KACEY MUSGRAVES – Deeper Well (Interscope/MCA Nashville) — If Golden Hour was the album about falling in love and its follow-up, Star-Crossed, was the divorce album, then Deeper Well, the latest from Kacey Musgraves, is the one about growing up enough to endure those emotional pendulum swings. Appropriately, the title cut comes across as a State of the Kacey address, complete with the startling news that she now forgoes the hazy pastime that famously made her the Cheech and/or Chong of the MCA Nashville set: “So I’m gettin’ rid of the habits that I feel/ Are real good at wastin’ my time/ No regrets, baby, I just think that maybe/ It’s natural when things lose their shine.” The process of settling down leads Musgraves back to her roots. With rare exceptions — the anxious swirl that invades “Anime Eyes,” for example — Deeper Well doesn’t have much of the pop experimentation that set its recent predecessors to glimmering. Working with regular collaborators Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, Musgraves is cozily huddling in the safety of her country roots. It’s not purely a back to basics affair, though. Musgraves still shows plenty of range, looping her lasso around other genres that are mightily influenced by her cohorts in the twangier contingent. There’s a tang of Suzanne Vega’s folks rock of the nineteen-eighties in “Cardinal” and almost a Jonathan Richman shimmy to “Heart of the Woods.” It turns out that maturity and wounded wisdom can sound pretty good. Go deeper into Deeper with the following cuts: “Too Good to Be True,” “Dinner with Friends,” “The Architect,” and “Nothing to Be Scared Of.”

ELBOW Audio Vertigo (Polydor) — Ten albums and around twenty-five years deep, Elbow still makes music with a uniquely vibrant panache. A little theatrical and luxuriant, the material the Manchester band delivers on their new album, Audio Vertigo, is imbued with a delightful liveliness. Signs of creative spirits bursting out are all over the album, notably in the moments when the band bears a resemblance to some of the greatest showmen in the history of rock music: “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years” suggests David Bowie’s swagger after a soak in a barbiturate bath, and “Her to the Earth” is reminiscent of Peter Gabriel. Of course, Elbow’s veteran status means they don’t really need to sound like anyone other than themselves to earn some attention. No one else is likely to come up with the soaring, burbling “Lovers’ Leap” or the headlong “The Picture” (“There’s no love for me on this train/ There’s no cocaine in this cocaine”), and it’s a fine happenstance that Elbow is still doing their thing with such scintillating style. In addition to the tracks already mentioned, give in to the dizzying delights of “Balu,” “Poker Face,” and “Good Blood Mexico City.”