JACK WHITE No Name (Third Man) — The opening track from Jack White’s new album, dubbed No Name, is like a clanging dinner bell meant to call home the formerly faithful who wandered away after his recent solo records drifted towards insular experimentation. Even the song’s title, “Old Scratch Blues,” is a promise of back-to-basic, greasy-guitar fury. Those who return to the fold are not likely to be disappointed, which is probably why White felt confident with the marketing gimmick of announcing the album by secretively slipping copies into the bags of customers at the Third Man record store. Unlike U2’s Songs of Innocence popping up in undefended iTunes accounts like a pussy zit, White’s outing is a proper return to form and a keeper. There’s purity to the proceedings here, whether the thunderous, psychedelia-tinged “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking)” or the charging “Tonight (Was a Long Time Ago).” “Archbishop Harold Holmes” finds White putting on the guise of a intense preacher (“And if you are suffering a strange sickness/ Or someone is blocking up all of your success/ You need to see me right away so I can fix this!”), which means he’s in his rascally showman mode familiar from the scrappiest moments of the White Stripes. This album arguably looks back to those foundational efforts with Meg White by his side more than anything he’s made since the duo called it quits. And when White couples the offhand spectacle of the Doors with the pummeling assault of Iron Butterly on “Bombing Out,” he asserts himself as one of the few artists endeavoring to keep true classic rock alive. Bless him for that. In addition to the cuts already mentioned, call these by their name: “That’s How I’m Feeling,” “What’s the Rumpus?,” “Morning at Midnight,” and “Terminal Archenemy Endling.”

MAGDALENA BAY Imaginal Disk (Mom+Pop) — The duo Magdalena Bay go concept album on their sophomore release. Not content to make oddball pop for its own sake, Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin build their latest set of songs around the story of a character named True Blue who seeks a shortcut to personal identity building by having a space alien shove the equivalent of a fully loaded CD-ROM into her noggin. If that strays a little further into Janelle Monáe-style fever-dream science fiction than matches an individual listener’s taste, it should be noted that the tracks on Imaginal Disk are inventive enough to command attention without the consultation of the fictional world’s map or the annotations that are cropping up online. Knowing the backstory might make a little more sense of the “Image” lyrics “But oh, my God/ Twenty-two more minutes/ Oh, so hot/ Meet your brand new image,” but outside reading required to take pleasure from the groove of its cascading disco. The shape-shifting songs mirror the character’s imperfect quest to settle on a single, true self. At times, as on “Watching T.V.,” the basic genre of the song in unsettled enough that it feels likes it’s warping between realities. Still, it’s definitely a modern pop landscape Magdalena Bay wanders. “Death & Romance” is like Carly Rae Jepsen as produced by the Avalanches, and “That’s My Floor” suggests what might have come of ABBA trying on a goth band guise. Keep hunting for who Magdalena Bay are with the following cuts: “She Looked Like Me!,” “Tunnel Vision,” and “Angel on a Satellite.”