Stream: New albums from Touché Amoré, Youngblood Hawke, Dennis Davison

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Touché Amoré (Photo by George Clarke)

Highlighting three albums released Friday …

TOUCHÉ AMORÉ, “Lament”

There should be a new Touché Amoré album at least every two years, if for no other reason than top-drawer post-hardcore should be part of a balanced musical diet. “Lament,” the L.A. quintet’s fifth album and first since 2016, magnificently channels the rage, despair and anxiety of sandpaper-voiced Jeremy Bolm. Producer Ross Robinson (Korn, At the Drive-In, Glassjaw, Blood Brothers) gives Touché Amoré’s woundedness a new dynamic. As if letting in a ray of hope, Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra guests on “Limelight;” blisters pop on “Reminders” and “I’ll Be Your Host;” and “Feign” says more about doubt in under three minutes that many can say in an album. Save “Lament” a seat the roundtable of 2020’s best rock albums.

YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, “Edge of the World”

The L.A. electro-pop outfit’s sophomore album comes seven years after their debut, YBH’s members having taken divergent career paths after grabbing the world by the ear with their platinum single “We Come Running.” Here, the band — Sam Martin, Simon and Alice Katz, Tasso Smith and Nik Hughes — stands at the “Edge of the World,” stares into the abyss, shakes off their sugar high and gets real. Tracks like ’80s-inspired rockers “Criminals” and “Knock Me Down” avoid the usual pop tropes; Alice Katz’s lead on “Find a Way” is a nice break from Martin’s vocal euphoria; and “Waking Up the World” will satiate anybody who misses 2013’s debut “Wake Up.” Even if it falls short of a true awakening, their hearts and voices are in the right place.

DENNIS DAVISON, “The Book of Strongman”

Dennis Davison fronted L.A. power-pop/psych-rock luminaries the Jigsaw Seen for nine albums and well over two decades, and his debut solo album “The Book of Strongman” arrives almost exactly 20 years after that quartet’s aptly titled “Zenith.” Like his former band’s work, Davison’s songs are left of the dial enough so that he can’t be dismissed as another retroist; besides, he’s too dense and erudite a lyricist. Songs such as “In the Folly of Youth” (rhymes with “burning truth,” kids), “Museum Piece,” “Shadow on a Tall Tree” and “Heaven Bound” beg for lyric-sheet follow-alongs. And the experimental, static-drenched closer “What the Hell Is That Noise?” might leave you, as he says, in “a musical brain freeze.”