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Brian Wilson

"That Lucky Old Sun"

Capitol

The Beach Boys’ troubled musical genius waxes autobiographical on the latest album in his surprising, and ongoing, artistic resurrection. With the songwriting assistance of bandmate Scott Bennett and longtime collaborator Van **** Parks, Wilson, 66, assumes the role of a solar observer overlooking Los Angeles in general and Wilson’s own unlikely career in particular.

Parks’s narrative interludes, voiced by Wilson, paint vivid pictures of Venice Beach, Olivera Street, and other familiar LA scenes. The tunes, meanwhile, concern Hollywood fantasies ("California Role"), female inspiration ("Forever My Surfer Girl"), Wilson’s "lost" years ("Midnight’s Another Day"), and his overall infatuation with the SoCal mystique ("Southern California"). Wilson and band perform them with angelic grace, surf-rock charm, and a bittersweet blend of nostalgia and possibility.

Billy Coulter

"Dose"

Confluence

This Washington, D.C., roots-rock favorite (and, it must be mentioned, daytime AARP employee) is an anomaly in a genre more typically represented by swaggering bad boys with cigarettes jammed between the strings and headstock of their guitars. And while the punning title of Coulter’s second album suggests pharmaceutical high jinks, his music combines tuneful and dynamic rock with seemingly hard-earned, emotional maturity. Coulter seems to direct his perceptive X-ray specs on the older dating scene in "Party of One," "Dragonfly," and "Striking a Pose." He offers consolation to a teenaged child of divorce in "Innocence" and calls out narcissists of all ages in "I’ll Be Happy When...". You’ll be happy when you hear it.