The moment the jaunty guitar kicks in on John Smyths’ new single, "Now I'm Wiser", you feel a familiar, comfortable warmth. It’s the sound of a good chair in a bar where the floor is sticky with spilled truths. And then the story starts, a classic yarn of a hard-living past yielding to a peaceful present. Smyths, a Dutch ex-metalhead singing country out of...

One rarely encounters a title as forthright in its ambition as what Nikiré offers with "ETERNITY beneath the stars of God." This single from Tom Arild Junge’s philosophical project is not something you’d play while sorting the recycling; it demands, and subsequently creates, a specific kind of quiet. The Enya comparison is there, certainly—a female voice gliding over vast, ambient soundscapes—but the effect is...