BE YOUR OWN PET Mommy (Third Man Records) — There was a time, not so long ago, when bands that made a mighty racket were expected to hang up their well-weathered Chucks when they reached a certain age. Stepping away from the scene was similarly a major impediment to boomeranging back after more than a decade away. Mommy, the comeback album from Be Your Own Pet, is the latest compelling that argument against those old saws. The Nashville quartet bashes out a batch of blistering songs for Third Man Records, Jack White’s label that set up shop in their hometown during the interim they were in idle mode. “Goodtime!” makes direct reference to the way growing up has blunted the ability to rage along with a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle (“They’re all old punk low-lifes/ I can’t be that way no more/ I’ve got two kids and a mortgage, what the fuck?”), but the album most finds the band up to their own ways, albeit with what’s arguably a tighter, more forceful sound than before. The added authority draws a straighter line to polished powerhouses who transformed rock and pop in the late nineteen-seventies: “Worship the Whip” suggests the Cars by way of the Runaways, and “Erotomania” recalls Blondie in their earliest, punkiest days. Even as Be Your Own Bet is primarily committed to rivetingly catchy, high-volume assaults — “Hand Grenade” is vicious enough that it’s like biting down on aluminum foil — they also demonstrate an ability to cool it down, as on “Teenage Heaven,” which approaches Cults when they properly wallow in retro pop dreaminess. The new era sounds great. In addition to the cuts already mentioned, cry out for “Bad Moon Rising,” “Rubberist,” “Big Trouble,” and “Drive.”

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER Jump for Joy (Merge) — For his latest album with the rotating support crew that makes up Hiss Golden Messenger, singer-songwriter M.C. Taylor found a unique way to give his creative juices a hearty stir. He wrote the new material from the perspective of fictional teenager Michael Crow, whose experience and perspective echoed those of Taylor’s younger self. Jump for Joy, then, is something of a concept album, albeit a loose one, more by feel than plot line. The feel in question is pretty irresistible. Recorded over a productive two weeks, the album is filled with crystalline pop songs that draw on a variety of styles. Every genre and subgenre that feeds the broad category of Americana is present, but Taylor and company also manage to introduce some Prince Lite–style funk, as on “I Saw the New Day in the World.” The kindred acts are mostly more expected: “The Wondering” has a War on Drugs groove, “Shinbone” sounds like a slicker Strand of Oaks, and the title cut is a nifty shuffle that recalls latter-day Bob Dylan when he’s in a friskier mood. In general, there’s an easygoing exuberance to the project, exemplified by single “NuGrape,” named after the Southern soda pop. Keep up the joyful jumping with the following cuts: “20 Years and a Nickel,” “Jesus Is Bored,” “California King,” and “Sunset on the Faders.”