“Converse Now,” from 2010, was Taylor Swift’s third album, and it’s now the third to be rereleased as a rerecorded “Taylor’s Model.” However all alongside, the album was a declaration of independence: It was the primary she wrote fully on her personal, as a rebuttal to critics — maybe just like the one she cuts down on the sugary, spicy “Imply” — who steered that Swift’s co-writers had an even bigger hand in her earlier successes than she’d let on. “Converse Now” stays considered one of Swift’s greatest and most sharply penned albums: The road “You made a insurgent of a careless man’s cautious daughter,” from the refrain of the nice opening observe “Mine,” is commonly held up for example of Swift’s lyricism at its most expertly concise.

However “Converse Now” is an album of excesses, too; a few of them are superb — just like the epic kiss-off “Pricey John” or the romantic grandiosity of “Enchanted” — and a few of them are the genuine artifacts of a 19-year-old’s considerably myopic sensibility. “Imply,” which punches down, is responsible of that, and so is the acidic rocker “Higher Than Revenge,” which has essentially the most considerably revised lyrics in a “Taylor’s Model.” “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches,” Swift sings on this 2023 replace, a clumsier and fewer direct lyric than the unique: “She’s higher identified for the issues that she does on the mattress.” The change is unlucky, and maybe the start of a slippery slope of self-editing. The earlier lyric was sanctimonious and nasty, sure, but it surely was additionally a historic doc of Swift’s viewpoint at 19, and that of many younger ladies who, being raised in a misogynistic society, are taught accountable the opposite lady earlier than they learn to curse “the patriarchy.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ

First Support Package is a duo of Swedish sisters, Johanna and Klara Söderberg, whose vocal harmonies are so excellent they will appear unreal. They’ve totally studied Seventies Laurel Canyon folk-pop, with its gleaming, exactly blended electrical and acoustic guitars. “All people’s Bought to Study,” from the expanded model of the 2022 album “Palomino,” feels like parental recommendation from Fleetwood Mac. Over earnest folk-rock guitars and what grows right into a hefty girl-group beat, the music displays on the missteps that result in maturity — “The blues and the bliss/you’ll hit and also you’ll miss” — and guarantees, “You’re gonna see this via.” JON PARELES

Prince, ‘All a Share Collectively Now’

The most recent discover from Prince’s vault is “All a Share Collectively Now,” a music he recorded in 2006 however by no means launched in any type. Prince sings about generational duties — “the debt of those earlier than us have to be paid” — in a taut, bare-bones funk exercise constructed round a jumpy bass riff. Dwell drums kick the beat round and a note-bending guitar teases out terse licks which can be concurrently lead and rhythm. It’s a homily disguised as a jam. PARELES

Rauw Alejandro’s new album, “Playa Saturno,” eases again on the digital experiments of his 2022 album, “Saturno,” in favor of earthy, party-ready reggaeton. However in “Cuando Baje el Sol” (“When the Solar Goes Down”), Alejandro and his fellow producers complicate the reggaeton thump with loads of spatial and sonic mischief. Sampled and warped vocals, echoey synthesizers, turntable scratching and eruptive percussion all ricochet round his guarantees of sizzling occasions after sundown. PARELES

Kaisa’s Machine, ‘Gravity’

Is “Taking Form” — the most recent album by the bassist Kaisa Mäensivu and her quintet, Kaisa’s Machine — a journal, or a workbook? Authentic tunes like “Shadow Thoughts” (a listless ballad) and “Eat Dessert First” (the LP’s keen, clattery last observe) bespeak a confessional urge, however they will’t assist spotlighting Mäensivu’s conservatory chops and wily compositional ways. When wizardry takes the wheel — particularly in jazz, and particularly immediately — the voice beneath it may possibly find yourself muffled within the trunk. Mäensivu deserves credit score for searching for a wholesome stability. “Gravity” is the album’s solely observe with out a piano, slimming down this band of younger aces to only bass, drums, guitar and vibraphone. Shifting at a quick, nine-beat clip, Mäensivu’s bass line squares up firmly in a minor key, easing you into an area of feeling earlier than the tune’s harmonic middle begins shifting round. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Anohni and the Johnsons, ‘Why Am I Alive Now?’

