Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

She’s a groundbreaker, bringing African music into the pop mainstream. Now the Grammy-winning diva has pulled off an impressive feat: taking Talking Heads’ classic 1980 worldbeat album and deepening its essential African-ness, upping the hypnotic polyrhythmic grooves on “Crosseyed and Painless” and turning “Once in a Lifetime” into a joyous carnival celebration.

Neko’s latest is a gem—self-produced and full of melodic charms and fairy-tale delights. “Bad Luck” is all soaring girl-group harmonies, while “Oracle of the Maritimes,” co-written with Laura Veirs, and “Gumball Blue,” one of two songs penned with New Pornographers bandmate Carl Newman, take listeners deep into the raven-haired siren’s rich, imaginative world.

One of the brightest, most refreshingly original female singers to emerge from the UK in the last dozen years, Allen suffered several personal and professional setbacks, including her split from the father of her two daughters, a battle with substance abuse and the lukewarm response to her last album, 2014’s Sheezus. Allen has also been given a rough ride by the British tabloid press. But her’s fourth album is a triumphant comeback in which the 33-year-old “Smile” singer has taken control of her story with starkly honest confessional songs. On “Apples,” she sings quietly over a simple keyboard riff about how her breakup with her husband mirrors her parents’ divorce. And she tackles her bad p...