KNITTING Souvenir (Mint) — There’s a slacker wonderment to Souvenir, the sophomore full-length from the Montreal band knitting. It’s not solely that the album is like a tour through the sonic subconscious of a Gen X record store rat, though that’s certainly a big part of it. Why, a track such as “I Want to Remember Everything” could have anchored a really nice late-night set on a nineteen-nineties alternative rock radio station. The main driver of the lowkey drifty sensation is the way the band — frontperson Mischa Dempsey, bassist Piper Curtis, drummer Andy Mulcair, and guitarist and engineer Sarah Harris — move through a range of related indie subgenres with a measured satisfaction that they have the sterling ability to play them all. Whether the dream pop of “Photocopy” or the intricate, goth-adjacent dirge “Exit Desire,” it all belongs to them and no one has the authority to bar the gates. The confidence doesn’t mean the band casts aside vulnerability in the songwriting. The riveting “I Wasn’t Fully Cooked” addresses anxiety Dempsey felt over not being completely open about being a trans/non-binary person. In so many ways, Souvenir speaks the totality of experience. Make precious memories out of these tracks: “Sunrise,” “Shuffle,” and “Sequel.”

JACK WHITE Frozen Charlotte (Third Man) — Jack White is locked in. Following the fierce return to form on the 2024 album No Name, most students of this particular rock ‘n’ roll raconteur probably expected one of his patented pivots. Not this time. White made his new album, Frozen Charlotte, with the same backing band that scorched through its predecessor, the first time he’s opted for an immediate personnel encore across seven solo outings. Accordingly, the baker’s dozen tracks found here rip and roar in a way that echoes the exemplary No Name. The album opens with the one-two punch of “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs” and “Derecho Demonico,” the surprise songs White dropped to coincide with his Saturday Night Live appearance in the spring. That placement emphasizes those tunes as the warning shot for the full fury that follows. “There’s Nobody There” has a thudding riff and icy swagger that’s not so far removed from what Aerosmith might have unleashed way back when they were still hungry, and “She’s in a Frenzy” is so tight and tough that it’s like jabs from a shiv. He delivers the raw and thunderous “Raising the Grain,” the blistering blues of “Dollar Bill,” and the casually epic and viciously squawky “Neighbors Blues” with old-hand certainty. In addition to those already mentioned, check these cool cuts: “You’ll Never Fix Me,” “Thick As Thieves,” and “All Alone Again.”