On their first album in seven years, the Strokes seem to have known they’d be returning at a crazy time.

“We are trying hard to get your attention,” singer Julian Casablancas sings on the first song, “The Adults Are Talking.”

Nine songs later, the band has definitely gotten our attention. Mission accomplished, gentlemen.

“The New Abnormal” is a superb slice of indie rock, varied, exciting and complex, with elements of glam, straight-down-the-line rock and dreamy pop. Produced this time by Rick Rubin, the album comes 19 years after the band’s seminal debut “Is This It” and is, in many ways, a fulfillment of that early potential.

“Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus” is upbeat and poppy in a way only the Strokes can do — riding on the swells of ’80s new wave (even asking of ’80s bands, “where did they go?”) but also commenting on the song structure.

Speaking of the ’80s, “Bad Decisions” repurposes Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” — he even gets a credit — and warped slices of synth propel “Why Are Sundays So Depressing.” Casablancas channels Frank Sinatra in “Not the Same Anymore” and leans on his upper register on the shimmering, Psychedelic Furs-ish “Eternal Summer.”

“Eternal Summer” hits especially close to home these days. Sinister forces are at play. Casablancas says we’re at the eleventh hour and asks, “Everybody’s on the take / Tell me are you on the take too?”

The last song — “Ode to the Mets” — is weighty, both ponderous and soaring, shapeshifting through various styles — a band looking back uneasily: “Gone now are the old times / Forgotten, time to hold on the railing.”

If we’re all going down with the ship, let this be the soundtrack.

— Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

The borders delineating M. Ward’s “Migration Stories” come in terrestrial and celestial forms, with songs inspired by his grandfather’s journey from Mexico and California earthquakes, as well as family reunions taking place in other dimensions.

Recorded principally in Quebec with members and collaborators of Arcade Fire, the collection began as largely instrumental ballads, mostly hushed moods occasionally linked by similar themes or visions.

Ward, whose career also has included roles in supergroup Monsters of Folk and — with Zooey Deschanel — in She & Him, filters reality through poetry, dreams and humane science fiction, alternating looks through grounded telescopes and microscopes in orbit.

“Unreal City,” referencing a dream about a “continental shake” and “the final tidal wave,” has the album’s nimblest rhythms and sunny backing vocals, tuning our satellite radio to the Soothing Sounds of the ’70s channel amid the calamity.

Opener “Migration of Souls,” with striking vocals from Irish duo the Lost Brothers, has a transcendent focus, while its sister track, “Heaven’s Nail and Hammer,” echoes the atmosphere of the Cowboy Junkies at their most delicate. “Coyote Mary’s Traveling Show” sounds like the result of a fragile Sun Records session.

Ward considers “Chamber Music” and “Torch,” another exception in its sprightliness, also to be connected and says that while he can’t reveal the poem that may have transformed guitar instrumental “Stevens’ Snow Man,” the words “may be useful in the middle of a drought or winter or pandemic.” If we only knew.

The relaxed pacing, Ward’s intimate vocals and tips of the cap to Hank Williams, Elvis Presley and the sounds of the West give the album a decidedly nighttime atmosphere, a drizzle of starlight that settles gently on the ears and the mind.

— Pablo Gorondi, AP