Andrew Lipke “Kamala & The Child People”

Self released ★★★★

“Songs from the Quarantine (a work in progress)” Self released ★★★★

South Africa-born Philadelphia multi-hyphenate Andrew Lipke is different things to different audiences.

Renowned for his Zeppelin cover act Get the Led Out, Lipke is also an adroit chamber-pop self-practitioner whose harmonic range would wow Bacharach and McCartney. Capable of forlorn topicality as a singer-songwriter (as on 2011’s “The Plague”), Lipke moonlights, too, as an orchestral arranger for string ensembles and opera companies.

His two new, self-released albums manage to be even more divergent.

Lipke’s decade-in-themaking “Kamala & The Child People” is based on Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha.” It starts as a hypnotic, Philip Glass-ian opera with heavenly harps and oxygenated choirs. Then come strummy folk, crunching metal, jungle rhythms, eerie musique concrete, and slack-key country. Winsome vocals include an Ozzy-like scowl on “Some Kinda Disease.”

The album is somehow an elegantly eclectic, avantpop epic that manages to be hummable.

While readying “Kamala’s” release, Lipke got trapped in pandemic mode. “His Songs from the Quarantine” is off-the-cuff, self-referential cabaret pop, with Wainwright-like fits of fancy. (Rufus or Loudon — take your pick.)

Along with the hokey, homespun “Happy Quarantine,” Lipke cooks up pastoral country-rock (“You Oughta Be Proud”), while offering the pixieish “Bored” to his daughters to sing.

“Quarantine” is as simple and precocious as “Kamala” is complex and ruminative — and both are thoroughly engaging.