A city can teach a person how to carry noise. The Liberties, with its old trade routes and close communal pulse, has long carried dense human music. From that inheritance, Zak Coghlan appears to have taken not only a taste for melody, but a belief that feeling becomes sharper when placed inside a story that can stand up under pressure. “Lead Balloon”, his new single...

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...