Mavis Staples' new album, One True Vine, comes out June 25. (Courtesy of the artist)

First Listen: Mavis Staples, 'One True Vine'

Jun 16, 2013 — Produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, One True Vine radiates reverence while summoning a slow burn well-suited to Staples' rich, dusky voice. Then, as the album blooms into something more celebratory, joy peeks through like slivers of sunshine.

Now in its seventh decade, Mavis Staples' career has taken her through chart-topping hits with the gospel-soul family band The Staple Singers, performances for Martin Luther King Jr., enshrinement in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a recent string of highly regarded solo albums. One of Staples' many high-profile fans, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, produced and plays on Staples' 2010 album You Are Not Alone, and he returns to steer its fine follow-up, One True Vine.

Out June 25, the new album finds Tweedy playing virtually every instrument — that's his 17-year-old son Spencer on drums — but, as Jeff Tweedy often does on records he produces, he tends to hang back, eschew showy flourishes and stay out of the way once the tape is rolling. This is Staples' showcase, and rightfully so, though Tweedy clearly had a hand in picking the songs, from "Holy Ghost" (by Low, whose new album he produced) to pieces by Funkadelic and Nick Lowe, to the three tracks he wrote himself.

Though Staples remains a gregarious and approachable live performer, One True Vine as a whole is a more darkly solemn and deliberately paced record than You Are Not Alone. But even at its slowest, in the tentative search for salvation in its first half, One True Vine doesn't drag to a slog so much as radiate reverence, while summoning a slow burn well-suited to Staples' rich, dusky voice. Then, as the album blooms into something more celebratory — as Staples begins to find salvation and comfort — the joy in One True Vine peeks through like slivers of sunshine.

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Smith Westerns' third studio album, Soft Will, comes out June 25. (Courtesy of the artist)

First Listen: Smith Westerns, 'Soft Will'

Jun 16, 2013 — The Chicago band's third album unleashes a sparkly charm offensive that practically rolls down your car windows for you. Sweet and dreamy, slick and sunny, Soft Will is the sound of weaponized agreeability.

Given that Smith Westerns' first record came out when its members were teenagers, it makes sense that the Chicago band has evolved from a garage-y pop-rock outfit — all shambling T. Rex-isms and impeccable hair — to something sweeter, dreamier, slicker and sunnier. Just in time for the season to begin officially, Soft Will finds Smith Westerns fully perfecting a summery jangle that's hugely ingratiating.

The follow-up to Smith Westerns' 2011 breakthrough Dye It Blonde, Soft Will (out June 25) is the sound of weaponized agreeability; a band whose songs are so catchy, even wistful ballads like "White Oath" have a shiny sheen that practically glistens. Given a brisk pace to match, songs like "Idol" and the appropriately titled "Glossed" practically roll the car windows down for you.

Lyrically speaking, it can be hard to parse what an individual Smith Westerns track might be trying to impart at any given moment — a product, in part, of a mix that tends to prioritize clean, chiming guitars over Cullen Omori's vocals. But that doesn't cool off Soft Will's softly sparkly charm offensive for a minute.

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Bosnian Rainbows' self-titled debut comes out June 25. (Courtesy of the artist)

First Listen: Bosnian Rainbows, 'Bosnian Rainbows'

Jun 16, 2013 — Though both are powerful and iconoclastic performers, The Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Le Butcherettes' Teri Gender Bender find a way to join together without crowding each other out.

Listening to Bosnian Rainbows' first album made me think of the paradox about unstoppable forces and immovable objects — as in, "What happens when Omar Rodriguez Lopez (At The Drive In, The Mars Volta) leads a band alongside Teri Gender Bender (Le Butcherettes)?" Both powerful and iconoclastic performers, the two somehow join together without crowding each other out.

Lopez is known for being prolific and brilliant, but he also has a reputation in the industry for being brooding, controlling, even dictatorial. He himself has gone on record saying, "I don't want to be a dictator all my life," and said his greatest challenge and desire is to be able to collaborate with band members. If so, then his best move was deciding to play with a singer who is not to be bossed around.

Born Teresa Suarez, Teri Gender Bender fits into the category of "unstoppable force." Funny, weird, sick and furious, her live performances are mesmerizing, terrifying and exhilarating. I've had the chance to speak to her and can attest that she's a lovely, thoughtful woman, but on stage she's another story: part Iggy Pop, with a helping of Siouxsie Sioux and a splash of David Bowie from his Ziggy Stardust era.

