Arthur Buck

Arthur Buck

The Arthur is Joseph, the seldom boring singer-songwriter-visual-artist. The Buck is Peter, the guitarist without whom R.E.M. might never have taken the underground overground. And if this collaboration isn’t the strongest musical statement that either has ever made, neither is it anywhere close to their weakest. As the programmed drums seem to emerge from the acoustic-electric-guitar mesh, the lyrics seem to emerge from the hooks. They also resonate on more than one level even when they’re calling for another American revolution.

Gene Clark Sings for You

Gene Clark

The first eight songs come from 1967 demos that the talented but self-sabotaging ex-Byrd circulated in hopes of landing a solo record deal. The last six come from demos that he gave to the one-hit-wonder folk-rock group the Rose Garden. “Down on the Pier” is to Dylan’s “4th Time Around” what “4th Time Around” is to the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman could do a lot worse than to record valedictory versions of all 14. They should start with “Doctor Doctor.”

“It does seem,” wrote the late musicologist Peter Williams of J.S. Bach’s compositional strategies, “to be the nature of the Goldberg [Variations] to inspire a range of hypotheses.”

It also seems to be the nature of the Goldberg Variations to inspire a range of interpretations. Last year, the Italian pianist Beatrice Rana won acclaim for her piano rendition, and, indeed, despite (or maybe because of) Glenn Gould’s landmark recordings of 1955 and 1981, the piano remains the instrument on which the composition is most frequently performed.

Good Thing 

Leon Bridges

Bridges’ sophomore effort begins with “Bet Ain’t Worth the Hand,” which sounds enough like his retro Southern-soul debut to placate continuity lovers. With the second song, though (“Bad Bad News”), the album shifts into something else—the Sound of Philadelphia, say, slowed down and reimagined as old jack swing except when it’s sped up to approximate Quincy Jones–era Michael Jackson. And if the lyrics aren’t always deeper than those of Bruno Mars, they have more integrity. The only song with bedroom eyes is called “Mrs.” for a reason.

Play the latest albums by the Innocence Mission and Wovenhand’s David Eugene Edwards for someone who doesn’t speak English—someone, in other words, oblivious to what’s being sung—and he’ll probably tell you that the two have little in common.

One of them, after all, is loud, dark, and turbulent; the other quiet, luminous, and peaceful.

In The Groove

Barry Goldberg

The words in the only song that has any are sung by Les McCann and—according to one source—address Donald Trump (antagonistically, of course). Otherwise, the producer Carla Olson keeps the focus off virtue signaling and on Goldberg’s Hammond B3, Joe Sublett’s sax, and the slinky R&B melodies of the covers (including those of Doc Bagby, Milt Bruckner, Johnny and the Hurricanes, and Sil Austin) and Goldberg’s own compositions. Target audience: anyone who thinks that Goldberg’s roots only go back as far as Newport ’65.

One of the few traditional gender-based assumptions that it’s safe to reiterate in public these days is that women have, or at any rate demonstrate, a greater capacity for empathy than men do.

But even if practically every study on the topic didn’t suggest as much, prolonged exposure to the latest albums by Joan Baez, Angélique Kidjo, Nellie McKay, and Judith Owen would.