MUSIC REVIEWS

Darlingside, “Extralife” ( Thirty

Tigers/More Doug Records)

Not everything Darlingside does turns to gold, and yet the stylistic quartet out of Massachusetts doesn’t sound like anybody else.

On its latest release, “Extralife,” the band continues down an utterly original path through an inconsistent 12-track set. The style is a melding of folk, chamber pop, baroque, progressive and indie rock that defies labeling. The lyrics sometimes veer into pretentiousness, more so than on the group’s breakthrough 2015 release, “Birds Say,” and some of the melodies are cloying.

But there also are moments of great majesty.

Some of the band’s influences lie near the surface. Its members surely played the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” on repeat until they mastered the four-part harmonies (they also might have absorbed some of the lyrical touches of that psychedelic era, the kind that sounded brilliant under the influence but later made no sense).

But the sound is rooted in harmony, and when Darlingside gets it right and leaves the search for deeper meaning aside, the effect can be sublime. This happens more than once on “Extralife,” especially on “Singularity” and “Hold Your Head Up High.”

On the latter, the band lays seamless harmonies over an urgently simple acoustic guitar. When horns join the chorus as the song builds to a crescendo, it echoes the gentle, unfettered encouragement of the lyrics in a manner that will find a home on many a no-depression playlist.

So yes, the album suffers from inconsistency. But when it reaches up and grabs you, it soars.—Scott Stroud, Associated Press

Moby, “Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt”

(Mute)

Moby is done screaming. He’s back to brooding—magnificently.

The musician-producer’s 12-track “Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt” returns us to the orchestral trip-hop he’s famous for following two politically-charged albums of virtual punk.

The album signals he’s post-anger, as if he’s entered a stage of profound grief. Many songs offer a fragile and melancholy Moby whispering about human fragility over velvet swells of ambient, orchestral sounds punctuated by drum loops.

The titles alone seem to suggest we’re in for a bleak affair—“The Sorrow Tree,” ”A Dark Cloud Is Coming,” ”The Last of Goodbyes” and “The Tired and The Hurt”—but the music is gorgeously gloomy without being depressing. That’s hard to do on an album that mentions darkness 15 times.

For the past few years, Moby raged against Donald Trump in “More Fast Songs About the Apocalypse” and “These Systems are Failing.” Now he’s turned his attention at our souls, referencing W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” and borrowing the new album’s name from Kurt Vonnegut’s “SlaughterhouseFive.”

He’s added female voices for every song, including five with Mindy Jones, two with Julie Mintz and three with Apollo Jane. They soar while Moby stays grounded and morose. “I can’t see, I can’t speak, I can’t walk, I can’t talk/But I can see how it’s falling apart,” he half sings in one song.

The album starts out strong with the driving “Mere Anarchy” and the coolly funky “The Waste of Suns” before hitting a peak with a spacy reworking of the spiritual “Like a Motherless Child.”

It loses some momentum amid moments of self-indulgence, like when Moby sounds more like Enya with “The Last of Goodbyes” or when his overinvolved monologues veer into him resembling a bad hypnotist in “The Middle Is Gone.”

But the album ends with a brilliant flourish with “A Dark Cloud Is Coming,” reminding everyone he is a master at creating hypnotic soundscapes. One thing is clear: In Trump’s America, Moby may be beaten but he’s not broken.—Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

Randy Bachman, “By George—

By Bachman” (UMe)

Randy Bachman, founder of The Guess Who and BachmanTurner Overdrive, let’s his imagination run away with 11 George Harrison songs on “By George—By Bachman,” which mostly succeeds when respecting the Quiet Beatle’s melodies, but sometimes fails to capture the grace and elegance of the originals.

“If I Needed Someone” has a jazzy feel, with a George Benson-like solo while there’s a flamenco-ish rhythm on “You Like Me Too Much.” ”I Need You” gets a power-pop rebuild and “Don’t Bother Me” rocks out even further, like something from the Smithereens’ catalog. On these and a few others, the original tunes are more or less intact and they’re sturdy enough to support the makeovers.

“Something,” however, is a supple love song meant to be about “the way she moves,” not the way she plods, and even some hot guitar solos can’t change that. On “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” the instrument and the song seem way past the soft cries and closer to a complete nervous breakdown. Oh well.

The album opens and closes with Bachman’s “Between Two Mountains,” a tribute where Lennon and McCartney are the peaks overshadowing Harrison, whose patience pays off and his time to shine finally comes. All true, as Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” from 1970 shines as brightly as any Beatle solo album.

But “Something” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” were great songs of his already from his time in The Fab Four and, as he later famously sang with The Traveling Wilburys, they should be handled with care.—Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press

Joan Baez, “Whistle Down the Wind” (Bobolink/Razor & Tie)

Nearly 10 years on from her last studio album, Joan Baez delivers another pearl, 10 deeply felt interpretations about the human condition and the state of the world.

Baez’s voice is in fine form and if her range now is, unsurprisingly, more earth angel than angelic, it serves to enhance her expressiveness, the depth of the lyrics and the strength of the melodies.

Some of the songwriters, like Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan and Eliza Gilkyson, also contributed to “Day After Tomorrow,” the 2008 album produced by Steve Earle that’s like a soul mate of this one, shepherded by Joe Henry.

The Waits/Brennan title track and their “Last Leaf” are typically full of captivating images and a few lines, like one about Dwight Eisenhower, provide some moments of comic relief. Baez can be mischievously funny in interviews, but not here.

“Another World,” from Anohni, is one of the most disconsolate tracks—“I need another world/This one’s nearly gone”—while “The President Sang Amazing Grace,” Zoe Mulford’s reflection on the 2015 Charleston church shooting, is one of the most moving.

Henry’s own “Civil War” seems both personal and universal while Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “The Things That We Are Made Of” is deeply poetic with a glimmer of hope.

“Silver Blade,” one of Josh Ritter’s two contributions, is a self-defense murder ballad where, unlike the motherly protection provided in “Silver Dagger” from Baez’s 1960 debut, the protagonist can take care of herself.

Baez will be presenting “Whistle Down the Wind” on what’s meant to be her last extended tour. It’s a strong album for a farewell, as representative of her talents as of the times.—Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press