Notable CDs

Don’t let what you read about the silly, extra-musical antics of this reluctantly maturing Canadian put you off the genuine charms of his songs. You’ll especially like them if you’re a fan of Donovan (whose flower-power preciosity gilds DeMarco’s lily-like enunciation), Sugar Ray’s “Fly” (the guitar riff of which wends its way throughout the album in various permutations), and lyrics that bypass profanity altogether. And, given that “Let Her Go” follows “Brother” (which goes “Let it go now, brother”), being a Frozen fan might help too.

English Oceans

Should Neil Young or The Rolling Stones want to record classic-sounding new music again, they could do worse than to rehearse themselves into shape with these 13 songs. The lead cut evokes Exile on Main Street, “When He’s Gone” Rust Never Sleeps, and “Pauline Hawkins” and “Hearing Jimmy Loud” could go either way. What the Stones and Young might find daunting: “Primer Coat,” “When Walter Went Crazy,” and “First Air of Autumn,” which suggest alternatives to burning out and fading away undreamt of in either’s philosophy.

50 St. Catherine’s Drive

Hooks and baroque-pop filigrees abound, making it possible to ignore the clichés for which Gibb was a sucker and pointless to resist the sheer aural juiciness of “I Am the World” (a redone Bee Gees oldie) and “Alan Freeman Days” (a tribute to the Casey Kasem of Australia). Had this posthumous testament been trimmed to its 10 best tracks instead of padded out to a quality-diluting 16, it would’ve been the best Brothers Gibb album in 20 if not 30 years.

Are We There

Of what might the prominence of this relentlessly downbeat if relatively euphonious album in critics’ best-of-2014 polls be indicative? That 2014—after decades in which such as Karen Dalton, Nico, and Judee Sill, were deemed too depressive—was finally the Year of the Lovelorn Woman? That two songs featuring the “s-word” equal the shattering of a glass ceiling? The playful studio chatter at the end lightens the mood a little. A cover of “Walking on Sunshine” or “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” would’ve lightened it more.

Spotlight

Like the other projects that William A. Thompson IV has released as “WATIV” since 2006 (Baghdad Musical Journal, Syntaxis), the New Orleans–based jazz pianist and Iraq War veteran’s latest sound collage, DD214, seeks to illuminate the mysterious and harrowing emotional landscapes unique to soldiers, blending interview snippets with dreamlike stretches of melody and “found” sound.

The resulting 27 minutes, which sometimes feel like Glenn Gould’s Solitude Trilogy as remixed by This Mortal Coil (and can be downloaded for free at soundcloud.com/wativ), never devolve into agitprop—in part because Thompson considers his combat experience to have been both the “best” and the “worst thing that ever happened” and in part because, as a Christian, he knows that joy and sorrow often go hand in hand. “As an artist, I must draw from my experiences,” he said. “And I’ve found that the wider my spectrum of perceived darkness is opened, the spectrum of light expands equally.”