Pollinator

Blondie

At first, you’ll marvel at how Debbie Harry and Chris Stein continue to make the excavation of musical and verbal hooks in keeping with their greatest hits seem easy. Then you’ll notice that this time they’ve farmed out most of the excavation to others. No matter. Whether young enough to be their children (Johnny Marr) or their grandchildren (Charli XCX), the hired hands obviously take writing for Blondie seriously. What does matter is the profanity to which Harry occasionally accedes in an unbecomingly desperate attempt to seem hip.

Kickin’ Child: The Lost Album 1965

Dion

This album as a stand-alone folk-rock artifact may have been “lost” since 1965, but if you own Wonder Where I’m Bound and the compilations Bronx Blues and The Road I’m On, you already have 14 of its 15 tracks. So ignore any hype containing the term “missing link” (between Dion’s pop youth and his singer-songwriter adulthood, lest you’ve forgotten), and ask yourself how much hearing such under-appreciated gems as “Time in My Heart for You” and “Now” in their original context means to you.

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love And … Los Straitjackets

Los Straitjackets

The Mil Máscaras–style wrestling masks behind which these non-Mexican purveyors of instrumental surf-rock perform will probably have the cultural appropriation police calling for their heads any day now, so you’d better enjoy them while you can. And they’ve never been easier to enjoy than in these affectionate transformations of Nick Lowe songs into themes from an imaginary beach-party film. Given Lowe’s verbal skills, it’s impressive how well his melodies hold up without lyrics—almost as impressive as how well these renditions double as karaoke.

Rock And Roll Music! The Songs Of Chuck Berry

Various artists

Chuck Berry has been covered so often and by such a wide variety of musicians that no single-disc compilation of his homage payers will do justice to the scope of his influence. So appreciate this one for the light it shines into the obscure tunnels of secondhand Berrydom. Aside from the Beach Boys’ top-five version of the title track, none of these 24 tracks will be familiar to the casual consumer. And although a few miss their marks, the playlist never grinds to a halt.

Encore

Paul Shaffer & the World’s Most Dangerous Band were never all that dangerous. But, as David Letterman’s resident jukebox, they certainly proved themselves flexible, adapting night after night to whoever the musical guest might be and to the ceaseless demands of cranking out audience-priming segues. That chameleon-like quality permeates the group’s eponymous new release on Rhino Records, a mostly obscure-oldies-covers collection that Shaffer commissioned from himself and his colleagues lest the Letterman-retirement doldrums get the better of them.

The guest vocalists pretty much steal the show, especially Dion (singing Sam Cooke), Darius Rucker (singing Timmy Thomas), Jenny Lewis (singing the McCoys), Shaggy (toasting over Vince Guaraldi), and Bill Murray (feelin’ both groovy and goofy on “Happy Street”). A check of the credits, however, reveals that it’s the bassist Will Lee singing Orlando Napier’s “Enjoy the Ride” and none other than Shaffer himself knocking Georgie Fame’s “Yeh Yeh”—updated with a Netflix reference—out of the park. —A.O.