On Georgia native Butch Walker’s stellar new album, “American Love Story,” (Ruby Red Recordings), the first track opens with the phrase, “Are we having a conversation?” different voices, same sentence, looped over and over, often overlapping with distortion. Walker has crafted a rock opera, a grand concept album, a “love story to hate,” as he’s described it. A compendium to his film of the same title, Walker sings of “Bo,” a fictional character who breaks free of his backward thinking of racism and homophobia. Don’t let the serious themes fool you: “American Love Story,” is funny, sweeping, politically-charged and ever-morphing. On “Gridlock,” a Fleetwood Mac-ish pop song with jangly guitars, he sings, “I don’t want to go back to the daily routine/don’t put me back in that world.” Walker knows how to craft listenable tunes, having helmed production chores for the likes of Taylor Swift, Green Day, Weezer and Panic! At the Disco. “Flyover,” finds Walker dabbling in a little of 1996’s cowbell-crazy “How Bizarre” (by OMC), as he sings, “Freedom dumb my way.” If the song’s chorus sounds like an homage to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” it should; by the end of the song, that chorus too is wrapped around his lyrics like a serpent. He riffs about a radio “DJ laughing on cue,” adding, “I want whatever they’re drinking at 6 a.m.” On “Six-foot Middle-Aged American Man,” you can hear the derisiveness in his voice as he “madder” of-factly sings about “freedom on my vanity plates,” before digging, “full of bricks I’m gonna haul/building up a border wall.” Walker walks the walk and hates the hate with stark conviction.

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“Wake Up Sunshine,” (Fueled by Ramen records), All Time Low’s sturdy new pop-punk album, draws from its roots (influences include Blink-182 and Green Day), and creates the perfect quarantine album. Opener “Some Kind of Disaster,” starts off mellow mush before the renegade rock and roaring guitars ignite the strain, “I’m a liar, I’m a cynic, I’m a sinner, I’m a saint… I’m the ghost of my mistakes.” The Baltimore natives, led by frontman Alex Gaskarth, venture into laidback surf rock and might just have their collective tongue planted firmly in cheek. On “Favorite Place,” they’re joined by Memphis indies, The Band Camino, as the singers long for and lament about their significant others. “Yeah, you’re everything I love about the things I hate in me,” Gaskarth rips along with Band Camino lead singer Jeffrey Jordan. The tune, “Safe” is just that – ATL treads in familiar waters, singing optimistically about the future with a slow burn: “Put your car in drive and don’t stop runnin’ ’til you’re long gone.” “Trouble Is” plunks with an experimental ¾ time signature, while “January Gloom (Seasons, Pt. 1),” deals with the winter blahs. If you’ve never listened to ATL, this album is a triumph of modern nostalgia with infectious licks and genres that are reimagined, punk-style. They don’t reinvent the wheel, but come close with “Basement,” the album closer. With swirling metaphors and lyrics like, “Alive in the age of outrage and outrageous behavior/they say it’s a calling.” A cascading record, “Wake Up Sunshine,” is worth a squinted glance.

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“Music from and inspired by Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, a film by Stanley Nelson,” (Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings), is the epitomal accompaniment to the PBS documentary where Davis is displayed as a sometimes flawed trumpeter and individual – yet it’s obvious that Davis was the closest thing to a pop star through the ears and years of jazz. The soundtrack music itself is anything but flawed. The album opens with saxophonist Jimmy Heath describing Davis’ sound as “pure, elegant and tasty,” before the first track, 1958’s “Milestones,” blows in, proving Heath’s point. The record features selections from Davis’ massive catalogue, as curated by Nelson for use in the film and stretches from “Donna Lee,” which was recorded by Davis in 1947 with bebop icon Charlie Parker, to the track, “Tutu,” Davis’ Grammy winner from 1986. The soundtrack also includes commentaries by Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana and others, musing about how Davis and “cool” are practically synonyms. Davis’ popularity – his celebrity – was rooted not just in his genius but by the cult of personality. From the cool cat of the ’50s to the fusion hipster of the ’60s, Miles Davis oozed cool. One listen to the track, “The Voodoo Down,” is proof that he remains the most enigmatic jazz craftsman of the last century – as horn player, a bandleader, an innovator. Miles Davis was elegant and smooth.

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With “Glue,” (Pure Noise Records), the Blackpool, U.K. band Boston Manor is sleek and subdued as they mull over society’s impatience for a return to normal. Warning: This album may cause many to romanticize about how good things were before the lockdown hammer came down. The album is moody; things kick off with the lead single, “Everything is Ordinary,” a raucous rouser that serves as the record’s mission statement. Lead singer Henry Cox has great vocal range, as evident on the song’s hook with piercing screams and subtle croons. “Glue” can be aggressive – “You, Me & the Class War,” is rancorous punk at its purest level. Cox sings like he’s frustrated and sometimes you need a road map to navigate the emotion. On “Plasticine Dreams,” the tempo drops, and its soulful vibes are reminiscent of ’90s Brit-Pop – think “The Verve.” Ultimately, “Glue” has a ghost in the machine: voices sound like alarms, the music reverberates, and while the record gets a nod for its disorderly conduct, the album is the answer to the question: What do you do on dark days?

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Sound sure comes from unexpected places. Take Car Seat Headrest’s “Making a Door Less Open,” (Matador). Here, the maverick band sheds its winding indie stylings and settles in for a little weird and wonderful fun. With electronic soundscapes and synths, the self-actualizing opener, “Weightlifters,” – the beats build for two minutes – is the perfect vehicle for the band’s new sound. From hip hop (“Famous”), to acoustic (“What’s With You Lately”), frontman Will Toledo likes to have it all ways. He’s wry and low-key and hard to pin down and it’s that friction that sparks his odd and ambitious songwriting. This is a pop record though it tries to deny it. Take “Hollywood,” a saga about the emptiness of big-budget Tinseltown (“a place where people go to make their fantasies come to life, and they end up exploiting other people and doing terrible things to maintain their fantasy,”) and “There Must Be More Than Blood,” simply hangs on for dear life. Who knows how to make a door less open? What difference does it make?

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