C Joynes and the Furlong Bray have dreamed up a wholly convincing invisible city and utopian alternative musical history of the world. While the beleaguered Havians “do not excel at the musical art”, the Bray boys do, and have created something warm and joyful out of the long ages.

Across The Field’s lyrics are dead serious, yes, but their tones are ethereal and arrangements spacious, sounding as if they’ve blown in on the keening breeze, to the point where “Carolina Lady” almost melts into air. ... Due to pairing of Louise and Morgan’s voices, Across the Field is never less than lovely.

At its best, jazz is a genre capable of evoking every other musical discipline, and the deftly-played music on We Are Sent Here By History serves as an energizing reminder of that. It’s deeply felt music that makes for a rewarding and often thrilling listening experience.

While Long in the Tooth offers more or less what you expect, it does so at a very high level. The band has never sounded tighter, more collaborative or more sure of itself.

Nightcap leans more towards the song-ish end of things in its first half, though bits of free-wheeling freakery are tucked in between verses and choruses. In the second half, it sprawls more open-endedly across cuts that lead one to another without pause for breath. ... The effect is more like a suite than a collection of tracks, a bravura show of musical prowess that winds through moods, time signatures and keys.

Dorji’s playing exudes a confidence that doesn’t rely solely upon volume or muscularity. Years of pitching himself headlong into musical situations have cultivated his ability to develop a piece of music on the fly, using rhythmic variations to make the listener feel like they had better hang on tight, and spinning intricate elaborations upon an idea until nothing seems to exist besides the shudder and vibration of steel strings and wood.

Amiable adaptability is a constant across the three concerts. Fidelity is conversely variable, but improved bootleg editions of the material and always listenable.

Martin and Chen create a world of liminal spaces on In Blue, the invitation to share them is persuasive and rewards are many. The Bug is a mercurial but known entity, his work always impressive, his choice of collaborators telling and Dis Fig shines in this setting. Hers is a voice and a vision you’ll want to hear more from.

Yes, you’ll hear echoes of influence but McGreevy and Lewis have forged their own path based on really good songwriting and musical chops.

Years of careful post-production honed this impressive exercise in large group improvisation into a multi-hued vista replete with crepuscular silhouettes and flecks of effervescence.

It’s remarkable, throughout, how well Purim has held up, as a singer, as a jazz composer and band leader and as an artist. You wouldn’t know, from listening, whether she was 80 or 60 or 20. The songs are vital, pulsing with bright energy, imbued with a lifetime’s skill but effervescent. Not many women got to play as pivotal a role in jazz as Purim did. This retrospective makes the case for her importance without getting bogged down in it.

Even if the record had been inevitable, it didn’t have to be so engaging; fortunately, it is.

Jazzy horn breaks? Twinkling bar-room piano? Doo-wop backing vocals? All this and more crops up in ways both unusual and satisfying. Rutili is also in fine lyrical form. Many of the songs begin with strange and imaginative opening lines.

I DES is an ambitious, moving work.

The Umbrellas have always offered bashed up, joyriding sweetness, but here they reach at—and intermittently attain—a Spector-esque wall of rock ‘n roll sound. Even better, that larger scale doesn’t undermine the vulnerability of their songs, but instead amplifies and clarifies it.

Y’Y has its lovely moments, but it wallows sometimes in woo-woo-y mysticism. It’s a bit soft and cushiony, hard edges sanded down to harmless auras.

It still squalls and surges and executes little folk-infused turns of melody, it still uses words with a scalpel to precise and premeditated effect, and it still sounds great.

There’s a light-footed joyfulness in these tracks that’s far from insubstantial, and in fact, borders on the profound.

The music has a spaciousness to match the timeline: jangling steel strings slide over martial drums while fuzzy synthesizers burst and Rigby repeats the title phrase. She sounds both invigorated and uneasy; a little bit triumphant and a little bit daunted by her arrival.

The Innocence Mission delivers its tunes with an uncalculated freshness, still innocent, even now.

It’s confident, focused, and consistently strong enough that it feels like the right place for newcomers to start paying attention.

Ishibashi arrives at points of repose on “Nothing As” and the closing title track, leaving behind the more challenging arrangements to focus on piano and a yearning vocal melody. It’s these moments of immediacy and unassuming beauty that leave the strongest impression.

Some feature Morteza Rezâei on dohool (cylinder drum). Heydarian’s playing is so full and out front in the mix that it is difficult to distinguish the two instruments, though sometimes, as on “Nishtemân,” their interplay is heard clearly and to great effect. The longish tracks, ranging from four to 11 minutes, give Heydarian ample space to develop his ideas.

You might flash back to 1990s Primal Scream or the Madchester grooves of a couple years prior, to certain Spiritualized cuts or even, in the flurry of woodwinds, a bit of Sun Ra. It’s quite good if you can get beyond wishing it were really Clinic. It’s maybe the next best thing.

This second Quade album is lovely and strange, fed by crystalline streams of rustic sound but not limited to them, and indeed, reaching into post-rock and symphonic art rock with its haunted melodies.

DJ Haram is all jaded Brooklyn sophistication and all wide-eyed exotic transcendance, all at the same time, and it’s wonderful.

Some vibrate with a ghostly blues — lovely, haunted “This” and the bent note mirage of “June Bug”—while others swagger fancifully like barroom tall tales (“Monkey”). Older songs, like “Abominable Snowman,” first recorded for 1995’s Parsnip Snips, and “Indian Chiefs and Hula Girls” from 1988’s Water Tower, sidle casually into the present moment, sounding well-loved and unbothered by the passage of time. They sit right next to newer songs like “Fava,” with its transfixing twang of guitar.

This is a lovely album, its only drawback being its brief running time of barely 30 minutes.