An oddity from an oddity, No One’s First, And You’re Next collects rerecorded out-takes from the past two Modest Mouse albums — and yet is hardly the second-rate release that that might imply. Isaac Brock & Co. (and when the “Co.” includes Johnny Marr, you know the company’s doing some business) step, jump and meander through eight tunes over 33 minutes, never doing the expected yet nevertheless delivering some of the most peculiarly compelling rock songs out there, like a Beefheart born into the alt-rock age. The highlights include “King Rat” (for which the late Heath Ledger directed a soon-to-be-seen animated video) and the weary, clattering “Perpetual Motion Machine,” which features the esteemed Dirty Dozen Brass Band. (M.L. Thrope)

Julian Plenti may be skyscraper, but it’s hardly a secret that he was really Paul Banks of Interpol first. The slightness of both his new identity and its secrecy contributes to a shared knowingness between artist and listener on Julian Plenti . . . Is Skyscraper that adds up to a curiously weighty mood — not in the music, as Banks has put together a sharp and beguiling album of modern rock (and I mean that as a descriptive, not a genre, for cryin’ out loud), but more in the mood of loss that shadows the whole endeavor, something more subtly dark than anything we can remember Interpol coming up with. We like the album on first listen — especially the kinetic “Fun That We Have,” the sweet “No Chance Survival” and the underplayed ache on opener “Only If You Run” — but this album may have deeper secrets that reveal themselves only through repeated listening. (M.L. Thrope)

“Ruminant”: it’s a fancy way of saying contemplative — or more precisely, it’s the way a truly ruminant band would describe itself as being contemplative. It all fits in the spacious sound-world of the Fruit Bats, who take full wing on their gorgeous fourth album, The Ruminant Band. Frontman Eric D. Johnson leads his quintet through their sweetest, most technicolor jams yet, finding room for plenty of wordy lyrics and melodies without ever making things feel crowded. To my ears the star here is lead guitarist Sam Wagster, whose very name suggests the decades-spanning rock-dude grooviness he unfurls in one song after another (alongside an almost saloon-y piano, played in a similar fashion by a few bandmembers). And at that you realize — if it hasn’t already happened, this is a band that could be a huge hit with the neo-hippies at Bonnaroo, without an atom of embarrassment to themselves (or you, indie kid). Put that in your pipe! (M.L. Thrope)

Once known mainly for their electronic side, Austin quartet the Octopus Project has expanded their songcraft to the point that on any given song the band can seem to be electronica, straight-up indie rock and even a bit outer-spacey — all at once. The new Golden Beds EP packs a lot of these formal ideas into less than 20 minutes, bouncing along merrily on opener “Wet Gold,” breaking into rock pyrotechnics on “Moon Boil” and then left-turning into the six-minute theremin-led “Rorol,” which could be an indie update on the classic Forbidden Planet soundtrack. Clearly not content with searing just 20 minutes of music onto a digital platter, the band went ahead and added seven videos, including a live performance on Austin City Limits. (M.L. Thrope)

This is the best roots record I’ve heard all year, by a country mile. Philly’s Jack Rose teams up with the Black Twigs, and what chemistry they have! Rose has long established himself as one of the finest guitar pickers in recent memory, bringing a variety of traditions in his ever pliable sound, from blues to ragtime to Eastern raga to the avant-garde. He’s played for years with Twig banjoist Mike Gangloff, but here the two are joined by the rest of the band, and the addition of strings, percussion and vocals give the album a raw, good-timey feel. On a few of the tracks Gangloff takes over lead vocals, and his gruff, personable delivery only adds to the album’s immeasurable charm. This is some of the most joyous, rollicking string music I’ve heard in ages, and it’s instantly one of my favorite albums of the year. GET IT. (James)

This reference doesn’t mean as much as it ought to, but Generationals are the two guitarist dudes who formed the defunct and under-appreciated Eames Era, a sprightly, elfin-singer-fronted band from Baton Rouge that released a few super-fine indie-pop records (and survived a nasty van accident) before breaking up. As Generationals, Grant Widmer and Ted Joyner are working a similar side of your indie-boulevard, but with a slightly more experienced, wide-screen angle: The sounds on Con Law occasionally take on a coyly vintage feel, courtesy of producer Daniel Black (of the Oranges Band) — evoking a quasi-60s vibe at times and a turn-of-the-80 spirit at others. Crisp and unfailingly on-point, Con Law has nary a miss in its 10 songs — but you’ll especially dig the vaguely world-weary “Faces in the Dark,” the rubbery new wave of “Wildlife Sculpture” and the classically soulful pop on “When They Fight They Fight.” (M.L. Thrope)

The Albertans,, a crisp Brooklyn quintet that also lives part or sort of fulltime in Vancouver now, walks the indie-pop line of preciousness very carefully, never stepping over it but often tip-toeing it with guitarist Joel Bravo’s coyly breathy vocals and some stubbornly recurring “ba da ba” style backing. But with this kind of fresh-scrubbed indie pop, walking that line is what makes magic. The Albertans’ sparklingly charming ways are bound to win over the sort of people who know that you can cast a spell with just a drum, a tambourine, a few voices and the occasional guitar strum. When you hear the achingly indie-romantic twinned voices of keyboardists Krystin Monaghan and Alison Yip (they should take more leads next time) at the beginning of “I Want You,” and you feel your heart flutter, you’ll know you’re lost, and you wouldn’t want it any other way. (M.L. Thrope)

24-Carat Black was the brainchild of Dale Warren, who achieved soul cred in 1969 with his string arrangements for Isaac Hayes’s Hot Buttered Soul. Sometimes you listen to reissues of “lost albums” and wonder how they could have been overlooked. Not here. This previously unreleased LP, recorded at the end of Stax’s run, was the abandoned follow-up to a darkly depressing 1973 LP and is even bleaker. Even the one seemingly positive track, “I’ll Never Let You Go,” turns out to be more about unrealistic hope than reality, more desperate addiction than happiness, as its disquietingly orgasmic middle section reveals. This is soul offering little uplift (some hypnotic grooves and the momentum built from insistent repetition) but plentiful painful catharsis. But love lost, love denied, love unreturned and love misunderstood are more psychologically interesting than their opposites, so these six anti-love songs (one opens “I don’t love you, I don’t love you, I don’t love you, you know that” repeated over and over), all that could be salvaged from long-stored tapes, are doggedly compelling. Much of this is due to Warren’s studio mastery. He didn’t finish this album, but that hardly matters and may even help, as he achieves big effects without bloated production thanks to an unerring structural sense of how to build climaxes. When the overall aesthetic is stripped down, the big moments shine all the more. It also helps, as always in soul music, that the vocals — shared among Princess Hearn, Hedda Sudduth, Naombi Still, and Robert Dunson — are righteous. (Steve)