ALBUMS

Singer Beth Gibbons hasn't released much music in the 30 years since her iconic band Portishead stormed out of the gate with seminal trip-hop record Dummy. Nor has she spoken to the press much, gaining a reputation for intense privacy.

- STEPHEN KEARSE

1. Lives Outgrown, Beth Gibbons

But she's not necessarily the hermit these habits suggest. Her second solo album, a collection of baroque chamber folk, explores mortality with striking verve. It's a deeply interior record, abuzz with images and thoughts that feel born of rumination and experience. The bustling arrangements—which frequently feature layers of strings, percussion, and woodwinds—surge and swell as Gibbons sings of her aging body and home life. Where the languid rhythms of trip-hop soundtrack the feeling of eternal night, that blissful postclub chill, this record inhabits the charged peace of knowing that all nights, and days, must end.

2. Tigers Blood, Waxahatchee

After four albums of gauzy indie rock, Alabama-born singer Katie Crutchfield turned to folk and country for Saint Cloud, her fifth record. The change of pace, rooted in both a sense of homecoming and her recent embrace of sobriety, recalibrated her songwriting and widened her audience. She further refines those heartland sounds on Tigers Blood, a stunning set of easygoing down-home tunes cataloging the travails and charms of mid-30s living. The rhythm section, helmed by multi-instrumentalist Brad Cook, works wonders, flickering and flaring in tandem with Crutchfield's mighty but nimble voice. “Oh, when that siren blows, rings out all over town,” she sings on the title track. Indeed.

3. I Lay Down My Life For You, Jpegmafia

Producer and rapper Jpegmafia makes hyperactive songs that jitter and rumble like an overloaded washing machine. Beat switches are common, samples get sourced from anywhere, and the rapping is variously smooth, abrasive, and stoned. He slows down a bit on his fifth album, which finds him processing the recoil of working with his controversial idol, Ye (f.k.a. Kanye West), on the album