JAWDROPPED Secret to Spare (Transgressive Records / Canvasback) — The debut album from the Los Angeles band Jawdropped has the sense of newness and discovery that is the common quality of a band’s first proper outing. At the same time, it has a lived-in assurance that speaks to the accumulated experience of the band members, all of them well-traveled veterans of their local music scene before coming together in this quartet. Secret to Spare is a splendid collection of power pop spiked with sounds from all over the alternative landscape. There’s definitely a strong borrowing from revered ancestors; “High Beams” has a Hüsker Dü punch, and “Cup” is not far from vintage Teenage Fanclub. The songwriting across the album is strong, and the group shows a particular talent for clever contradiction, as when the sunny sound comes up against rueful lyrics on “Split Lip”: “”Cut off, waiting to state your piece/ You get dragged down ’til you’re on your knees/ And it’s fucked up, but that’s how it is/ You’re beginning to live with it.” There’s pleasure to be found in the punchiness of “Monday,” the delicacy of the acoustic guitar ballad “Two,” and every inspired tone in between. Spare some time for the following tracks: “The Line,” “Cellulite,” “Smoglight,” and “Whiplash.”

JULIA JACKLIN The Gem (4AD) — Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin named her fourth album, The Gem, after a Melbourne-area pub. The watering hole was a floor below the studio where the new release was recorded, and Jacklin and her cohorts reportedly frequented it plenty. Appropriately, the material on the album feels like confidential conversations had in dusky hours at the corner of a bar. Consider the unguarded expressions of sadness on the rich and forlorn “The Hardest Thing” (“The hardest thing to do/ Is believe it when you say, ‘I love you'”) to get an idea of how intimate Jacklin is willing to get. Jacklin experiments with different sonic textures, such as the disco beat up that underlies dreamy vocals and wispy melody on “Real Life,” but she mainly locks into a neo-folk zone that puts her in conversation with Beth Orton. Indeed, the artfully layered “Brand New” would be entirely out of place on Central Reservation, Orton’s most unassailable masterpiece. Jacklin knows her way around a tender ballad (“Angel Vision”), a jaunty pop tune (“Get Away From Me (I’ll Love You Soon)”), and vintage folk rock (“I Wish”). The Gem earns her a round on the house. Admire these jewels: “God Sometimes,” “You Turned on the Tap,” and “Walk On Me.”