New Music: Albums From Gotye, Candy Dulfer and Jeff Lorber Fusion

“Making Mirrors”

(Samples ’n’ Seconds/

Universal Republic)

First things first: Yes, Gotye sounds a whole lot like Sting when he sings a carol of “Somebody That we Used to Know.” That shade of cocktail laxity might have helped make a strain an general strike when Gotye’s third album, “Making Mirrors,” was expelled final year in Australia, where he lives. Now “Making Mirrors” arrives in a United States along with Gotye himself, who is behaving Monday during a Bowery Ballroom.

The manuscript merges familiar gizmo-loving cocktail constructions with a stalwartly depressive mindset. Gotye, a Belgian-Australian songwriter innate Wouter De Backer, is mostly a one-man studio band, personification many instruments and building songs around samples from a record collection apparently filled with selected soul, loll music, soundtracks and exotica. The succinct guitar lick that opens “Somebody That we Used to Know,” for instance, is a few records from a Brazilian musician Luiz Bonfá.

Gotye worries about amiability destroying a world by overconsumption in “Eyes Wide Open” and sees an entertainer’s life as a rascal in “Smoke and Mirrors.” He portrays himself as a beloved who’s some-more egotistical than sensitive; he apologizes for being “wrapped adult in myself” in “Giving Me a Chance,” while in “Somebody That we Used to Know,” after he moans about his ex shutting him out, a ex (portrayed by Kimbra) shows adult to remind him about “all a times we screwed me over.”

When he does find love, he is desperately needy. The generous Motown kick in “I Feel Better” usually pulls him partway out of a despondency he keeps returning to in a verses; “Save Me” extols a partner who eases his suicidal anxiety. “In Your Light” praises a partner who can “settle a unhappiness and a voices in my head,” usually to warn, “I won’t get by if we take that light away.”

But his poignant cocktail constructions quarrel a moping. There’s a proud tiny xylophone line in “Somebody That we Used to Know,” a jazzy electric-piano representation that circles by “Smoke and Mirrors,” a galloping kick and floating guitars of “Eyes Wide Open,” a approach “In Your Light” meshes hand-clapping, guitar-strumming folk-pop with essence horns and booping electropop. The album’s one wholeheartedly joyous strain is “State of a Art,” full of pitch-shifted praises of an electric home organ that has built-in drumbeats and unnatural choir — a jigger supreme. People might let Gotye down, and clamp versa, though a gadgets never do. JON PARELES

CANDY DULFER

“Crazy” (Razor Tie)

JEFF LORBER FUSION

“Galaxy”

(Heads Up International)

Whither a essence of well-spoken jazz? A satisfactory doubt and substantially an unanswerable one, given a terms of a genre so omnivorous, so famously squishy. We can, however, contend this with confidence: The state of well-spoken jazz is strong. Evidence abounds, though we’ll extent this conference to a span of high-spirited, expertly made, differently separate new albums, by a alto saxophonist Candy Dulfer and a keyboardist Jeff Lorber.

“Galaxy” is a manuscript that some-more straightforwardly conforms to a smooth-jazz genotype, that creates sense: it comes to us from Jeff Lorber Fusion, that helped operative a hybrid some 35 years ago. And as was loyal of “Now Is a Time,” a band’s 2010 album, it’s partly a callback, connecting new songs with early-catalog staples like “The Samba,” from 1978, and “Wizard Island,” from 1980. What it proposes is an cultured continuum, if we will.

Mr. Lorber, who will spin 60 this year, brings a clinical pointing to his outlay in a studio, on Fender Rhodes piano or several other keyboards. But a stronger moments here also advise a sound of musicianly exchange. His stream chronicle of Jeff Lorber Fusion facilities a Yellowjackets bassist Jimmy Haslip, along with a saxophonist Eric Marienthal, a trumpeter Randy Brecker and a percussionist Lenny Castro. A few pointy guitarists lend a hand; Vinnie Colaiuta and Dave Weckl lift a separate change on drums.

You clarity a liquid work of these studio aces on “Live Wire,” with a disco bump that partly evokes a residence track; “The Underground,” with a flashes of pop-samba heat; and “Big Brother,” with a superslick take on a Bernard Purdie shuffle. But Mr. Lorber’s ear for chirpy tune frequency pushes this manuscript over palatability, and a self-nostalgia feels unwarranted. “Wizard Island” was a manuscript that initial brought us one Kenny G; conference a retooled pretension lane mostly creates we demeanour adult awaiting a five-day forecast.

Few such moments drag down “Crazy,” Ms. Dulfer’s new album. Produced by Printz Board, one of a enchanting elves behind a tellurian prevalence of a Black Eyed Peas, it’s a disarmingly savvy dispatch, clever on hooks as good as grooves. There’s some singing, by Ms. Dulfer and others; there’s a small, vital bit of room for solos. Only rarely, as on a closer, “Too Close,” is there most in a approach of boilerplate well-spoken jazz.

Instead it’s high-grade pop, harmless though insistent, suitable for step workouts or “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Ms. Dulfer, who has toured with Prince, thrives within a album’s parameters: her tinge on alto saxophonist is spicy though not grating, and she’s skilful with a funk-hiccup denunciation of Maceo Parker, one of her early supporters.

On a title track she opens with a array of quarter-note bleats, sounding like a digital alarm clock, and afterwards shifts into a fresh staccato.

As it happens, pop’s stream sound, with a European dance-club pedigree, is ideally matched to Ms. Dulfer, who hails from a Netherlands. One extraordinary lane on a album, “Hey Now,” even has a dubstep interlude: proof, if any were still needed, that in a adapt-or-die game, well-spoken jazz will substantially always adapt.

NATE CHINEN