Editor’s Note: In Sound Advice, veteran BDN entertainment writer Dale McGarrigle, rock columnist Emily Burnham, former British music writer Adam Corrigan and a revolving stable of BDN writers review new albums from across the musical spectrum.

“Return to Cookie Mountain” (Interscope) – TV on the Radio

TV on the Radio’s third full-length album “Return to Cookie Mountain” is a sweeping masterpiece of fuzzy guitars, punchy saxophone playing, tribal drumming and spine-tingling vocal harmonies. It’s also, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, the best album of the year.

Now, it certainly won’t appeal to everyone. TV on the Radio’s influences are wide (shoegazer rock, free jazz, gospel, dub, hip-hop, and so on), and their approach to music making is so creative and genre-defying that to ears not accustomed to such things it’ll sound like a pretentious mess.

Which it is anything but. The album starts off with “I Was a Lover,” an elegy to a relationship gone wrong – or to an angry, politically divided American people. One is never sure if singer and lyricist Tunde Adebimpe is singing about love, or about war. But the thick, syncopated drums, flashes of piano and noisy guitar mesh with Adebimpe’s distinctive wail, and it becomes clear that this is an album about both those things.

“Wolf Like Me” is a buzzing, forward-propelled blast of post-everything rock, while “A Method” features more of the killer harmonies present on the band’s debut. “Let the Devil In” pairs heavily percussive rhythm with a simple chant, making it seem more like a group singalong during a firestorm than a song by a mild-mannered indie rock band.

And “Province,” the album’s centerpiece, features David Bowie (the band’s No. 1 fan) on backing vocals, a sweet piano refrain, and an uplifting message that has been echoed by everyone from John Lennon to modern-day peace activists: As the song says, “love is the province of the brave.” – EMILY BURNHAM

“Highway Companion” (American) – Tom Petty

In late middle age, after a rough personal spell, Tom Petty is on the road. It’s not a journey of discovery or conquest he’s singing of in his third solo record, “Highway Companion,” but of resignation, regret and returning, a humbler man, to his roots.

Petty’s strong suits have always been the easygoing guitar grooves and good-natured Southern drawl he brought to his tunes, and both are evident here. But for the first time, he has added something more personal.

Instead of “Running down a dream, that never would come to me,” as he sang on his first solo effort, 1989’s “Full Moon Fever,” Petty observes that “Livin’ free is gainin’ on me, can’t keep ahead of my dreams,” on “Highway Companion’s” “This Old Town.”

Petty hasn’t exactly gone confessional in this collection; lyrics are still mostly on the surface of things. But the emotional context he sets seems to be the result of some soul-searching.

The record is full of traveling imagery, most of it propelling the narrator to places – geographical and emotional – that he doesn’t necessarily choose to visit. In “Saving Grace,” the terrific single, the scene is set:

I’m passing sleeping cities

Fading by degrees

Not believing all I see to be so

I’m flyin’ over backyards

Country homes and ranches

Watching life between the branches below

“Highway Companion” is not a descent into bitterness and despair. Sonically, it’s as pleasant sounding as any of Petty’s previous work, recalling the fun sound achieved on 1988’s “Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1,” which is not surprising, given it was produced by Petty’s fellow Wilbury Jeff Lynne.

The added lyrical depth coupled with ear-friendly tunes makes for one of Petty’s strongest offerings yet. – TOM GROENING

“Bleeding Heart Graffiti” (Warner Bros.) – Nina Gordon

Sometimes environment can be a factor in an album’s final sound.

A good example would be “Bleeding Heart Graffiti,” the second solo album by former Veruca Salt member Gordon.

After a year of touring, the Chicago native headed for Los Angeles, where she got spiritually in touch with singers who inspired her, such as Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt.

Not surprisingly, the then newly unattached Gordon wrote more than a dozen songs about relationships, ranging from hope to falling in love to the eventual break-up.

Sounds simple enough, but the process took five years from her move west to the album’s release. She scrapped a set of tracks that she recorded with producer Ethan Johns, then hooked up with producer Bob Rock, who helmed her debut album, “Tonight and the Rest of My Life.”

Most of the tracks that became “Bleeding Heart Graffiti” were recorded in two days with a stellar group of musicians (including a solo by Audioslave’s Tom Morello on “Don’t Let Me Down”). Then Gordon and Rock laid down vocals, harmonies and overdubs in a month at his studio in Maui, Hawaii.

This abbreviated recording cycle gives the album an immediacy and rawness that more polishing might have muted, and it’s better for that.

“Bleeding Heart Graffiti” is worth the wait for Gordon fans, and its thoughtful rock is sure to bring her new converts. – DALE MCGARRIGLE

“Riot City Blues” (Sony) – Primal Scream

Newcomers to the Primal Scream party may be a little perplexed by “Riot City Blues.” However, those who have followed the band from the ’80s won’t be too surprised that Bobby Gillespie and gang have scrounged up the leather pants from the back of the closet and worked on loosening up their hip shakes.

Whether the absence of Kevin Shields (ex My Bloody Valentine) this time around has prompted the band to ditch the more experimental electronic sound featured on “XTRMNTR” and “Evil Heat” is debatable. Either way, “Riot City Blues” is nothing new for the Scream or music in general. Instead, it recalls 1994’s “Give Out But Don’t Give Up” after a funk-removal operation, or their eponymous 1989 album. And, yes, as you’ll hear repeatedly, it sounds a lot like the Rolling Stones’ swagger of the early ’70s.

Primal Scream is, musically at least, back on the hedonism express and “Riot City Blues” is a huge slab of macho rock ‘n’ roll, liberally seasoned with wheezing, harmonica-driven 12-bar blues. It’s as dumb as it is loud, and as much mindless fun as it is dumb. – ADAM CORRIGAN