This Year’s Model (Deluxe Edition) (Hip-O) Elvis Costello’s already enormous back catalog has just expanded. Although all of the demos and other bonus material on the latest rendition of the snarling songwriter’s second album has been out for years, Deluxe Edition marks the first official release of a 1978 concert in Washington, D.C. It shows some of the twists taken by a strong rock band on a set of great early Costello songs.

Earlier this year, Dave Cousins—lead vocalist for England’s longtime progressiverock/folk outfit The Strawbs— entered the studio with pedalsteel guitarist Melvin Duffy to record a CD that he could support on his current U.S. “Stories and Songs Tour.” The result is Secret Paths, which is only Cousins’ third proper solo album since 1972. Because it lacks a full band, the 11-song disc isn’t nearly as lively as 2007’s The Boy in the Sailor Suit. But Cousins wraps his Mark-Knopfler-meets-Nils-Lofgren

Until Beck Hansen released Odelay in 1996, he was a one-hit wonder: In the period when indie-rock was making its way onto the pop charts, his “Loser” was one of its iconic novelty songs. Odelay informed listeners that Beck was to be taken seriously, although he didn’t actually sound like he intended to be. Twelve years later, the double-disc deluxe version of Odelay has it the same two ways. It bulks up the original release with plenty of bonus material, but spurns reverent, meaningful liner notes in favor of consciously rambling reminiscences—at least that’s what they might be—from Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore, and variously irrelevant and intriguing opinions on the album from 15 teenagers interviewed by . . .

This recording doesn’t create a new sound, and for that we’re thankful—especially at a time when so much music goes to extremes for its own sake, but forgets about the basics. The debut by Milwaukee’s Hounds Tooth is an exciting recording with a sensibility that should be heeded by many bands trying to push the edge.

World music fans have already been exposed to the contemporary music of the Tuareg, the displaced nomads of the southern Sahara, through the band Tinariwen. Toumast offers a similar approach with desert dry, bluesy electric guitar riffs accompanying hand-slapped percussion and call-and-response . . .

Made in China (Invisible China) “I just want some rock music”: The first words you hear on the latest offering from Martin Atkins—ex-PiL/Killing Joke drummer, Pigface ringmaster and industrial entrepreneur— have grown so familiar to us in the West that they sound comical. In some parts of the world, however, a simple attraction to rock music still constitutes an act of defiance with potentially grave consequences. Of course, as the Chinese economy awakens into the profit-ravenous behemoth that it is, Chinese society is undergoing massive, sweeping changes. And, like a predictable virus, rock music isn’t far behind, already infiltrating Chinese life and spinning off new strains. Savvy to this and sensing untapped creative frontiers, Atkins set off for China in 2006 and began an intensive two-week process of collaboration and sampling.

Joni Mitchell may be more revered by jazz players than by her pop-music peers. Pianist Herbie Hancock is the latest acolyte, releasing River: the joni letters, a tribute disc that delivers at a high, innovative level. Hancock’s assimilation of the material is unexpectedly introspective. His performance—which boasts the now-requisite guest artists, including Norah Jones, Tina Turner and, surprisingly, Leonard Cohen, in addition to Mitchell herself—is one of the pianist’s best efforts.

If there’s another album that gives such an impression of pop offhandedness yet holds up three decades later as a work of brilliance, I can’t think of it. For most listeners, Nick Lowe came onto the scene via his 1979 hit “Cruel to Be Kind” and Rockpile, the band he co-fronted with Dave Edmunds. But before that he was the primary songwriter/singer/bassist for Brinsley Schwarz, reigning champions of England’s rootsy pub rock scene. It’s a safe bet that over the course of the group’s half-dozen albums, Lowe learned a thing or two about making records. So when his buddies Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson started Stiff Records, they gave Nick the nod as house producer.

Even when Bob Mould was a young punk fronting Hüsker Dü during the 1980s, he grasped that mature intelligence and loud electric guitars could forge a near-seamless partnership. Like Pete Townshend and Richard Thompson—his closest artistic forefathers—he hasn’t turned away from the knowledge, welcome and unwelcome, that age can bring. On District Line, the unwelcome knowledge is that growing older is no guarantee, where the heart is concerned, of growing wiser. The welcome knowledge is that Mould can still crank pain through amplifiers and catalyze it into something that can feel like catharsis.

Bringing an indie edge to their brand of alt country, Milwaukee’s Juniper Tar handle dreamy three-part-harmonies and weighty poetic license with an ease belying their debut-album status. Sleepy melodi- cism mixes with droning guitars in brooding, late-night trips of Americana.