Devendra Banhart - What Will We Be
Setting aside the grand orchestrations of Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, Devendra Banhart’s What Will We Be is everything its predecessor was not: straight-forward, cleanly produced, consistently laid-back (to nearly Jack Johnson proportions), and free of ambition. Banhart enlists the same band as last time (Noah Georgeson, Greg Rogove, Luckey Remington, and Rodrigo Amarante), but hired production whiz Paul Butler, whose records with A Band of Bees are some of the most striking productions of the 2000s.

Broadcast & the Focus Group - Broadcast & the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age
Broadcast’s music has always been a little unearthly, so Broadcast & the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age isn’t so much a departure as it is an inspired homage to their influences. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and its alternately innocent and menacing soundtrack inspired the band years before the movie was rediscovered. The whimsy and strangely familiar feel of ’60s and ’70s library music could also be heard in their music from the beginning, but never more clearly than on this mini-album.

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Bob Dylan - Christmas in the Heart
After the initial shock fades, the existence of Christmas in the Heart seems perhaps inevitable. After all, the thing Bob Dylan loves most of all are songs that are handed down from generation to generation, songs that are part of the American fabric, songs so common they never seem to have been written. These are the songs Dylan chooses to sing on Christmas in the Heart, a cheerfully old-fashioned holiday album from its Norman Rockwell-esque cover to its joyous backing vocals.

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Christmas on Mars might be the Flaming Lips’ bona fide sci-fi epic, but Embryonic is the musical equivalent of the final scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey: transformative chaos that results in a new start. From The Soft Bulletin onward, the Lips seemed focused on tidying the loose ends of their earlier work, almost to the point of constraining themselves. Their wilder side is unleashed on Embryonic’s 18 tracks, and the band sounds more off-the-cuff than it has in years — some tracks are barely longer than snippets, others are rangy epics, and it all holds together so organically that listeners might wonder just how much these songs were edited.

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Basement Jaxx - Scars
Previewed by “Twerk” — their booty-disco, “Maniac”-quoting team-up with Yo Majesty — plus the uplifting perfection of the five-star track “Raindrops” — sung by member Felix Buxton with Auto-Tune on the assist — Scars is an obvious return-to-form effort for Basement Jaxx, reigning in the big conceptual ambition displayed on Crazy Itch Radio for better or worse. Getting back to everyday business sounds like sweet relief on tracks like the good-timing “Twerk,” and while this is the lunk-headed party theme you’d expect from such a pairing, two of the other marquee-worthy collaborations far exceed expectations.

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Big Star - Keep an Eye on the Sky
As the object of intense devotion for so many fans, it’s fitting that Big Star receive a box set designed for the intensely devoted: four discs containing every song the band cut in the ’70s, often present in slightly alternate mixes or versions in addition to the originals, a clutch of solo songs from both Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, as well as a handful of pre-Big Star cuts by Icewater and Rock City, all topped off with a live disc culled from a three-set stint at Memphis’ Lafayette’s Music Room in January of 1973, not long after Bell left the band. Excepting subsequent reunions in the ’90s and 2000s, no corner of the band’s career remains untouched on Keep an Eye on the Sky and rarities are abundant, with 55 of its 98 tracks previously unreleased.

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Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Pt. 2
Like the original, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Pt. 2 sets the stage with the intro, but here it’s some Raekwon history courtesy of Papa Wu. On Pt. 1 it was fictional dialog introducing a loose concept album. Besides the introductory dialog and the album’s look-alike cover — tinted purple, as if it were a Cash Money screwed & chopped mix of Pt. 1 — the only traits this sequel shares with the original Linx is that it’s the Wu rapper in top form, spitting out rhymes worthy of the Wu logo and pushing his guest list to work harder, as evidenced by Ghostface, Jadakiss, and Cappadonna all sounding at the top of their game.

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The Black Crowes - Before the Frost/Until the Freeze
Revitalized by their 2008 reunion, the Black Crowes decided to take a genuine risk, recording a double-album’s worth of new material in front of a live audience at Levon Helm’s barn in upstate New York…and then release the second half, Until the Freeze, as a free download-only. To a certain extent, such formal experiments are where the Crowes can really stretch, as they’re so devoted to rock & roll roots from Southern England to South Georgia, they can’t add new wrinkles to old traditions. But that’s not exactly right: they’re willing to stretch until at least the late ’70s, offering their spin on a Rolling Stones’ disco on the album’s first single, “I Ain’t Hiding.” As true as that may be, it’s too snide and easy, and does a disservice to what the Crowes pull off with aplomb on this rather remarkable record, a record that has all the easy interplay of a road-tested band but none of the weariness.

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Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
Facing the third album blues, the Arctic Monkeys turned to Josh Homme, the Queens of the Stone Age mastermind renowned for his collaborations but heretofore untested as a producer. On first glance, it’s a peculiar pair — the heirs of Paul Weller meet the heavy desert mystic — but this isn’t a team of equals, it’s a big brother helping his little siblings go wayward and get weird. Homme doesn’t imprint his own views on the Monkeys but encourages them to follow their strange instincts, whether it’s a Nick Cave obsession or the inclination to emphasize atmosphere over energy.

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Brendan Benson - My Old, Familiar Friend
My Old, Familiar Friend is Brendan Benson’s first album since becoming Jack White’s lieutenant in the Raconteurs, but the group’s raucous classicist guitar rock isn’t readily apparent on this, Benson’s fourth collection of precisely practiced pop. If anything, the higher profile he’s received as part of the Raconteurs has offered Benson the opportunity to ratchet up his perfectionism and indulge in a bit of retro fantasia, allowing him to pair the bright neo-Motown of “Garbage Day” with “Gonowhere,” a rather brilliant pastiche of prime Wings. All the extra time and budget on My Old, Familiar Friend does result in a record where it’s easier to admire Benson’s reach but it’s at a cost: the extra care does take a good deal of the power out of his power pop, putting his music somewhat at a remove even when it’s at its liveliest, as on the opener “Eyes on the Horizon” or the cheerful, not entirely ironic, breakup stomp “Don’t Wanna Talk.”

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