SAYA GRAY SAYA (Dirty Hit). Canadian iconoclast Saya Gray is probably incapable of making a conventional-sounding album, and that is a truly wonderful thing. SAYA, her second full-length (though there’s some indication that Gray thinks of it as her proper debut), has some of the contours of a breakup album. Gray has been clear that she was nursing heartbreak when she made it, and there are signs of all the right emotions — bitterness, sorrow, loneliness — strewn about the steely yet elusive lyrics. What she creates in the thrall of those feelings, though, is about as far away from a troubadour’s collection of sad, somber songs as music can get. Like the dual patron saints of enticing oddity, Kate Bush and Björk, Gray is resoundingly unique while still demonstrating sterling, familiar pop craft. Comparisons spring to mind, but they come corkscrewing in through a side door: “SHELL ( OF A MAN )” is like some wild hybrid of Haim and the White Stripes when they’re in acoustic rascal mode, and “PUDDLE ( OF ME )” suggests Joni Mitchell as a techno deconstructionist. It really is the intricacy and force of the individual tracks that makes SAYA resound. “EXHAUST THE TOPIC” reminiscent of PJ Harvey circa To Bring You My Love but weirder, and “10 WAYS TO LOSE A CROWN” so tender and intimate it feels like an idea that lilted into songs form as if by sorcery. let others be conventional; Gray works wonders outside the norm. In addition to the cuts already mentioned, puzzle out the following: “..THUS IS WHY ( I DON’T SPRING 4 LOVE ),” “HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP UP A LIE?,” “H.B.W.,” and “LIE DOWN..”

MIYA FOLICK Erotica Veronica (Nettwerk) — Miya Folick digs into the dirt on the cover of her third studio album, Erotica Veronica, and therein lies a perfectly apt metaphor. Across her recorded output, Folick has shown a remarkable — and maybe lightly alarming — willingness to expose her inner being. Plenty of people exposes themselves through their personal pop tunes, of course, but Folick is surely one of the standard bearers for hummable confessions. The new album is produced with a light lushness that invites the listener in to embrace the emotionality of what she’s conveying and sometimes to marvel and the artfully discordant tones. “La Da Da” is triumphantly downbeat as Folick intones lyrics such as “There’s a fictional relationship/ We think too much about,” and “Felicity” includes probably the sweetest imaginable reading of the line “Punch me in the viscera, I can take it.” Folick sometimes approaches some exalted contemporaries. “This Time Around” adds a warble to her voice and the hint of twang, giving the cut the feel of a more pop-friendly Adrianne Lenker, and “Light Through the Linen” recalls the elegant airiness of Laura Marling. Much as Folick often seems to be pulling back, she can also go big, as on the ravishingly epic “Love Wants Me Dead.” There might be dirt under Folick’s fingernails, but she somehow remains pristine. Get seduced by these tracks: “Erotica,” “Prism of Light,” and “Hypergiant.”