Notable CDs

Don’t believe the hype. No matter how much significance critics claim to find in these hip-hop soundscapes and messages, Lamar is a tongue-tied lout. What’s tying his tongue is profanity, but it could’ve been any verbal tic (“like,” for instance). Repeated ad nauseam, such interjections suggest a stultifying lack of imagination or intelligence or both. Do the stunted have a right to free speech? Of course. Does “How Much a Dollar Cost” actually glint with gospel hope? Yes. It’s one cut among 16. Do the math.

Rebel Heart

There are seven official versions of this album, and it’s too bad that one of them isn’t an edition free of explicit sex and/or profanity. At least 15 of the 25 available tracks avoid moral slumming, and they’re not without their aesthetically—maybe even philosophically—ambitious moments (“Joan of Arc,” “Illuminati,” “Devil Pray”). Sequenced together, they sound like a long-overdue Like a Prayer sequel: catchy, thought-provoking, self-aware. The seven or nine others (“Inside Out” and “Best Night” are borderline) morally slum with a vengeance.

No Pier Pressure

Nobody who considers Pet Sounds a masterpiece instead of a moody experiment saved by three classic singles has any business taking this album to task for being an easy-listening excursion almost saved by the Al Jardine–sung “The Right Time.” Anyway, the easiest-listening cut, the Mark Isham–showcasing instrumental “Half Moon Bay,” is right gorgeous. And, unlike the other half dozen or so right-gorgeous numbers, it doesn’t suffer from lyrics that call attention to Brian Wilson’s age or vocals that call attention to the lyrics.

Wire

If “Wire” were your band’s name, you might lead with an anti-WiFi song too. Colin Newman’s and Graham Lewis’ is called “Blogging,” and it’s pretty clever for minimalistic Luddite rock. Whether you’d risk overkill by skewering the same straw man in “In Manchester”—well, who’s to gainsay the wisdom of a legendary punk duo? Even where politics is concerned? “The narrowest vision often has the widest appeal,” “There’s always someone who thinks they’ve got a plan”—they’re sentiments as commendably pithy as their music’s tightly coiled hooks.

Spotlight

The live and blues thirds of Eric Clapton’s new compilation Forever Man (Reprise) prove exactly what they’re meant to: that, even as a journeyman (the all-too-appropriate title of his sole 1989 album), Clapton has stayed in touch enough with his roots to remain marginally indispensable. Or, to put matters another way, just when you think that you have all the Clapton that you could possibly need, he puts an interesting spin on something by Cream or Robert Johnson that could’ve only come about via 99 percent perspiration.

The real revelation, though, is the 1980s hits disc. Experienced in real time via the radio and MTV, “I’ve Got a Rock ’n’ Roll Heart,” “Forever Man,” “It’s in the Way That You Use It,” “Change the World,” “My Father’s Eyes,” and maybe even “Tears in Heaven” felt like common-denominator-placating trifles—hummable but unworthy of Clapton’s legacy. Heard as history, they sound more like that legacy’s uncommon-denominator-placating coda.