New and noteworthy

The Raveonettes Sing …

The Raveonettes

Both Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo have hit the big five-oh, so feel free to file these covers of their favorite songs from the last 60-plus years (a lot of which are also other ­people’s favorites from the last 60-plus years) under “middle-­aged crisis” if not “shooting fish in a barrel.” But be warned: Because their dream pop includes intimations of nightmares, they can spike the Shirelles and the Everly Brothers with the Cramps and the Velvet Underground and not only get away with the experiment but also make it not seem like an experiment. And if the presence of the Doors’ “The End” on the bonus-track edition scares you away, please know that Wagner and Foo excise that song’s most obnoxious eight minutes.

My Town

Brian Ray

It’s not every hired gun who can make a creditable solo album let alone three. But Brian Ray is one such slinger, and even though he sings “I’ve got my Beatles and my Stones down” in “Pirate Radio,” his style owes nothing to Paul McCartney (for whom he has played guitar and occasional bass since 2002). Rather, he remains faithful to the chunky power pop and clever lyrics that distinguished his Mondo Magneto and This Way Up from the run of the best-kept-secret mill in 2006 and 2010 respectively. This time, he’s so confident in what he’s peddling that he risks letting a Willie Dixon blues show up his own tunes. It doesn’t.

Soulegrass Gospel

The Slygo Revival

Eight of these bluegrass gospel songs were written by Kevin Shawn Smith and Kenneth R. Robertson, the other two by them and Alan Wilson. The backwoods-country “Let Your Light Shine” is the only one with drums. The rest keep the banjo and mandolin front and center. The lead and harmony singers, be they male or female, do the project proud. Picks to click: all 10, but “Jesus and Jim Beam” and “Between the Hard Place and You” especially.

Born Blessed Grateful & Alive

Yarn

Just when you peg these guys for an ace country band with Southern-rock striations (who else would do a song about the impact of “Freebird” on a family’s emotional coordinates?), they deploy “Heart So Hard,” a fleet shuffle with echoes of Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Conclusion? They’re good at avoiding ruts. They’re good at conveying nascent spirituality too. “Turn Off the News” culminates in calls of “hallelujah,” “These Words Alone” in a prayer to Jesus. The latter also indicates where the album title’s missing commas belong. And, yes, they matter.

Greg Kihn Randy Bachman/Getty images

Encore

When Greg Kihn passed away in August at 75, the unpretentious rock ’n’ roll that had made him a star in the early 1980s was a relic of simpler times. Forged the old-fashioned way (two guitars, bass, keyboards, drums) and geared to messages no more complicated than their titles, his songs carved a niche among fans who liked their music straightforward and catchy. “The Breakup Song” (aka “Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh”) reached the Top 20, “Jeopardy” (later parodied by Weird Al Yankovic) the Top 5. Kihn released his final album, Rekihndled (Riot Media), in 2017, 21 years after he’d put music on the back burner to become a DJ and a writer of horror fiction. Musically anachronistic, the album didn’t chart, but it packed plenty of punch as well as prescient common sense. Three years before COVID and the 2020 election, Kihn delivered “The Brain Police” (yes, he meant “Thought Police”). And in “The Life I Got,” he sang, “Life’s too short. / It goes by too fast. / Next thing you know, / it’s in the past.” R.I.P. —A.O.