THE WAEVE The Waeve (Transgressive) — Maybe no one out there was wishcasting into being a pairing of mad-genius musician about town and former Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall, but their debut together under the name the Waeve is pretty persuasive proof that everyone should have been. Dougall might have made her modest fame as one third of a joyful girl group pastiche, but her solo outings in the closing-in-on-twenty-years since have tended towards more lush, complicated soundscape. That sensibility melds magnificently with Coxon’s restless experimentation, which was renowned for casting Blur’s expert Britpop through a prism of thrilling oddity. The music is deadpan and vivacious at once. “Over and Over” calls to mind Wye Oak at their peak, and the “Kill Me Again” is a slyly scintillating thriller, its spattering of horn offering jolting punctuation marks across a splendid musical run-on sentence that suggests Tony Visconti producing a spinoff album by Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” music video band following their own gleaming-yet-disaffected North Star. The Waeve rolls, crashes, and recedes with ample power. In addition to the cuts already mentioned, ride these Waeves: “Can I Call You,” “Over and Over,” “Drowning,” “Someone Up There,” and the jazzy “Alone and Free.”

THE MEN New York City (Fuzz Club) — Wheels are so persistently useful that there are whole cliches about the foolishness of pursuing reinvention. New York City, the ninth album by the Men, thunders and gnarls in testament to rawest rock ‘n’ roll as deserving of the same ain’t-broke philosophy. The venerable Brooklyn band blasts through ten tracks so full of garage rock goodness that the record should come with a toolbox and a beer fridge. The blasting workout “Hard Livin'” would have CBGB staple back in the day, and “God Bless the USA” is reminiscent of those deliriously cool instance when nineteen-seventies punk heroes would cover the likes of Chuck Berry. The Men don’t stay tethered to one decade, though, in part because frontman Nick Chiericozzi regularly wails himself to a rasp on songs in manner more in line with the next generation of dirty t-shirt string busters. “Through the Night” lifts some of the best tricks of the earliest Replacements’ records, when they wanted to be reckless but their innate command of songcraft kept winning out, and “Eye” weaves is like the Black Keys making their version of a hardcore record. This wheel is more like a steamroller. Melt away your little town blues with the following cuts: “Peace of Mind,” “Eternal Recurrence,” “Anyway I Find You,” and “River Flows.”