Press play and the room changes temperature. 'Make The World Stand Still' by Kaitlin Corbett Jones comes in with piano, strings, and a voice that sounds ready for the balcony seats and the person crying quietly in the back row. This is big-feeling music, but it is not messy for the sake of drama. Kaitlin Corbett Jones has the training to go massive and the...

Listening to John Keenan’s “Wreckage of the Past” feels like being handed the audio diary of a ghost who is not yet dead. This is an 18-song excavation of a psyche at war, made all the more intense by the knowledge that Keenan is the sole architect—producer, writer, mixer, and tormented protagonist. The whole project has the hermetically sealed, slightly feverish quality of a...