POP/ROCK

Various artists, "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County" (Concord)

As you can gather from the title, the Stephen King-John Mellencamp stage musical is not exactly "The Sound of Music." And the Mellencamp-penned songs on this soundtrack, produced by T Bone Burnett and performed by a collection of stars and cult favorites, grippingly reflect the haunting, gothic nature of the show while being able to stand on their own apart from the book.

Blues and folk, elemental and evocative, underpin the music here, from Elvis Costello's oozing charm and menace as a devil figure in "That's Me" to the slide-guitar bite of Ryan Bingham and Will Dailey's "Brotherly Love," the swamp groove of "And Your Days Are Gone" with Sheryl Crow and Phil and Dave Alvin, and the gospel-flavored fervor of Taj Mahal's "Tear This Cabin Down." Neko Case offers a dose of attitude with "That's Who I Am," while Rosanne Cash betrays matriarchal melancholy on "You Don't Know Me" and Kris Kristofferson, with his seriously weathered voice, is a natural as the tortured patriarch on "How Many Days."

Mellencamp himself appears only at the end, to sum it all up with "Truth," and cap what proves to be a successful new career move.

Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

Sigur Rós, "Kveikur" (XL)

Caption

In 2008, this cult-beloved Icelandic band upended expectations with "Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust," a set of relatively concise art-pop songs that suggested, after a series of increasingly tedious space-rock albums, that Sigur Rós had developed an interest in rhythm and energy. Predictably, reaction among the group's cult was mixed, and last year it backtracked with the typically sluggish "Valtari." All hope for excitement, it seemed, was lost.

Consider it another pleasant surprise, then, that on "Kveikur," Sigur Rós regains some of the ground it gave up. "Stormur" conjures the delicious anxiety of young love, while the grinding title track gets as close to Nine Inch Nails' furious industrial disco as Kanye West's "Yeezus" does. In moving away from the band's stultifying idea of beauty, "Kveikur" gets at something livelier — and far more lifelike.

Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times