Noah Lennox makes music swathed in so much synth noise, ambient voices and ricocheting stereophonic WTFs, it can feel like you're swept into a tidal wave of bong water. But life can feel that way too. The rapturous beauty on the Animal Collective singer's fourth solo disc is built on basic stuff: Lennox's choirboy tenor – multiplied into billowing harmonies – and sweet melodies. If it's a bit less stunning than 2007's Person Pitch, it's also more focused. "Last Night at the Jetty" is nearly a Platters song, all doo-wop lilt and swoon. And "Scheherazade" conjures a space-station piano-bar crooner over a lonely chord, vintage wine in a strange new bottle.

Listen to "Last Night at the Jetty":

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“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"