No Latina rockers are doing anything as powerful as her: Her voice is commanding and majestic and, true to her moniker, oddly devoid of gender, though completely sexual. She's the opposite of quirky hipster femininity; she will eat cuteness alive.

Every song on Bosnian Rainbows is catchy and anthemic, with frequent nods to the '80s work of Simple Minds and Bowie. Lopez, who can get too tangled in his own head, here finds a way to package his ideas in a succinct and digestible way. Songs like the bouncy "Torn Maps" and the wistful "Turtlenecks" are easy to enjoy, but not too reduced — they're full of rich narratives, unusual musical progressions and cryptic, Tori Amos-esque lyrics to keep listeners feeling both included and intrigued.

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Austra's new album, Olympia, comes out June 18. (Courtesy of the artist)

First Listen: Austra, 'Olympia'

Jun 9, 2013 — The Canadian band's second album showcases Katie Stelmanis' massive voice and increasingly personal lyrics in style, keeping one foot in the conservatory even as both are occupied on the dance floor.

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Everything in Austra's music is painstakingly engineered to maximize drama, from its relentlessly pulsing arrangements — performed by a live band, no less — to Katie Stelmanis' sweepingly grandiose, Siouxsie-sized vocals. Stelmanis is a classically trained veteran of the Canadian Opera Company, so her soaring Gothic swoops are second nature by this point, but Austra's music still mixes the accessible hooks of electro-pop with the stubborn drive of house music.

Over time, Austra has expanded from a core trio — with bandleader Stelmanis joined by percussionist Maya Postepski and bassist Dorian Wolf — to a sextet, and its sound has naturally become bigger and busier. In the process, that's meant letting some of the spare, arty mystery of 2011's Polaris Prize-nominated Feel It Break give way to the bombastic throb of Olympia, out June 18. But the new album still showcases Stelmanis' massive voice and increasingly personal lyrics in style, keeping one foot in the conservatory even as both are occupied on the dance floor.

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Statik Selektah's fifth studio album, Extended Play, comes out June 18. (Courtesy of the artist)

First Listen: Statik Selektah, 'Extended Play'

Jun 9, 2013 — Mutual respect pervades Extended Play, an inviting, prideful album that's never snobby. Statik is something special -- he makes functional, real-deal records that sound like the triumphant persistence of New York and the strains of nostalgia in a sunny day.

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To make Extended Play, producer and DJ Statik Selektah put out the bat signal and more than 40 rappers turned up. They range from middle-aged, battle-scarred pros like Prodigy, Black Thought and Bun B (Raekwon calls them "the vets in the sweats") to the next wave, like Flatbush Zombies, Troy Ave and Pro Era (Statik is also the group's DJ). They showed because Statik is something special — he makes functional, real-deal records that sound like the triumphant persistence of New York, the strains of nostalgia in a sunny day, parents telling their kids to quit running around and be easy. Then he invites mentally tough, rigorous thinkers raised on competition to perform over them.

Statik isn't trying to super-size the bass, or deconstruct melody, or strip anything away. He isn't interested in messing with perfection, which is, for him, the golden era of rap — that boom-bap. DJ Premier productions, Pete Rock tones, A Tribe Called Quest's intimacy. This album, the fifth he's made in this style in six years, is not solitary by its very nature, and it works best as something shared. It's what you put on while everybody wakes up on Saturday and trickles downstairs at weekend pace.

These are old friends who don't like to do too much explaining. Flashes of recognition cohere around a sensibility that, despite differences in their ages and ports of call, the musicians share. Miss Cleo is referenced, by Hit-Boy in "Funeral Season." Marriage is discussed, as it relates to the block (AG da Coroner in "Big City of Dreams": "Bought the block a wedding ring") and the game (Slaine in "Gs, Pimps and Hustlers": "I'm married to the game, no ring and no gown"). Horns stab, drums are heavy and the bass moves. The specter of Biggie is everywhere, in echoey samples, and the presence of Jay undeniable — he's quoted liberally. Common's 10-year-old lyrics return, in a track called "My Hoe" that communicates the opposite of what its title implies: "I'll never call you a bitch, or even my boo / There's so much in a name and so much more in you."

Mutual respect pervades Extended Play, an inviting, prideful album that's never snobby.

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