LILY SEABIRD Lightspheres on Their Way (Lame-O) — Lily Seabird just keeps churning out rich, verbose songs. Lightspheres on Their Way is the Vermont performer’s third album in as many years, those new full-length releases arriving with the dependability of a metronome. All the fine new additions to Seabird’s songbook found on this latest effort are dense. They’re driven by stealthily cool melodies and lyrics that pack novels into every stanza. On “Bindlestiff,” which is like early Lucinda Williams when she often tilted a little more country, Seabird is expresses her ideas with rousing complexity: “Time’s an interval strange and contradictory, how we keep it’s never made too much sense to me but/ Five years come and five years passed, you can spend a lifetime just trying to get a year back.” The words command attention, and Seabird crafts compelling music to merge with it. “Election Day” sounds like Letters to Cleo borrowed Crazy Horse from Neil Young for a spell, and “The Afterglow” is evocative acoustic pop that puts Seabird in conversation with the likes of Julia Jacklin and Squirrel Flower. The relatively spare production and instrumentation could lead to an album that sounds small. Instead, Seabird manages big sounds without sacrificing intimacy. The casually epic “Portal to the Past” is proof of that. Seabird soars. Wait no longer to check out these tracks: “The Pulley,” “Slipswitch,” and the the title cut.

THIS IS LORELEI – The Singer in My Band (Matador) — The fine folks at Matador Records probably expected they wouldn’t need to wait too awful long to get new music from Nate Amos after signing him to a deal. Around already prolific work with the band Water from Your Eyes, Amos already demonstrated the ability to produce lots more songs under the solo guise This Is Lorelei. According to Amos, not even a half hour passed between him inking the contract and putting a completed album in the new bosses’ hands. He’d recorded the album, The Singer in My Band, at his home studio in anticipation of the new professional partnership. The material suggests Amos was serious about giving his all for the label. The craft is formidable enough to evoke some storied songwriters: “Watching Heaven Fall” mirrors Jeff Tweedy’s skill at catchy cleverness that sounds easy as can be, and “And I Haven’t Seen My Love in Quite a While” is like something that might show up deep onto a Magnetic Fields record, when Stephin Merritt is ready to flash some brilliant simplicity. Amos brings gleaming pop-rock on “I Will Eat My Heart in the Morning Light,” lithesome folk on “Hey Sarah Is It Gonna Rain Forever,” and a honky-tonk bounce with the title track. Like the name of the project itself, This Is Lorelei is making an announcement. This is the list of additional tracks worthy of attention: “Billy Came Back,” “Sailing (Your Baby’s Down),” and “The Kid with a Crown.”