rock/pop/opera

Dr. Dee (Virgin) — Damon Albarn's first album in a while to be released under his own name, rather than Gorillaz, Blur, Monkey or whatever — is no conventional solo outing. It's also an opera staged last summer and based on the life of John Dee, mathematician and adviser to Elizabeth I. Albarn's melancholy voice intertwines beautifully with the pastoral orchestrations. Sans stage production, patience is required during the inscrutable moments, like the three minutes of sputtering drum loops, or songs featuring actual opera singers. —Michael Pelusi

soul/funk

Stepping away from his duties backing retro powerhouse Sharon Jones, in-demand Daptone saxman Neal Sugarman reconvened his long-mothballed Sugarman 3 for their first date in a decade, not so much updating as simply reinhabiting their quintessentially reverent take on a rather less-regarded strand of vintage soul: scorching, instrumental, Hammond-organ-led funk. What the World Needs Now (Daptone), complete with period-appropriate covers (J.J. Jackson, the Standells) and equally hard-swinging originals, with moonlighting from several Dap-King cohorts, does its job and does it well, and that's surely enough to justify the title. —K. Ross Hoffman

rock/pop

Best Coast just got a lot better. Sure, bedheaded, teenybopping California dreamer Bethany Cosentino's still singing about loneliness, misfit apathy, crazy-making boys and, on the irresistible title anthem of The Only Place (Mexican Summer), reiterating her band's eponymous West-is-the-best credo. Only now she's doing it with a revelatory newfound sonic richness and vastly improved production values that allow the luxuriant, Neko Case-ish fullness of her voice to shine through. —K. Ross Hoffman

comedy/experimental

Nobody messes with sounds like the worlds-colliding Reggie Watts. Music fans will dig the way he loops and layers, creating thick soul/pop/rock/R&B songs with nothing more than his own rubbery vocal cords on the new A Live at Central Park (Comedy Central). Comedy nerds will appreciate the way he messes with language, dropping extended, blunt innuendoes between nigh-subtle idiom dissections. Watts plays the Trocadero next Saturday (May 19, thetroc.com). —Patrick Rapa