There are some songs that pose a question and others that feel like an answer. Shyfrin Alliance’s new single, “Colours of Time,” does something far stranger: it wrestles with a question so personal it barely knows how to form the words. It’s an exercise in trying to name the unnamable, that internal puppet-master who tugs at the strings of doubt and ambition from a...

Before listening to a single note of Suris’ new album, “Pertinax”, I spent a few minutes just looking at the word. Pertinax. It has the distinct ring of a Stoic philosopher’s last defiant utterance or maybe a type of beetle known for its unusually stubborn shell. What a curious flag to fly for a collection of songs in an age of fleeting distraction. But...