New and noteworthy

Vipers and Shadows

Bride

Most Christians object to universalism (the belief that ultimately everybody will be saved) because, its longstanding status as a serious doctrinal error aside, it can dull one’s commitment to the Great Commission. Well, it hasn’t dulled Dale Thompson’s. Every song on these relentless two discs grabs sinners by the lapels and shakes them up something fierce. And the Guns N’ Roses comparisons have things backward: Bride came first.

Homecoming

The Castellows

Between their 22-minute 2024 EP and this 26-minute job, the Balkcom sisters released the 11-minute Alabama Stone. And only Warner Music Nashville knows why the slow drip. Maybe, before committing to a full-on push, the label’s waiting to see which generates the most streams—the trio’s troubled-marriage songs (e.g., “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am”), its love-conquers-all songs (“Broke”), or its perfectly pleasant, down-the-middle country-lite (“Old Way”). The filler, meanwhile, is just an occupational hazard.

Church of Kidane Mehret 

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru

Because of the human ear’s finite tolerance for lo-fi, you’d think that the returns of this Orthodox nun’s reissued piano music would have begun to diminish. One reason they haven’t is the sense that Gebru was composing as she played, making a sense of discovery part and parcel of the results. Another, one specific to this album, is the variety introduced by her playing one song on the harmonium and two others on the organ. Still, diminishing returns might be on the horizon: The four-minute organ piece based on Psalm 122 sounds a lot like the 11-minute organ piece based on the nailing of Christ to the cross.

Wartime Cartoons

My Brother’s Keeper

The brothers Joshua, Benjamin, and Titus Luckhaupt (joined by one or two fiddle- or bass-playing fellow travelers) have been releasing what they call “progressive bluegrass” albums for 10 years now, and the only reason it feels wrong to say that they’re getting better is that they’ve always been good. What’s good about their latest includes a song called “James” (whom Jesus isn’t done with) followed by a song called “Jimmie” (a master carpenter and a good man to boot), a 71-second solo-church-organ intermission, melodies undreamed of in traditional bluegrass circles, solid singing, and, if you haven’t already inferred as much, the sense that at any given moment anything can happen.

Lou Christie Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

Encore

From 1962 to 1969, Lugee Sacco—better known as Lou Christie—was second only to the Four Seasons’ Frankie Valli when it came to white, falsetto­-voiced hitmakers. Granted, it was a distant second (Valli: 27 Top 40 hits; Christie: five). And, like Valli’s and later the Bee Gees’, Christie’s falsetto, especially when complemented as it usually was by the equally helium-voiced girl group the Tammys, could wear out its welcome. But in concentrated doses and hitched to the right song, it made for pop magic.

Christie died in June at 82, leaving behind compilations that were only semi-representative because he’d recorded for various labels and cross-­licensing is a pain.

In 1988, however, Rhino Records greased the right palms and released the 18-track EnLightnin’ment: The Best of Lou Christie. The title was a pun referring to Christie’s biggest hit, “Lightnin’ Strikes” (No. 1 in 1966). His other four hits were included too. The best of the 13 misses: the pop-magical “If My Car Could Only Talk,” No. 118 in 1966. —A.O.