Laura Dzubay

Seven people, two houses, a motorcycle and a locked treatment facility for adolescent boys. It’s the stuff of legends. The Mountain Goats’ 2002 album All Hail West Texas drew up these legends in a 14-song collection of their most enduring tracks—and Jenny from Thebes, that record’s sequel, returns to this home—both to double down on the myths and to bear witness to their fracturing. The people are leaving. The house is facing eviction. The motorcycle is destined, maybe, for a wreck yard.

“The one I know isn’t here,” sings Jake Ewald, his voice laced by the twangs of a guitar. This line from “Surfin’ New Jersey” comes just a few seconds into Slaughter Beach, Dog’s new album, Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling. The one he’s referring to remains elusive—it could be a companion, but there’s a sense that, as the album unfolds, one’s honest self may be just as hard to access.

“If I lead, will you follow / I’ll take you way over yonder,” Rhiannon Giddens sings in “Way Over Yonder,” the penultimate song on her new record You’re the One. It’s a sweep of the arm into a space worth spending time in—but this, her clearest invitation, arrives right at the end of the record. She takes her time building up to this gesture, showing us first where she’s been. Giddens’s last solo album was Freedom Highway in 2017.