Vince Staples

“SUMMERTIME ’06”

Def Jam Records

In the last five years, Long Island rapper Vince Staples has made his name working on other people’s records. Some of it (e.g., with Common or Earl Sweatshirt) lived up to his growing reputation, and some (as with Jhené Aiko) not so much. But many still pick him to be hip-hop’s next firestarter.

It’s great, then, that “Summertime ’06,” his double-disc debut — and we haven’t seen an opening move this audacious since the Mothers of Invention bowed with “Freak Out!” — is worth the hype. With a slurry, conversational approach, it offers us a dark glimpse into his environment and a plainspoken look at certain aspects of black culture. Produced by No I.D. and other weird-rap mixologists, some tracks, such as “Jump Off the Roof” and “Surf” offer no hope, personal or spiritual. The sparse, psychedelic whirr behind “Lift Me Up” and “Get Paid” magnify the futility rather than the funk. “Lift Me Up” is particularly chilling in its blasé attitude toward violence (“We really killing”). Staples sounds as if there’s no fun in the Badlands, only frank finality.

— A.D. Amorosi,

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Miles Davis

“MILES DAVIS AT NEWPORT 1955-1975: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 4”

Columbia Records / Legacy

This monster four-disc box set would be worth getting just for the first two tracks alone. We’re in 1955 at the Newport Jazz Festival, and impresario Duke Ellington introduces the cosmic gang onstage, ready to jam on “Hackensack”: Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Connie Kay, composer Thelonious Monk, and Percy Heath. It’s splendid, clear, lovingly preserved, and unheard until today.

Thus kicks off “Miles Davis at Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4,” almost five hours of music, much previously unreleased, tracing Davis’ performances at the hallowed Newport, Rhode Island, jazz fest over five dates in Newport, plus three more when the festival exported itself to New York, Germany and Switzerland.

You can really hear Miles changing, from the purveyor/inventor of cool jazz in the 1950s, through the classic investigations of the ’60s, into the electric, divisive fusion/fission of the turn into the 1970s. The highlights are the 1966 and 1967 performances with the great quintet of Miles, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, and Tony Williams; and the previously released 1969 set, which assaulted listeners with his Bitches Brew-era music, outrageous, edgy, and exultant. Lovingly packaged and mastered, this set upholds the high standards of the Bootleg series. This box set isn’t just for completists — it’s for everyone.

— John Timpane,

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Years & Years

“COMMUNION”

Interscope Records

Let’s concede from the top that Years & Years is all received wisdom. None of its gestures are pure or novel. This British dance-pop trio — the tender singer Olly Alexander and the multi-instrumentalists Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Turkmen — is an inheritor of all sorts of traditions, not a creator of new ones.

“Communion,” its debut album — largely produced by the group with Mark Ralph — is cotton candy, 90 percent air. There is breezy, finger-snap house music (“Real”); two-step garage without any of the bite (“Desire”); new-wave-influenced pop that totally foregoes moodiness (“King”). “Eyes Shut” sounds like someone smoothing the rough edges off Sam Smith, a performer with no edge to lose.

And yet all of those songs are excellent. (Not “Eyes Shut,” though — that dog won’t walk.) They have fleet energy; they’re vivacious. Goldsworthy and Turkmen understand how to compress complexity into neat packages. And though Alexander’s vocals sometimes need multitracking for his lyrics about fickle lovers to have import, he’s an astute writer, especially on “Without”: “You don’t belong to me, you’re too far away/Everything falls apart when I try to say/You’re in love, in love without me.”

There are low points here, of course, and given this group’s approach, nowhere to hide during them — those songs are amateur, failed replicas.

Accepting the accomplishments on this album of diet club music perhaps requires a suspension of distaste for bandwagoners and carpetbaggers. But in this album’s most thrilling moments, whether the music is effective because it’s familiar, or familiar because it’s effective, almost ceases to be a concern.

— Jon Caramanica,

New York Times