Tinashe, "Aquarius"

Stevie Nicks

“24 KARAT GOLD: SONGS FROM THE VAULT”

Warner Bros. Records

Now that young bands such as Haim and One Direction are reviving the polished pop-rock of Fleetwood Mac, it seems only right that the group’s iconic frontwoman, Stevie Nicks, would look back as well.

As its title suggests, “24 Karat Gold: Songs From the Vault” offers new recordings of tunes Nicks wrote as long ago as 1969; the most recent is from 1995. You can tell the material is old too. In the aching “Hard Advice,” she sings about listening to the radio and hanging out in a record store. (Remember those?)

Recorded mostly in Nashville with Nicks’ longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel and Dave Stewart, “24 Karat Gold” makes room amid the retrospection for some new sounds. “Cathouse Blues” touches unexpectedly on ragtime, while “Blue Water,” with backing vocals by Lady Antebellum, shimmers with traces of country and soul.

There’s also a couple of crunching hard-rock numbers, including “I Don’t Care,” that feel powered by the same aggression Fleetwood Mac channeled on its 2013 arena tour. (Now reunited with Christine McVie, the group launched yet another road show last week and will hit Portland in November.)

Whatever the arrangement, though, Nicks’ voice defines the music here. Her singing dominates as easily now as it ever did.

ON TOUR: Nov. 22 — With Fleetwood Mac; Moda Center, Portland; www.rosequarter.com or 800-745-3000.

— Mikael Wood,

Los Angeles Times

Weezer

“EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT IN THE END”

Republic Records

Weezer and its songwriter and frontman, Rivers Cuomo, have always wrapped worries and vulnerabilities in brash, succinct rock tunes: power pop with the distortion cranked up. On “Everything Will Be Alright in the End,” Weezer’s ninth studio album, the melodies are as strong as the misgivings. And vice versa.

Twenty years after the release of Weezer’s self-titled 1994 debut album, Cuomo stares down a situation that most long-running acts try to ignore: a band’s midcareer — possibly late-career — crisis as youth fades, radio styles change, fans prefer nostalgia and cynical self-consciousness sets in. It’s not the first time; “Hurley,” Weezer’s 2010 album, started with “Memories” and ended with “Time Flies,” both well aware of aging. On the first single from the new album, a two-chord hard-rock stomp called “Back to the Shack,” Cuomo sets out his current plan: “Kick in the door, more hardcore/Rockin’ out like it’s ’94.”

That doesn’t mean Weezer has turned primitive or unpolished. After gimmicky attempts to update — a hip-hop collaboration, programmed sounds — on its 2009 album, “Raditude,” Weezer has reclaimed what it does best. Reunited with Ric Ocasek of the Cars as producer, who also worked on Weezer’s first and third albums, the band savors the three-minute, guitar-driven, verse-chorus-bridge rock song. But it also heaps on the overdubs — particularly Brian Bell’s lead guitar, which rivals the orchestral edifices that Brian May built for Queen and takes over the album’s grandiose and manic finale, “The Futurescope Trilogy.”

The rest of the album often returns to the wellspring of power pop: girl trouble, usually as faced by a clueless guy (though not clueless about verse-chorus-bridge). “I’m lonely, so homely/ Can’t you relate?” is the singer’s approach to a “Lonely Girl,” as vocal harmonies surge in. Applying grunge guitar to the basic doo-wop chord progression, Cuomo and Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast share a duet in “Go Away”: He’s contrite, she’s bitter.

Even in matters of the heart, some new songs face the ravages of time. The girl trouble in “Foolish Father” is an adult’s predicament: a daughter who hates him. Minor-key verses move into major-key choruses until, eventually, the daughter replies, singing, “Everything will be all right in the end.” In Weezer’s songs, music brings hope.

— Jon Pareles,

The New York Times

Tinashe

“AQUARIUS”

RCA Records

What to call this weird, wonderful world of experimental beat music sung by young women right now? Recent albums by FKA Twigs, Kelela and now “Aquarius” by the L.A.-based Tinashe seem too expansive for the term “R&B,” except in the most literal sense — these records have rhythm and swing yet cut through with melancholy.

Whatever we end up calling this sad, seductive new sound, “Aquarius” might be the record to take these ideas into every American bedroom. It comes on the heels of the summer-defining single “2 On,” a slow-simmering DJ Mustard banger in which Tinashe’s lyrics about her hard partying came streaked with a bad-decisions-at-5 a.m. kind of darkness.

That was a great single, but “Aquarius” elaborates on that template with even more enticing moves. “Bet,” with Blood Orange’s Devonte Hynes, trades overt hooks for pure feeling — its spectral voices and inky synth pads are a perfect setting for Tinashe’s whispered invitations. “Pretend” pairs New Agey keys with a mid-tempo drum crunch that lets Tinashe explore the pull between pain and artifice in love.

Pop-savvy producers like Stargate, Boi-1da and Mike Will Made It add brevity and melody; others like Clams Casino and Evian Christ add difficult, implacable emotions. But “Aquarius” heralds an essential new voice, one that coheres 100 current ideas about women, sex, sadness and musical restlessness in one excellent album.

— August Brown,

Los Angeles Times