The title is a plain-spoken survivor’s lament, ostensibly about dwelling via a time of environmental collapse: “I don’t need to be witness,” Anohni wails, “seeing all of this duress, aching of our world.” However throughout the context of Anohni and the Johnsons’ piercing new album “My Again Was a Bridge for You to Cross” — which contains a picture of the band’s namesake, the homosexual activist Marsha P. Johnson, on its cowl — that query can be haunted by the ghosts of the queer neighborhood. By the tip of this unfastened, mournful soul music, Anohni finds a hopeful reply to that titular inquiry: She’s right here to inform these tales, to attract consideration to those causes, to sing this music. ZOLADZ

Little Dragon that includes Damon Albarn, ‘Glow’

Surrounded by swirling, twinkling, glimmering arpeggios, Little Dragon’s Yuki Nagano sings about sheer rapture: “Glowing in the dead of night to search out streams of stars to style.” Halfway via, and inexplicably, Damon Albarn arrives from a special, bummed-out dimension, with apologies for being “Beneath the spell of the eyes that paralyze.” Having offered somewhat ballast, he vanishes in a obtain spiral and Nagano returns, nonetheless glowing and totally unperturbed. PARELES

Fito Páez that includes Mon Laferte, ‘Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba’

Fito Páez, Argentina’s most celebrated — and perpetually eccentric — rocker, determined to remake all of the songs on his definitive 1992 album, “El Amor Después el Amor” (“Love After Love”), three a long time later for the album “EADDA9223,” joined by duet companions together with Elvis Costello, Nathy Peluso and Marisa Monte. “Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba” — a story of ardour and crime — used busy disco-funk guitar again in 1992. However the brand new model — buying and selling vocals with the dynamic, torchy Chilean belter Mon Laferte — uncovers the retro bolero underlying the music. With reverb-laden guitar and a trumpet obbligato, Páez and Laferte revel within the drama collectively. PARELES

Tkay Maidza & Flume, ‘Silent Murderer’

The Australian digital music producer Flume normally juxtaposes bouncy, consonant chords with somewhat noise. However the observe he dropped at the Australian rapper Tkay Maidza is pure irritation: buzzes, distortion, wavery tones, a drone that bristles with dissonance. Maidza tops it with a speedy, shifty, percussive boast, racing via traces like “I’m a jigsaw, not a fast repair” and “I’m tactical, no attachments/I’m doing it for the eagerness.” From any angle, it’s combative. PARELES

PJ Harvey, ‘Lwonesome Tonight’

Polly Jean Harvey meticulously constructed a story, a sound and a language — primarily based on the native dialect in Dorset, the place she grew up — for “I Contained in the Previous World Dying,” her first album since 2016. The music is folky however fringed with electronics; her vocals are excessive and eerie, practically disembodied. In “Lwonesome Tonight,” she sings about encountering a mystically charismatic determine: “Are you Elvis? Are you God?/Jesus despatched you, win my belief,” she sings, and on the finish she’s left questioning: “My love, will you come again once more?” PARELES

Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band, ‘God Be With You’

Over the previous quarter-century, Brian Blade’s Fellowship has come to really feel extra like a brotherhood than an ensemble, accruing a repertoire of unique music that can stand the check of time together with an unmistakable sound: a mixture of nation, jazz and gospel that exudes a sense of choral heat, regardless of not utilizing any vocals. However past that, they’ve stood up in opposition to (and mainly outlived) a couple of insidious developments in jazz: When so many superb improvisers appeared be reconciling themselves to a future the place the viewers may change into an afterthought, Blade and Fellowship had no time for that. The group’s fifth album, “Kings Freeway,” begins with “Till We Meet Once more,” a slowly seductive Blade unique that makes reference to a William G. Tomer hymn; it ends with “God Be With You,” a brief and chic rendition of the Tomer piece itself. We are able to solely hope that these valedictory titles aren’t telling us one thing about Fellowship’s future. RUSSONELLO