Ty Segall is an inspired interpreter. With a previous collection of T. Rex covers and a deep-fried take on Hot Chocolate’s “Every 1’s a Winner” under his belt, he reaches a high noon stand down on this new six-track quarantine collection of covers culled from Harry Nilsson’s 1971 lp, Nilsson Schmilsson. The source material jittery and depraved as it already is, Segall twists it further inward, practically taking a trip to the Overlook Hotel on wholly villainous rides at “Coconut,” “Gotta Get Up,” “Early in the Morning,” and the like. Dripped in psychedelic sludge, sometimes you’ve just got to fight crazy with crazy.

Mississippi Records’ new compilation Brother Theotis Taylor, mines the private archives of the Georgia minister and singer. These solitary songs of praise and contemplation extend an offer to join Taylor in spiritual reverie.

Dougie Poole is the patron saint of millennial malaise. On The Freelancer’s Blues, the Brooklyn-based country slacker sings about familiar tropes: vaping on the job, trying Buddhism for a week, considering a move out west, and finally, giving up to hang out at the bar with his buddies. Playing with common woes, pop sheen, and sideways humor, Poole invests his particular blues with a wink and a crooked smile.

Rather than existing at odds with the disturbing energy of the pandemic, and the eerie silences that accompanied the quarantine, Woods feel profoundly present. Their balmy psychedelia reckons with the world rather than seeking to escape it. Reflecting on and reasoning with death, they ask, “I see old friends when I sleep…Where do you go when you dream?” In a momentary flash, we see children age and gardens grow.

This fall finds the release of Transmissions: The Music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland—a collection of the wildly idiosyncratic and brilliantly singular catalog of a pioneering transgender artist. Perhaps most exciting, is its introduction of a heretofore unknown EP from 1983, entitled At Last!. Daring and jazzy, and not without a touch of danger, Glenn-Copeland crafts something of a more straight-forward “rock” here, filling the extended player with soaring guitar lines, muscular rhythms, and power ballads. It works.

This 2004 collaboration between cellist David Darling and the Wulu Bunun singers of Taiwan is nothing short of a miracle. With the Bunun singers’ a capella vocal recordings of indigenous folk songs at the core, their joyous, polyphonic harmonies coalesce with Darling’s luminous, delicate, and occasionally bluesy compositional tones. Together, they brighten and blossom amongst ambient sounds of nature, resulting in something truly spectacular and life-affirming. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful record deserving of far wider recognition.

There are voices. And then there are Voices. With “Wondrous Love,” Shirley Collins reminds us she’s in the latter category, bringing fresh humanity this early 1800s Sacred Harp hymn (with roots stretching back even further to the British isles).

On their new album, Ohms, Trees Speak evoke the heavy weirdness of the deep desert but from a Krautrock connoisseur’s viewpoint, folding in elements of post-punk, noir soundtracks, analog synth-music and contemporary psychedelia.