SLOWDIVE Everything Is Alive (Dead Oceans) — Like a lot of folks, the members of Slowdive have come through a tough couple of years. There were the usual lockdown woes to be sure. They also faced down the deaths of loved ones and reckoned with substance abuse issues. Given the drone built right into their sound, it would be wholly understandable if Everything Is Alive, their new album and first since their unexpected and triumphant return in 2017, turned out to be a dour affair. That’s not the case. The album swells, shines, and shimmers, implicitly arguing that music doesn’t have to involve howling at the heavens to be cathartic. Sure, “Andalucia Plays” rivals Nick Cave in the realm of the stately and forlorn, but the material is more often richly transportive. “Shanty” opens the album in casually epic fashion, and “Skin in the Game” is like floating on a sandpaper cloud. Just as in their heyday, Slowdive invites and rewards an immersive listening experience. Settle in and they’ll take you with them as they fly. Sometimes escaping the dark clouds means soaring above them. Embrace Everything further with “Prayer Remembered,” “Chained to a Cloud,” and “The Slab.”

PRETENDERS Relentless (Parlophone) — All our aging rockers deal with their advancing years in different ways. Not everyone is as perfectly poised as Bob Dylan to slip right into roughly squawked ruminating on mortality. It’s a little jarring to hear Chrissie Hynde, on “Losing My Sense of Taste,” sing, “I must be going/ Through a metamorphosis/ Pre-senile dementia/ Or some kind of psychosis/ I don’t even care about rock and roll.” She goes on to detail all manner of physical and identity collapse, all of which is understandable enough for someone who recently ticked into her seventies. Luckily, the whole of Relentless, the album that the cut opens, provides a compelling counterargument to Hynde’s claims of decrepitude (as does the lead single, “Let the Sun Come In,” which declares “They even say that we must die/ I don’t believe it, that’s a lie”). It’s been quite time since Pretenders sounded quite as vital as they do here. If the material remains miles away from the classics at the dawn of the band’s career, well, most acts are going to fall short of that mark. Using more reasonable yardsticks, Relentless is a fine, sturdy rock record, occasionally recalling the easygoing musical muscularity of Tom Petty, with and without the Heartbreakers. As usual, Hynde can go leather tough (“Vainglorious”) or touchingly tender (“The Copa”) with equal ease. If the lyrics are to be believed, Hynde might be wavering in her affection for rock and roll, but she and her cohorts are giving everyone else reason to believe. In addition to those mentioned, check out the title cut, “The Promise of a Love,” “Just let Go,” and “I Think About You Daily” (which features characteristically striking orchestrations by Jonny Greenwood).