Bright Eyes’ new album is a sound and word collage: confessional yet opaque, intimate yet anthemic — dense and dizzying and dark, yet catchy and engaging.

“Five Dice, All Threes” is the trio’s first album of new songs since 2020. Frontman Conor Oberst’s familiar, distinctive punk-folk tremolo serves as the aural and spiritual anchor.

“I hate the protest singer staring at me in the mirror,” he sings on “Hate.”

Oberst is good at his job, though, as are his bandmates. Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott provide inventive accompaniment on instruments ranging from banjo and pedal steel to synthesizer and celeste. Electric guitars drenched in pedal effects are prominent in the lo-fi but intricate sonic patchwork, as is movie dialogue and a dice game.

Oberst had a hand in all the compositions, with help from Walcott and Alex Levine of the So So Glos. They draw from punk, power pop and classic rock, with sprinkles of jazz and hip-hop. It’s an appropriately expansive setting for discourses on discontent, disillusion and death.

The album is not as relentlessly heavy as that sounds. The first song sports a whistling introduction worthy of Disney, and some of Oberst’s observations are similarly playful.

“You shouldn’t place bets on the New York Mets,” he sings on “Bells and Whistles.” Grim contemplations about mortality on “The Time I Have Left” are leavened by an ironic singalong verse that goes, “Sha la la la la la,” although a vocal contribution from the National’s Matt Berninger’s baritone ensures the mood doesn’t get too bright.

The tunnel at the end of the light is a recurring topic. Cat Power’s ethereal backing vocals distinguish “All Threes,” which laments the toll of time, as does “Tiny Suicides,” which ends with sobbing.

On the final song, “Tin Soldier Boy,” Walcott’s trumpet serenades Oberst’s repeated reminder that our days are numbered. Point taken.

Other subject matter includes Bud Light beer and the Bible, blown speakers and used amplifiers, cracks in the heart, bad dreams, artificial intelligence, aging and the weather.

Oberst’s a town crier with the latest news, striving to make sense of it all. — Steven Wine, Associated Press

For Michael Bublé aficionados, “The Best of Bublé” is a gift — a celebration of the Canadian singer’s best work, with a couple previously unreleased songs thrown in.

Bublé rose to fame in the early 2000s for his capacity to take staple songs from the worlds of jazz, blues and the Great American Songbook and make them his own, through his angelic and controlled vocal tone. He was quickly celebrated, too, for his original hits, many of which are present on this album: “Home,” “Haven’t Met You Yet” and “Everything.”

But this greatest hits collection does more than rehash the past. “The Best of Bublé” welcomes in the new through two unreleased songs, illustrating his range and elastic approach to genre.

“Don’t Blame It On Me” brings out the cheery side of Bublé. Beneath his voice are lively horns that fill a room, hand claps and acoustic guitars, a dance that makes it absolutely impossible to hear without smiling.

“Quizás, Quizás, Quizás,” a cover of a Cuban classic written by Osvaldo Farrés and made famous by Bobby Capó, allows Bublé to show off in Spanish.

Those songs placed next to his best-known material makes “The Best of Bublé” the perfect present for his die-hard followers and an accelerated crash course for any newcomers. “The Best of Bublé” is a beautiful and nostalgic journey, one best consumed while sipping a dirty martini in an art nouveau bar, channeling a past time. His bossa nova takes the listener on a journey.

The only thing missing for this release — the only thing that could make it a truly in-depth visitation of his career — would be the inclusion of some of his Christmas songs. But holiday feelings aside, “The Best of Bublé” is one to place under the tree, a delightful catalogue representing a modern classic voice. — Martina Inchingolo, Associated Press