Like his labelmate Will Oldham, Bill Callahan has spent his long career honing, altering, adding to and subtracting from an identity that has acted as a conduit for a now staggering amount of exceptional music. Whereas Oldham eventually created a personality that is him but not all of him, the richly throated Callahan seems to have found the path toward his own truth by simply being himself. (Hell, the guy used to put Smog in parentheses on his album covers!) Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle is Callahan’s second album using his government name (and maybe his 12th, or 15th, or more, overall), and it is this veteran songwriter at his most unfiltered: stark, honest, knowing and disarmingly beautiful. “Maybe this was all/Was all that meant to be,” he offers not unhopefully on “Rococo Zephyr.” God damn. There is not a misstep here, but if you have anything left in your heart, you will feel it flutter upon hearing that song, the rootsy pseudo-Arabianisms of “The Wind and the Dove” and “Too Many Birds.” (M.L. Thrope)

We don’t like it when someone tampers with a good thing, so I wasn’t sure at first what to make of the Papercuts’ latest, You Can Have What You Want. Few bands can deliver the kind of hazy, beautiful dream pop of Jason Quever’s Bay Area outfit, and I resisted at first to his new album and its swirling organs, thumping basslines and Krautrock-ish rhythms. After a few listens, however, I’ve become a true believer. Quaver has beefed up his sound while never sacrificing his melodic gifts, and once again you will be charmed by the broken-heart sincerity of his lyrics and lush arrangements. With You Can Have, Quever has shed Papercuts of any twee trappings and given us the perfect album to bridge us to the spring. Fans of Beach House and Grizzly Bear will love this. Highest recommendation. (James)

Words will never quite be enough for Woods. Not to suggest this Brooklyn outfit is The. Greatest. Thing. Ever!, just that when I tell you Songs of Shame is a collection of ramshackle floaty folk-rock songs, you won’t quite be able to grasp the spackle in their ramshackle, the vibe of their float, the worn-in alrightness of their lazily brilliant approach. That “dancing about architecture” crack applies only when music is actually art, is what I’m try’na tellya here—and Songs of Shame rates. It is psychedelic in nature, if not always in sound. And soon enough it will be hot out, and your mind will wander, and you’ll think of trees, and no record will make more sense to you than this. Go out on a limb with the short and bittersweet “Born to Lose,” as well as “Down This Road” and the protracted simmer of “September with Pete,” which features righteous hombre Pete Nolan of Magik Markers and Spectre Folk. (M.L. Thrope)

I didn’t think that Eddie Argos would be able to write more than one fine album given that all of his songs are about music, excessive drinking, or relationship foibles, but here we are at #3 and he and his bandmates are still going strong. He’s as witty and quotable as ever: “I fought the floor and the floor won”; “cool your warm jets Brian Eno”; ”how am I supposed to sleep at night, when no one likes the music I like?“ (in the same song that gives the album its title and also contains the line “on your visa it says entertainer/you’d better step it up or they’re going to detain ya”); and “if you want me sober and straight/I’m gonna have to be a little bit late.” But this ain’t poetry, so some credit to producer Frank Black and the four guys in the band who play instruments, who shift between chirpy punk and chipper post-punk, utterly unadventurous, nothing that wasn’t done 30 years ago, but sounding thoroughly enjoyable and thrillingly enthusiastic. (Steve)

This is, surprisingly from this dark duo, an album of love songs. I was going to crack that finally they’ve given us an album where nobody gets murdered, but then I noticed that one of the love songs appears to be from a praying mantis to his mate as she devours him. Yes, even when the topic is love, Rennie Sparks’s mordant wit can’t be staunched. And as usual she twists mundane things into weirdly discomforting metaphors: chain link fence entwined by a thorn bush as an image of love; broken windshield glass as diamonds; “the loneliness of magnets.” That these lyrics are sung in Brett Sparks’s soothingly ordinary voice, accompanied by low-key country rock from Brett and a few sidemen, is an important aspect of the wit; it works simultaneously as sincerity and irony. (Steve)

Originally released in 2007 in Germany only, What Is?! finds the unstoppable (then and now) King Khan leading his charges through his now-patented brand of soulful, high-voltage garage and blues, with distinct afternotes of psych and global-jungle mayhem. What sets Khan apart from all the other high-energy rawkers is that he writes good songs with crisp arrangements and killer melodies, rather than simply getting up there and going wild (which you, me and/or your kid sister could do). It’s all here on What Is?!, a record you could easily leave on REPEAT at your next house-rockin’ party. (M.L. Thrope)

When does a long-awaited second album feel not so long-awaited? When you stay as busy as John Maclean has since his quasi-namesake group’s debut, 2005’s Less Than Human. Since that record established The Juan Maclean as legitimate stars of the international club scene, Maclean (the person, not the band) has remixed everyone and DJ’ed everywhere. Which won’t dampen the auto-excited response to The Future Will Come, of course. The Juan Maclean has always excelled at long, head-down club tracks (like the recent singles “Happy House” and “The Simple Life,” both included here). But now that LCD Soundsystem vocalist Nancy Whang is onboard as a fulltime collaborator, the shorter, higher-impact tracks (“No Time,” the strings-kissed “One Day” and the Tom Tom Club-inna-time-machine-funky “Accusations”) nimbly straddle the pop-song/club-floor divide. (M.L. Thrope)

Oslo band I Was a King’s second, self-titled album is a neatly portioned dose of almost archetypal power-pop, from the slightly awkward yet charming vocals to the tendency of the guitars to get massive at any time. (Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque might serve as a decent point of reference.) Listen to the ragged strumming of “Step Aside” or the gently accelerating “Weighing Anchor” and it’s clear that they know their way around memorable hooks and the appropriate ways to deliver them. There’s a slight but omnipresent shoegaze component to I Was a King’s music as well, a mounting swirl of guitars that recalls the more rock end of the genre. (And here, Swervedriver’s Raise might serve as a decent point of reference.) What it adds up to is a collection of songs that, more often than not, pushes for bliss from multiple angles. (Toby)