 40 years, there's still so much here to love

If you’ve never before heard Big Star, stop right here, download the #1 Record/Radio City two-fer and Third/Sister Lovers, and take in some of the greatest yet most unjustly unsuccessful rock music of the early-to-mid ’70s or, really, any other era. Lead by former teen singer of the Box Tops (“The Letter”) and future cult star Alex Chilton, Big Star were the bridge between the Beatles, the Byrds and the Who of the mid ’60s and the alternative rock of the future. Young, hugely talented, yet doomed, their music was, through no fault of their own, commercially D.O.A., yet also full of finely articulated life that’s resonated for decades with power-poppers, New Wavers, alt-rockers, and indie connoisseurs.

Nothing Can Hurt Me is the soundtrack of the Big Star documentary of the same name that’s scheduled in select movie theaters beginning in early July. Although all of its songs have appeared elsewhere, all of these versions are previously unreleased. Six are cleaner, more detailed variations on familiar album cuts, created last year for the film by tape archivist Adam Hill and Big Star producer John Fry. Two of Chris Bell’s masterful post-Star solo tracks, “I Am the Cosmos” and “Better Save Yourself,” get the polished mixes they’ve always deserved, and the results are actually harsher and more harrowing because the clarity reveals yet-unheard pain within these well-loved songs.

The rest are alternate, demo, and rough mixes of well-known songs from ’72, ’73 and ’74 that feature slightly different performances and relationships between instruments. Recorded as a three-piece following Bell’s departure after #1 Record, the ’73 demo version of “O My Soul” lacks the keyboard and handclap overdubs and guitar solo that flesh out and elevate the track, but what’s here is in-the-pocket dynamite: Drummer Jody Stephens is particularly explosive.

The collection as a whole emphasizes how totally on this band was during its short life, even as they worked through (and captured on tape) warped psychological states brought about by their escalating personal and financial failure. These guys may’ve encountered obstacles, ones that arguably deepened their art, but they weren’t fuck-ups: No matter what stage the songs are in, from the innocence of “Thirteen” to the thorough despair of “Holocaust,” they’re all emotionally complete. Forty years later, there’s still so much here to love.

A sturdy retooling of the ultimate gateway drug to Marley's work

The latest of several Bob Marley remix albums provokes the initial knee-jerk reaction that greets all most post-mortem alterations of sacrosanct artifacts, namely: “Blasphemy!” The same was said of the 1984 issue of Legend, which included five relatively subtle remixes that were replaced on all pressings from 1986 and thereafter (but ultimately revived on the bonus disc of the 2002 deluxe edition). Then as now, Legend remains the ultimate gateway drug to Marley’s work, one that at approximately 25 million global sales, is by far the planet’s most popular reggae album. It is sturdy enough to sustain the tinkering.

Legend: Remixed takes that classic status and stirs it up with drastically different remixes that downplay reggae in favor of largely bombastic hip-hop and EDM beats. The generally far-more-aggressive results aren’t always spiritual or spliff-friendly: The inevitable dubstep track, Stephen Marley’s interpretation of “Easy Skanking,” features a counter-intuitively uneasy bass rattle that suggests Skrillex. Stephen pulls many of the same tricks, with greater success, on his dad’s “Buffalo Soldier,” which itself is about dislocation and therefore suits the disjunctive new arrangement.

But although nothing here betters the originals, some tracks offer revelatory new elements. Roni Size’s drum ‘n’ bass rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff” messes with the tempo, initially slowing it down slightly, and then doubling it, as if the song’s protagonist were literally running from the law. It’s an irie move, and yet Size preserves plenty of the Wailers’ original riffs. Thievery Corporation achieve a similar balance in their dubbed-out interpretation of “Get Up, Stand Up,” which like roots reggae itself, mixes tranquil parts (womblike bass, gurgling sound effects) with enervating qualities (the punchy snare, Marley’s righteous vocal).

The rest isn’t always this savvy, but many cuts, like Jim James of My Morning Jacket’s oddly hypnotic twist on “Waiting in Vain,” get better with repeated plays. Legend: Remixed may not ultimately age well, but for Summer 2013, it’s an audacious party record.

Her second Jeff Tweedy collaboration is spare but deeply spiritual, dignified but down-home

Decades after her 1969 solo debut and a whopping 63 years since she joined her family in the Staple Singers, septuagenarian Mavis Staples is once again doing work that eclipses records of singers a third her age. The follow-up to 2010′s stunning You Are Not Alone, One True Vine continues her collaboration with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, a pairing that seems strange in theory but sounds utterly sweet and mutually flattering in the grooves. As before, Tweedy gets unguarded performances from Staples that have sometimes eluded more conventional producers, and Staples helps Tweedy focus on musical and emotional fundamentals in a way he hasn’t always done with Wilco.

This time around, though, the results are even more relaxed and at times experimental, as if their mutual trust had expanded even further. Unlike its resolutely traditional predecessor, her 13th solo studio album strikes a low-key tone with the disarming opening track, a definitive take on Low’s “Holy Ghost” from their Tweedy-produced album The Invisible Way, and then sticks with unadorned expression of muted moods. The results are akin to Johnny Cash’s American albums with Rick Rubin — spare but deeply spiritual, dignified but down-home. Who knew but Staples and Tweedy that gospel with simultaneously rootsy and artsy droning would work so well?

The clincher is a faithful yet liberating rendition of Funkadelic’s 1971 minor hit “Can You Get to That.” The Maggot Brain track has always been a Staple Singers record in disguise; it’s got their simple but profound karma philosophies down pat. Tweedy recreates the original’s see-sawing acoustic funk and Staples shares the mike with a swinging choir.

The original material compliments the gospel covers elsewhere with folky reverence: Tweedy’s “Jesus Wept” and the title track, a Wilco out-take, combine incorporeal and interpersonal themes, while Nick Lowe’s “Celestial Shores” looks to redemption in a sparkling afterlife. But it’s the singer’s late dad who gets in the most commanding words: Pops Staples’s “I Like the Things About Me,” a black-pride anthem the Staples sung for the early-’70s Wattstax concert and documentary, resonates even more deeply in an era where ideals of physical perfection loom in every Photoshopped image. Understated yet authoritative, Mavis proves it’s best to keep things real.

Equal parts unsettling and inviting, austere and yet deeply emotional

Classical, goth and underground house music don’t come together often; in fact, the combination is virtually unprecedented. But here they all are, on the second album from this rapidly evolving Toronto act. What’s odder still is that the three genres actually cohere and mutually flatter one other. Fronted by classically-trained singer/keyboardist/composer Katie Stelmanis, Austra have created the rare kind of record that’s equal parts unsettling and inviting, austere and yet deeply emotional.

Lead single “Home” provides a way in. It starts with stiff piano chords, mournful bass, and Stelmanis’s plaintive cry; a 4/4 bass drum enters and the piano part flips into the kind of restless, anxious riff that animated deep house jams of the late ’80s. The vibrato in Stelmanis’s warble widens as her words to an absent lover move from resentment to longing and back again. Percussion tracks multiply, voices swell, and woodwinds, bass and violin all weave together to create tightly-organized patterns of harmony and counterpoint. It’s as tense and as torchy as hell, as if Stelmanis could wave her hand and put an instant 100-year hex on her should-be ex.

Nothing else is quite as immediately startling, but the rest slowly insinuates. There’s a lot of bass, but also plenty of space as the arrangements shift from stark and minimal to thick and throbbing. Lyrics that mention forbidden rendezvous and clandestine arrangements accumulate, building an enticing landscape of ambiguity, insinuation, queer whispers: It’s the music of shadows brought into the light.