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...

With their single “Ain’t Got Nothing But Time,” Electric High presents a glorious contradiction. Here we have a Norwegian rock band – a collective known for high-voltage, grit-under-the-fingernails swagger – serving up a sermon on the profound beauty of… doing nothing in particular. It’s a curious thing, like finding a Zen mantra scrawled on the back of a well-worn leather jacket. It feels both...