Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

With his band El Torpedo, Mays crafts excellent alt-country-rock songs about lost love and endless highways. On this solo album, the Nova Scotia surfer dude explores similar themes but in a variety of styles. “Beach Party,” with its spacey keyboard dub, sounds like something from The Beta Band, while the title track, featuring a guest vocal from rapper Buck 65, is an urban-flavored delight. And when Mays returns to jangly California sounds on “Morning Sun,” it’s as gorgeous as anything he does with El Torpedo.

The woolly-hatted one is back. For his latest album, the Boy, born Damon Gough, pays tribute to growing up in England, with a nod to his hero Bruce Springsteen. While there’s nothing as spirited as the Boss’ “Thunder Road” or “No Surrender,” Gough has a way with modest pop songs about life’s futility, such as the piano-laced “Without a Kiss” and the acoustic blues “Time of Times.” The rocking title track sums up all things English, including royalty, The Sex Pistols and the country’s “sense of loathing and belonging.”

Canada’s Hip has achieved undeniable greatness, graduating from bar band to stadium act with consistently strong, uncompromising albums. But throughout Hip history the American charts have always eluded them. That may change with “In View,” the buoyant first single from the band’s 11th album, produced by Rob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi). Bright and accessible, it’s the closest the Hip has ever come to pop music. Also cool are excursions into one-drop reggae (“The Kids Don’t Get It”) and giddy travelogue (“Fly”).