Albums by Leonard Cohen, Otis Brown III and Lee Ann Womack

“Popular Problems”

(Columbia)

One song leaps out of Leonard Cohen’s 13th studio album, “Popular Problems,” arriving two days after he turned 80. “Nevermind” chugs calmly into earshot with a terse bass vamp from a keyboard and a single muffled drum playing only the beat. Mr. Cohen’s voice, a low husk barely above a whisper, chants the lyrics, putting a rhythmic edge on its seeming nonchalance. And what unfolds, in lines just four syllables long, is a tale of war, deceit, divided loyalties, bitter betrayals and grim persistence:

I had to leave

My life behind

I dug some graves

You’ll never find.

Gentle backup voices join him, along with soul-music strings; eventually a woman’s voice arrives singing “Salaam” — Arabic for “peace” — to place the story in the Middle East: “In places deep/With roots entwined” Mr. Cohen sings. There’s no lesson, no punch line, just the unflinching gaze of someone who’s already seen too much.

The rest of the album offers more bleakness, more consolation, more romance and more avuncular wisdom from Mr. Cohen, who long ago proved himself one of rock’s most profound aphorists. It continues the production approach of Mr. Cohen’s 2012 album, “Old Ideas.” Mr. Cohen collaborated with Patrick Leonard, who was Madonna’s producer in the 1980s and 1990s (on songs including “Like a Prayer”). As Mr. Cohen’s voice grows ever more sepulchral, the backdrops are subdued and rootsy, touching down in the blues and gospel and cuing the female singers who have long been his better angels, weightless and benevolent.

Mr. Cohen burnishes his persona as the wry, elegant Romeo in “Slow,” which extols the unhurried approach: “A weekend on your lips/A lifetime in your eyes.” He’s evocatively reticent in “My Oh My,” observing “Held you for a little while/My oh my oh my” over stately chords hinting at the Band. “Born in Chains,” with a gospel organ foundation, merges love and faith, compassion and redemption. The album’s major misstep is “Did I Ever Love You,” about another remembered liaison; it alternates Mr. Cohen’s rawest vocal dirge with jarringly bouncy country from the backup singers.

On this album, love is barely a refuge. Violence and destruction always loom. The slow blues of “A Street” places a broken marriage amid the wreckage of a civil war, with the singer as a scarred survivor. The hymnlike melody of “Samson in New Orleans” mourns that neglected city. And in “Almost Like the Blues,” a blues with a Latin undercurrent, Mr. Cohen sings about witnessing unbearable misery and turning inward: “I let my heart get frozen/To keep away the rot.”

The album concludes gamely, clinging to the irrational optimism of love. “You Got Me Singing” arrives with folky acoustic guitar and fiddle, and there’s almost a smile in Mr. Cohen’s voice as he shrugs and perseveres. “Even though the world is gone,” he sings, “You got me thinking/That I’d like to carry on.” JON PARELES

OTIS BROWN III

“The Thought of You”

(Revive/Blue Note)

The title song of Otis Brown III’s debut album, “The Thought of You,” comes divided into three parts, spread out across the track listing but meant to execute a single objective. It opens with a scrambled groove — courtesy of Robert Glasper on piano, Ben Williams on bass and Mr. Brown on drums — before a springlike vocal turn by Bilal. Then come several bracing solos, over forward-tilt swing rhythm: by the trumpeter Keyon Harrold (in Part I), the saxophonist John Ellis (Part II) and finally Mr. Glasper (Part III).

There might be a purely practical reason for the tune’s tripartite form, starting with track length. But as Mr. Brown makes clear elsewhere, he’s interested in the power of three, as a spiritual concept. The album opens with “The Way (Truth & Life),” a nod to one of the “I am” pronouncements of Jesus Christ, from the Book of John; two other tracks are titled “Interlude I — Truth” and “Interlude II — Life.” A more substantial offering, with vocals by the gospel stalwart Nikki Ross, unfolds as a three-part praise-and-worship medley: “I Love You Lord/We Exalt Thee/In The Beginning.”

Mr. Brown is best known in jazz circles as one of the two drummers with Us Five, an acclaimed band led by the saxophonist Joe Lovano. (He has also backed its original bassist, Esperanza Spalding, in her solo career.) A fierce and flowing agent of rhythm, Mr. Brown has the foundation to go in a number of directions. On “The Thought of You,” co-produced by Derrick Hodge, he pursues each, all at once.

That the album has any sense of continuity, despite its tangents, can be attributed to its personnel, much of which was already intact during Mr. Brown’s undergraduate years at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Mr. Glasper in particular puts his stamp on the album — steering the vamps, creating a vibe, writing an arrangement of Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One,” in sinuous 7/8 meter, for Gretchen Parlato to sing.

But the album’s eagerness to impress clearly comes from Mr. Brown, whose second album will probably feel less jittery than this. For a starting point, he could do a lot worse than “Stages of Thought,” a brooding postbop burner in oblong meter, with a coda that emulates the hip-hop producer J Dilla, in perfectly contemporary fashion. NATE CHINEN

LEE ANN WOMACK

“The Way I’m Livin’ ”

(Sugar Hill)

About a decade ago, Lee Ann Womack made a sharp left turn — once one of country music’s pop queens, she remade herself as a preserver of its heritage. The result was the 2005 album “There’s More Where That Came From,” one of the loveliest country albums of the 2000s and an argument that in Nashville, traditionalism could be plenty pop, too.

But the genre didn’t follow Ms. Womack; all around her, mainstream country became an utterly modern omnivore. Six years have passed since her last album, and her new one, “The Way I’m Livin’,” is her first outside of Nashville’s major-label system.

She’s still mining the genre’s past, from countrypolitan to light rockabilly, and at its best, showcases how those styles suit her as well as the bright sheen of her 1998-2000 peak. “Chances Are” is the high point here, a gleaming song about desperation, with Ms. Womack lonely at a bar, looking to revisit an old mistake:

Well, I know you’ve been around

And you’ve seen what you needed to see

And at night when you’re dreamin’

You’re probably not dreamin’ about me

Ms. Womack is an exceptional singer with a plangent voice designed for lingering on notes and words, especially plaintive ones — that’s why some of the wordier songs here, like “Tomorrow Night in Baltimore,” feel forced. She sings a soothing but not terribly necessary cover of Neil Young’s “Out on the Weekend,” a song that’s not terribly soothing. Sometimes, seemingly out of respect for her voice, the production here can feel spare and a little listless.

But when Ms. Womack is allowed to luxuriate in her anguish, she is entrancing. On the title track and “Send It on Down,” she stares down the pain of drinking too much. On “Nightwind,” she talks about needing to leave a good man because she’s too toxic for him. And on “Sleeping With the Devil,” she talks about loving someone dangerous, and sounds almost calm, as if this is exactly where she’s supposed to be. JON CARAMANICA