SHAME Cutthroat (Dead Oceans) — The English band Shame raise a proper ruckus on their new album, Cutthroat. The group’s fourth studio full-length is a bruising, boisterous rock record that takes off from post-punk and leaves plenty of scorch marks on the launchpad on its way to rocketing across all manner of sounds. “Quiet Life” has some countrified romping, like Green on Red after they took a few lessons from Built to Spill, and “Nothing Better” rubs elbows with Turnstile and their experiments with melding punk and radical pop. The latter variant gets an yet wilder and more jarring expansion on the snyth-driven album closer “Axis of Evil.” Lest all that make it seem like the album is prone to over fussy mucking about, it should be put forth that Shame is primarily dedicated to being rough and noisy. Producer John Congleton gives the band a clean sonic platform to pummel away, whether on the driving title cut or with the hooligan panache of “Spartak.” On “To and Fro” vocalist Charlie Steen barks, “And I don’t need to be clever to see what’s going on/ I ain’t got a good voice but it don’t mean I don’t mean/ What I say in a song.” It’s an understandable corrective to offer, but it’s also unnecessary. No one listening to Cutthroat could possible doubt that Shame means every word, every note, every damn bit of it. These tracks go for the jugular: “Cowards Around,” “Lampião,” “Screwdriver,” and “Packshot.”

DAVID BYRNE Who Is the Sky? (Matador) — It’s been quite a stretch of revival for David Byrne. Although he’d hardly fallen out of favor before it, his last studio album, American Utopia, and the associated Broadway production and Spike Lee–directed concert film brought Byrne back to a level of high reverence that he hadn’t really experience since the heyday of Talking Heads coincided with ambitious theatrical collaborations and cinematic efforts. The adoring attention that met the rerelease of Stop Making Sense only fortified Byrne’s status as an art rock icon. For his new album, Who Is the Sky?, Byrne feels comfy locking into more of a screw-around mode. Despite slick production by Kid Harpoon and bright, bustling accompaniment from the New York ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra, this release finds Byrne flitting out ideas with the unbothered ease of someone who thinks every notion is worth sharing, because why not. The sweetly meandering “She Explains Things to Me” (“She explains what is happening in the movies we watch/ I ask, ‘Why did they do that? Why did they stop?'”) has a kinship with Jonathan Richman’s charmingly offbeat musings. That’s the prevailing vibe, whether Byrne is celebrating broad cheer (“Everybody Laughs”) or pleasing solitude (“My Apartment Is My Friend”). What could have been light noodling is instead creatively restless, as heard in the exploratory textures of “The Avant Garde.” Byrne even recruits Hayley Williams to duet on “What Is the Reason for It?” If not everything on the album works, Byrne’s spirit is so buoyant that it’s difficult to get to churlish about the uneven bits. Who Is the Sky? is an album of pure play. Seek answers with these tracks: “Don’t Be Like That,” “Moisturizing Thing” and “The Truth.”