THEON CROSS Affirmations (Live at Blue Note New York) (New Soil/Division 81) — Midway through the live set captured on Theon Cross’s new album, he addresses the audience and expresses hope that he hasn’t disrupted their evening “with raucousness.” Delivered with a touch of charming sheepishness, the concern is a reasonable one for the Londoner jazz player to offer up. Fronting a quartet that includes guitar player Nikos Ziarkas (a regular collaborator), saxophonist Isaiah Collier, and drummer James Russell Sims, plays his tuba like he believes its can peel back a couple layers of reality. Consider the gnarled, feverish “Radiation,” where the whole group pushes themselves into distortion and Cross leads the way like he’s swinging a sonic battering ram. Then there’s the soaring “Transcending,” featuring Hendrix-y jams as transformed by draining them through jazz kaleidoscopes as merely the opening salvo to other beautifully wild explorations. The music is consistently fierce, whether in the insistent, repetitive lines of “We Go Again” or Cross’s evident determination to see how many different sounds and rhythms as he can conjure more or less by himself in a couple minutes on “Here and Now.” At the end of Affirmations (Live at Blue Note New York), Cross tells the audience, “For me, it really is a dream come true to play on such a famous, legendary venue where so many amazing musicians have played.” Cross isn’t merely a follower of those amazing musicians; he belongs in their number. Say yes to the following cuts: “Greetings,” “Affirmations,” and “Cadence of Meroe.”

BILLIE MARTEN Dog Eared (Fiction) — Billie Marten approached Dog Eared, her fifth studio album, with an interest into digging into her own history. Specifically, Marten concentrated her songwriting on thought of childhood, considered how the warm, poignant, troubled, and uncertain memories felt when measured through the perceptive abilities that comes with wiser adulthood. When, on “Clover,” Marten sings, “Don’t push me over/ I’m half your size,” she’s being literal. The British indie folk artist also longed for a more collaborative experience than is the norm for artists who ply their trade with a lilting voice and a strummed guitar. She brought musicians into the studio and worked with them to feel her way through arrangements, with producer Philip Weinrobe favoring live takes and encourage all assembled to really listen to one another as they played and shift and swerve accordingly. As a result, there’s a tonal fullness to the album. “Leap Year” is rich and seductive, recalling the work of Maggie Rogers, “Goodnight Moon” has some of the cool elegance of the Blue Nile, and “Swing” has a hoedown force. Marten might be looking backwards, but, as always, she’s insistently moving forward. In addition to those already mentioned, bookmark the following tracks: “Crown,” “No Sudden Changes,” and “Planets.”