New and noteworthy

My Nirvana

Redi Hasa

Most attempts to alchemize rock into something approaching classical end up in schlock. But Hasa, an Albanian cellist, really loves Kurt Cobain’s music, encountering it as he did when it blew into Albania on the winds of post-Communist change. So he bypasses the words (which, in the case of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” were notoriously indecipherable anyway) and dives into the textures of the melodies—melodies that, unplugged, sound more like Middle Eastern folk dirges than anything musicologists would’ve ever labeled “grunge.”

Milk Teeth

Tyson Motsenbocker

The lyrics and barely audible samples from what sound like old home movies are so autobiographically specific that you’d have to be Tyson Motsenbocker to appreciate fully what they allude to. Thus the task of putting this album over falls to its meticulously layered sounds. The ones tethered to irresistible hooks echo with the jittery gloss of ’90s alterna-pop. The ones tasked with ennobling universal truths such as “Time is a one-way mirror” and “The things we love will take a piece of us away” just echo. As sounds go, they’re not bad. But it’s the irresistible hooks that will keep you coming back.

Hope

Soweto Gospel Choir

These South Africans have toned down the vocal power that they displayed on Freedom (their 2018 album honoring Nelson Mandela), the better not to overwhelm the famous melodies, precise rhythms, and carefully enunciated English of the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” Mike & the Mechanics’ “The Living Years,” Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All,” and the Impressions’ “Amen” (medleyed with “This Little Light of Mine”). The standout non-English performance, “Joe Lefifi,” shares lyrics with the song usually titled “Jo Lefifi La Le Kaakang” and sets them to an especially lovely melody. You’ll want to master phonetic Sesotho just to sing along.

Esther

The Welcome Wagon

Mixed and partly produced by Daniel Smith of Danielson fame, this latest offering from Presbyterian Pastor Vito Aiuto and his wife Monique takes its name from Monique’s late grandmother, who can be heard reading Scripture in the background more than once. In the foreground, translucent folk timbres mesh with lyrics new, ancient, and focused on the Author and Finisher of the Aiutos’ faith. A notable exception: “I Know You Know,” a masterpiece of empathy that even an atheist could love.

Encore

Rhino/Parlophone has just reissued Break Every Rule—the 1986 album with which Tina Turner proved that her 1984 breakthrough/comeback album Private Dancer wasn’t a fluke—as a three-CD, two-DVD box. Although the original 11-track program seemed solid enough at the time, ­neither its then-fashionably cluttered production nor Turner’s equally cluttered ­stadium-pandering live presentation (see the first DVD) has aged all that well.

What has is the title track penned by Rupert Hine and Jeannette Obstoj. The album’s fourth single, it met with Turner fatigue and stalled at No. 74 despite a decent push from MTV and the juiciest chord progressions of Turner’s renaissance. (The line “I will be your slave” wouldn’t have ruffled feathers back in the not-quite-woke environment of the ’80s.) The new box includes three iterations (album version, extended dance mix, live in Rio). The video iteration, alas, remains unreleased except on YouTube. It’s the best one of all. —A.O.