[ rock ]

Retribution Gospel Choir, Alan Sparhawk’s other, louder band, follows last year’s hook-y li’l Revolution EP with 3 (Chaperone), which comprises merely two monolithic, 20-minute sides. It’s a definite yin-yang affair. “Can’t Walk Out” is the expected onslaught, all portentous sludge-riffage and scrawled, desperate skronk. It’s epic, and fairly interminable. (Also, it’s in 9/4.) “Seven” is the payoff: bleary-eyed but surprisingly sweet, full of shimmering, Pinback-y layering and a veritable lullaby chorale, with sideman-to-the-stars Nels Cline joining in the inexorable six-string-wringing glory. —K. Ross Hoffman

[ dvd ]

Compared to the tectonic emotions of Still Walking and Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish (Magnolia) is slight, an airy tale of brothers separated by divorce who make a wish on a passing bullet train. (The film was commissioned by a rail line, which led to charges of selling out.) The kid-focused tale is occasionally syrupy, but its winsome charms persist. As always, Kore-eda shows a gift for drawing rich, unprecocious performances from young actors, and an appreciation for life’s little moments. —Sam Adams

[ electronic/instrumental ]

Bells, chimes, carillon, crotales — if it rings, pings, dings or dongs, Pantha du Prince wants it in his music. In a logical apotheosis of that obsession, and a revelatory expansion beyond his typical track-oriented, techno-based approach, the Hamburg-based producer teamed up with Norwegian ringing squad The Bell Laboratory to devise the highly immersive Elements of Light (Rough Trade), an album-length “symphony” of tintinnabulation that runs the gamut from glockenspiels to gamelan, sounding by turns gossamer and ominous, meditative and scintillating. Edgar Allan Poe would be proud. —K. Ross Hoffman

[ bluegrass ]

Softly sweet and not quite pop — that’s the prevailing wind from Blue Cactus Choir’s latest, Once in a Bluegrass Moon (Porgy). Marty Atkinson of the original Cactus Choir and Katy Boyd are the core, playing acoustic guitars and layering harmonies up to the skies. Atkinson’s songs run to sweet little snippets of life: encouragements (“Go ahead and take a chance, it’s your move”) and sad observations (“Don’t the towns all look the same in the rain?”) — particularly when you’ve been kicked to the curb. —Mary Armstrong