Double invoice problem: write a track with the act sharing the tour to show compatibility. Beck and the French electro-pop band Phoenix, who will hit the highway collectively this summer season, have accomplished simply that. Their collaboration, “Odyssey,” finds frequent floor in synthesizer-centered Eighties pop, particularly Speaking Heads’ 1980 “As soon as in a Lifetime” plus quite a lot of marimba or xylophone overdubs. Homer’s “Odyssey” was an extended, brutal journey dwelling. This “Odyssey” is way more comfy. JON PARELES

“If the person says that he needs you in his life without end — run!” That’s what the English songwriter Maisie Peters advises after a relationship with somebody who was “too good to be true.” It’s a brisk, beat-driven battle-of-the-sexes track that could possibly be a slogan. PARELES

Aphex Twin, ‘Blackbox Life Recorder 21f’

Brooding synthesizer chords and reliable however ever-shifting drumbeats run via Aphex Twin’s first official launch in 5 years, the inscrutably titled (as common) “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f,” from an EP due July 28. Melodically, the observe is a dirge, however till the rhythm drops away on the finish, the percussion is there to occasion irrespective of how grim the environment. PARELES

Jaimie Department, ‘Take Over the World’

The trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Department, who was 39 when she died final yr, left behind raucous, defiant recordings that might be launched in August as a posthumous album, “Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World Warfare)).” Department determinedly fused jazz, electronics and punk spirit, and in “Take Over the World” she begins out chanting “Gonna gonna take over the world/and provides it back-back-back-back to the l-l-land,” whooping up excessive as she’s joined by pummeling, New Orleans-flavored drums and rhythmically droning cello and bass. She performs a taunting, growling trumpet solo; she places her vocals via an digital warp. Her fury gathers a fierce, joyful momentum. PARELES

“We broke up on Independence Day, crying whereas the subsequent door neighbors raged,” El Kempner begins on this single from indie-rockers Palehound’s forthcoming album “Eye on the Bat,” atop a chord development that chugs wearily, like Wilco’s “Kamera.” That memorable line units the scene for this bleary, blurred snapshot of a relationship’s finish, stuffed with wry humor and hard-won knowledge. “Even when I may, it will kill me to look again,” Kempner sings, musing on the unhappiness of the highway not taken. “No, I don’t wanna see the opposite path.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ

Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson, ‘Waltz Throughout Texas’

The nation artists Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson recorded the generation-bridging album “Loving You” shortly earlier than Nelson’s 2022 demise at age 91, and the result’s a testomony to the collaborative spirit and lightweight, intuitive contact as a pianist that she retained up till the very finish of her life. The album’s opening quantity “Waltz Throughout Texas,” the Western swing traditional made well-known by Ernest Tubb, showcases their simple musical chemistry: Shires’s fluttery voice is playful however reverent to the supply materials, and Nelson’s notes are as elegantly spaced and glimmering as stars in an evening sky. ZOLADZ

Faye Webster, ‘However Not Kiss’

Faye Webster trades in misleading nonchalance. She brings her sly, sleepy voice to “However Not Kiss,” singing concerning the cautious, ambivalent beginnings of a relationship: “I need to see you in my goals however then neglect,” she sings, “We’re meant to be — however not but.” Every quiet, folky declaration is answered by a wealthy burst of devices: bodily responses outpacing rational selections. PARELES

What wouldn’t it really feel prefer to drive off a Mediterranean mountainside? Go away it to the Smile — Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead with the jazz drummer Tom Skinner — to contemplate that risk on this nerve-racking eight-minute observe. “Bending Hectic” strikes from considering the view to getting suicidal on curvy Italian mountain roads, from quiet guitar choosing and contemplation to catastrophe scored by Greenwood’s dissonant string preparations. Takeaway: Select that van driver rigorously. PARELES

Ambrose Akinmusire, ‘Cora Campbell’

Ambrose Akinmusire recorded his latest album, “Magnificence Is Sufficient,” at Paris’s towering Saint-Eustache cathedral, with out an viewers or a band — simply his trumpet and the pure reverb of the corridor. He approached the album, which is completely improvised, as one thing of a ceremony of passage: So lots of his horn-playing heroes had accomplished solo albums at essential profession junctures, he’d recognized he would in some unspecified time in the future too. Akinmusire has a large data of jazz historical past, however he pushes himself to keep away from stress-free inside it; you’ll by no means hear him falling again on references. As a substitute he’s constructed one of the vital ineffable types in jazz, stuffed with smoldering feeling, however with a startling quietness at its core. (The LP’s cowl artwork approximates this properly: a faint, virtually bodily form, barely rising from an all-black background.) On “Cora Campbell,” the final of the LP’s 16 tracks, you’ll hear him squeeze his notes tightly, letting them tremor and wriggle a bit. Seventy seconds in, he turns the notes he’s been toying with into a gradual sample, then challenges himself to splice larger pitches and glissandos into its gaps. It’s not overloaded, however he’s by no means at relaxation. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO