[ JAZZ ]

A half-century after his father released Blue Train on Blue Note Records, Ravi Coltrane makes his own debut for the label. Instead of feeling constricted by the pressures of his legacy, Spirit Fiction finds Coltrane in a loose, expansive mood. The saxophonist divides his time between two completely different ensembles, floating assuredly between the sort of modal excursions that his father pioneered and the more angular, free-form experiments of his own generation. —Shaun Brady

[ ROCK/PUNK ]

Album titles rarely come as succinctly encapsulating as Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl), the sophomore salvo from Vancouver power duo Japandroids (who hit a sold-out Johnny Brenda’s on Friday.) It begins and ends with literal fireworks, but even that feels too pale a gesture to contain the half-hour of nonstop, in-the-red fist-pump that comes between, channeling the youthful abandon of their scrap-heap debut into something far richer and more immediate: a surging, shout-along treatise on the electric potential of every single, perfectly ephemeral instant. —K. Ross Hoffman

[ METAL ]

While titles like “Molest Dead” and “The Depths of Depravity” are kindergarten compared to the imagery Chris Barnes deployed in Cannibal Corpse, it’s for the best that we still can’t tell what he’s singing about. Well, “singing” is a bit of a misnomer; on Undead (Metal Blade), Barnes’ steamroller-on-gravel voice is better understood as another instrument alongside Kevin Talley’s carpet-bombing drums and the Venus flytrap attack of guitarists Steve Swanson and Rob Arnold. Six Feet Under began life as a Frankensteinian death metal supergroup, but by this, its ninth album, the band has mutated and congealed into something more deliciously sinister. —Shaun Brady

[ R&B/POP ]

We’re clearly due for a new onslaught of UK soul singers right about now, and we could do a lot worse than Emeli Sandé, whose Christian name, in a not-so-subtle twist of serendipity, turns out to be Adele. While it’s mostly more subdued than its barnstorming lead single — the euphoric, amen-break fantasia “Heaven” — portended, the ballad-inclined Our Version of Events (Virgin) is a treat nevertheless, recalling the refreshingly unfussy sophistication of Beyoncé’s 4, a full-on diva showcase blissfully free of overblown diva posturing. —K. Ross Hoffman