CASSANDRA JENKINS My Light, My Destroyer (Dead Oceans) — Like a laudable short story, novel, or film, My Light, My Destroyer has a fantastic beginning that sets the tone for all that follows. The first words Cassandra Jenkins sings on the opening track “Devotion” are “I think you’ve mistaken/ My desperation/ For devotion.” Everything the listener needs to know about the sullen defiance that will follow in contained in that refrain. Even when Jenkins tilts towards sentiments that might reasonably be called hopeful, the foundational feel sits somewhere between melancholy and morose. Jenkins’s third album is also her first for Dead Oceans, and it bears some resemblance to the breakthrough efforts of her new labelmate Mitski. The songs here are orchestrally intricate and spare, accentuating the elegance of the melodies and the piercing truths of the lyrics. The songs often get their walloping power from Jenkins burrowing into the details of mundane situations. “Aurora, IL” tells of Jenkins being left behind in a Midwestern city when she came down with an illness on tour (“The bus left this morning/ Thеy took my name off the marquee/ How long can I stare at thе ceiling/ Before it kills me?”) and “Petco” uniquely captures an unmoored sense of isolation through recounting chain store wandering (“It’s become my second nature/ To wander through the pet store/ And stare into the sideways gaze of a lizard/ Doesn’t always make me feel better/ Just less alone”). On the diverting “Betelgeuse,” Jenkins finds a different level of purity by building the song around audio of her mother, a science teacher, talking about the stars. Music this compelling and real doesn’t come easy. At one point, Jenkins discarded an earlier take at the album and started again. My Light, My Destroyer is a helluva do-over. In addition to the cuts mentioned, bask in the light of “Clams Casino,” “Delphinium Blue,” “Omakase,” and “Tape and Tissue.”

LOS CAMPESINOS! All Hell (Heart Swells) — It’s been seven years since the last full-length from the Welsh band Los Campesinos! Even when they finally got down to the business of recording their seventh studio LP, All Hell, there was still a decided lack of urgency. According to frontman Gareth Paisey, the band recorded the album across multiple sessions than spanned six months or so, and they never felt like they had a deadline to hit. If the band lost some of the agitated intensity that enlivened their earlier work, they make up for it in the gleaming confidence found across these fifteen tracks. Los Campesinos! know how to express their unique creative voice. Paisey’s lyrics tend toward bleak comedy, and the music written by guitarist Tom Bromley finds slyly inventive ways to stretch the boundaries of raucous indie rock. Sure, “Feast of Tongues” takes up residence on the plot of land between Modest Mouse and Passion Pit that Los Campesinos! has long called home, but there are other wild ventures. “Long Throes” like Of Montreal if they’d been toughened up by a couple gut-punch existential crises, and “Clown Blood; or, Orpheus Bobbing Head” slides up to nu metal and gives it an impish lick. It’s exciting to hear a band so happily in command, whether on the churlish, headlong “Holy Smoke (2005)” or the tightly controlled cacophony of “A Psychic Wound.” All Hell is time well spent. Try out these Hell‘s belles: “The Coin-Op Guillotine,” “The Order of the Seasons,” “kms” (with lead vocals by Kim Paisey), and “0898 HEARTACHE.”