New and noteworthy

The Other Side

T Bone Burnett

Instead of the final installment of his foreboding (and forbidding) Invisible Light trilogy, T Bone Burnett delivers a dozen country-folk songs that find him cleansing his musical and philosophical palates (and palettes). He has gone back to basics before, 38 years ago with T Bone Burnett to be exact. But this time the basics have mainly to do with the melodies and instrumentation—the clearly articulated lyrics will keep metaphor unpackers busy for weeks. An exception: the straightforward “(I’m Gonna Get Over This) Some Day,” the text of which should be magneted to the fridges of everyone struggling with letting bygones go by.

June

Make Sure

Make Sure is Joshua Jackson (the artist formerly known as Fiery Crash), and the release of his second Tooth & Nail album couldn’t be better timed: It sounds like a sunny spring day set to music. More specifically, it sounds the way America might’ve had Gerry Beckley not had Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek for vocal foils or scoring hits among his goals. Jackson’s tunefulness plays out more casually, a loose fit for lyrics that often sound like overheard conversations to former loves or friends. “Infinite Rail,” however, is a prayer. “Make what I want and what I need the same thing,” he requests. The disc-ending title cut is a kind of answer.

Erase 

The Rocky Valentines

Anyone who has spent the last three decades following the music of the Martin family—Jason in Starflyer 59, Ronnie in Joy Electric—will enjoy this latest piece of the puzzle. Harnessing heavy, distorted guitars that almost drown out his sweet power-pop croon to concise, catchy, mid-to-fast-tempo tunes, Jason’s son Charles brings a perennially underground sound about as close to the overground as it can go without spilling (or crossing) over. That his equally concise lyrics feel like last-minute exigencies almost doesn’t matter.

Late Have I Loved You

John Michael Talbot

Not so much a soundtrack to John Michael Talbot’s just-released autobiography of the same name as a devotional backdrop, this 26-minute album is being called an EP. But The Lord’s Supper, the album that made Talbot an unlikely CCM star 45 years ago, was only one minute longer, and if you’ve ever found that folk-choral setting of the Mass directing your spirits heavenward, you’ll find these exquisitely produced, elegantly reverent, and palpably monastic expressions of worship doing likewise.

Cliff Richard Ragnar Singsaas/WireImage/Getty Images

Encore

In September 2009, Cliff Richard and the Shadows played three nights at London’s O2 Arena early in their 50th anniversary tour. Seven weeks later, the DVD The Final Reunion, edited together from those shows and credited to “Cliff and the Shadows,” appeared, topping the U.K., Danish, Dutch, and Swedish charts. Now, 15 years later (and minus some ’tween-song chatter), Edsel Records has released the audio on two CDs, giving the United States yet another chance to catch up with the rest of the world.

Despite combining for 35 Top 10 hits in the United Kingdom from 1959 to 1966 (the Shadows’ 14 plus Richard and the Shadows’ 21), ­neither act took hold in the States, and it’s still hard to hear why. Richard had one of the great pop male voices, and the Shadows’ Hank Marvin helped forge the lead-guitarist template in which so many stars have been cast. In 2009, they were still selling out venues around the world. Teen-idol pop and surf rock have seldom sounded fresher. —A.O.