Nathan Abshire, Master of the Cajun Accordion: The Classic Swallow Recordings (Ace)
Louisiana accordionist and singer Nathan Abshire helped popularize Cajun music during the 60s folk revival, and this superb 25-track anthology collects his work for the Swallow label between 1965 and 1976, fronting his own Pine Grove Boys as well as the Balfa Brothers. Born in 1913, Abshire picked up the accordion at age eight, and by the mid-30s he’d cut a handful of sides for Bluebird Records with his Rayne-Bo Ramblers; but until he scored a hit in 1950 with the first version of his signature song, “Pine Grove Blues” (represented here in a 1966 version), his recording career progressed in fits and starts. The late-career recordings collected on Master of the Cajun Accordion comprise the bulk of his discography, and they’re as soulful and spirited as anything he cut as a younger man. Over waltzlike rhythms (the percussion is sparse, sometimes just a triangle), his wheezing squeezebox pumps out biting unison licks with astringent fiddle, played mostly by masters Dewey and Will Balfa, and his slurred, forceful Creole singing finds a sweet spot between honky-tonk and the blues. —Peter Margasak
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In the late aughts New Zealand-based trio the Dead C seemed to have come full circle; after making several albums of torpid electronics and cut-and-pasted chaos, their two most recent returned to the grimy rock of their late-80s output. Armed Courage suggests that what looked like a full circle might really be more like a comet’s orbit. Though each side-length piece has plenty of squalling, fuzzy guitar and restlessly accelerating beats, whatever force holds them together appears to be giving out—and when singer Michael Morley begins intoning sorrowful phrases distorted by what sounds like an old rotary-phone handset, the aura of collapse is complete. The Dead C’s music has always been about entropy, and current events have finally caught up with it; crumpled and obscure, Armed Courage is a map of the world. —Bill Meyer
Earl Sweatshirt, Doris (Columbia/Tan Cressida)
When LA rap collective Odd Future broke out in 2011, one of its brightest members, rapper-producer Earl Sweatshirt, was conspicuously AWOL. In part because fans had little to work with besides the raw, minimalist mixtape Earl, his mysterious absence transformed him into a cult pop hero; they wore T-shirts that said free earl and chanted for him at shows. (It turns out he didn’t exactly need freeing: when Complex and the New Yorker tracked him down, he was at a boarding school in Samoa.) Earl faces down his outsize persona early on his new album, Doris—on the second track, “Burgundy,” he raps lucidly about juggling audience expectations and personal woes. Sparse, stumbling drums and leaned-out, squealing synths give the album an atmosphere of alienation and paranoia, but high-profile guest producers (the Neptunes, RZA, Frank Ocean) help lighten the mood with refined beats that complement Earl’s humane, personal, and heartbreaking rhymes. —Leor Galil
No Age, An Object (Sub Pop)
After nearly a decade together, America’s favorite noise punks have begun to mellow, trading a little of the manic adolescent energy that defined their early career for a calmer, more deliberate way of working. But though An Object is the quietest record in the duo’s catalog, it’s also probably the most experimental one, with physically manipulated microphones and speakers adding subtle inflections to what remains essentially two-chord punk—sort of like if the Ramones had gone into the studio with John Cage. —Miles Raymer
Chelsea Wolfe, Pain Is Beauty (Sargent House)
When Chelsea Wolfe started attracting serious attention after the 2011 release of Apokalypsis, part of her hook was the doom-and-gloom, black-metal aesthetic she brought to her gothy, tribal folk. On the cover she’s pictured zombielike and possessed, her face dead and eyes whited out, and the music is noisy and twisted, orchestral in its darkness (“Movie Screen” especially). But though a metal font graces the cover of the new Pain Is Beauty, Wolfe has tiptoed much further into haunting electro territory—and on this cover she’s portrayed as a radiant kind of sorceress. The aura of doom has given way to prettier, more refined tracks, propelled by pulsing beats that seem to pursue the vocals. Wolfe is achingly soulful on “Sick,” backed by a jogging bass rhythm and washes of stringlike synths—the whole thing sounds like it could dissolve into an ominous chant at any moment. —Kevin Warwick
