THE BLACK KEYS Ohio Players (Nonesuch) — The Black Keys have been putting out albums at a steady clip of late, and they have spent most of their twenty-plus recording career operating with an in-the-pocket certainty when plying their updated blues-inspired rock ‘n’ roll. It makes sense that they’d want to occasionally skid their zipping slot car over to a different track, looking to outside collaborators to help them do exactly that. On Ohio Players, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney enlist loads of unexpected helpers, most notably Dan the Automator as a coproducer and Beck as a generously deployed co-songwriter and performer. Can the spirit of creative collectivism go too far? “Paper Crown” is so thoroughly given over to Beck’s sensibility that it’s almost like the Black Keys are guesting on one of Mr. Hansen’s records. Even so, the Black Keys’ genes are strong enough to keep asserting themselves, as on the flinty, funky “Beautiful People (Stay High)” and their cover of “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” which wrenches William Bell’s vintage soul tune back from Billy Idol’s post-glam posturing. Always beholden to their influences, the duo signals more range in their duly tithed antecedents on Ohio Players. There’s the John Lennon devotion of “On the Game” and the Dick Dale–style riffing on “Read Em and Weep,” which comes across like the main theme to a spy film helmed by Quentin Tarantino. Really, the Black Keys have been willing to go far afield of expectations before — “Candy and Her Friends,” with Lil Noid chipping in some rapped verses, recalls their hip hop collaborations under the guise of BlakRoc — but they always boomerang back to the R&B at their core. The experimentation works because the control group is dependable. Give some play to “This Is Nowhere,” “Only Love Matters,” “Please Me (Till I’m Satisfied),” and “Fever Tree.”

VAMPIRE WEEKEND Only God Was Above Us (Columbia) — On their startling new album Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend seem to be in a perpetual state of discovery. Always fussy and precise in dabbing up their sonic palette — take those descriptors with only positive connotations, please — the band expands their boundaries while still operating with the laser focus of a precociously ingenious high schooler determined to get a perfect score on the SAT. The lyrics, largely penned by frontman Ezra Koenig, are gingerly erudite, flashing an intricacy that somehow avoids pretension. With those creative feeders, every last track is an adventure. There are the wild tempo swerves of “Ice Cream Piano” and the casual drama found on “Capricorn.” Often on Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend are preoccupied with finding out how richly dazzling they can get while retaining the hermitically sealed spareness that had been their main mode from the jump. The squanching, headlong “Gen-X Cops” and the lightly massive album closer “Hope” exemplify this deliriously discombobulating quality. Vampire Weekend always run the risk of getting lost in their own falderal. They were in that very existential morass on their previous release, Father of the Bride. The new album proves definitively that such danger can be avoided when the keen eyes and ears are gauging the aural path to travel. Only God Was Above Us is so deft and inspired that it makes it seem that there are no pitfalls at all to the Vampire Weekend approach. Go beyond the already noted tracks with “Classical,” “Prep-School Gangsters,” “Mary Boone,” and “Pravda.”