Just close your eyes and listen and you might almost convince yourself that The Messthetics were test tube engineered by some ax-obsessed mad scientist, designed to highlight every conceivable expression of electric guitar heroics. Novices should begin with the group’s self-titled 2018 debut, a library of riffs and a testament to the elasticity of the power trio. Then, when you’re ready for the real brain melt, dive into Anthropocosmic Nest, the wirier and more disruptive follow-up; an album that conveys the same technical prowess as their debut, but jolts it with the gutsiness and bravado that only a year of steady touring can bring. This is a band equally adept at building locomotive grooves and then ripping them open with crackling pyrotechnics; at crafting immaculately linear rock and roll songs, then allowing them to dissolve in bursts of static and noise. Anthropocosmic Nest is demonstrably more anarchic than its predecessor, but what makes it lovable is the ease with which The Messthetics shift between clean, conceptual playing and the biggest, dumbest, most lumbering riffs imaginable: check “Scrawler,” where a clattering countdown launches the band into throttling, in-the-red punk, then deep-space jazz noodling. “Drop Foot” thrashes and bashes but then takes a strange detour into junkyard percussion and knob-tweaking chirrup, as if the band is suddenly caught in a swarm of chirping cicadas. Don’t confuse it with “Insect Conference,” a weird minute and a half of twittering sound effects. And don’t let either of those songs fool you into thinking The Messthetics don’t do straight-ahead beauty: “Pacifica,” coasts through wave after wave of glorious melody, its moody atmospherics suggesting an alternate timeline in which The Messthetics play straight shoegaze; you’ll even hear an acoustic guitar in “Because the Mountain Says So,” as clarion as a folk song, as insistent as arena rock. These songs are epic in their build and patient in their pacing, and set the stage for at least one more curveball: “La Lontra,” the next to last song on the album, may be its sleaziest rock and roller of all. Scratch the shoegaze thing; maybe what this band was really cut out for is hair metal?

The Messthetics’ restless spirit is more than equalled by Tinariwen, a caravan of literal nomads whose new Amadjar was assembled on the go, recorded guerilla-style at campsites throughout the Sahara. The album’s title is translated as the foreign traveler, and at first blush it seems like it could have been affixed to most any album the group has made since its 1979 inception, each one of them bearing witness to the roving curiosity and low-key political dissidence of these Tuareg exilees. Upon closer listen, devotees may find that Amadjar captures their rambling nature—the paradoxical way in which they sound so tethered to their particular part of the Earth yet also so defined by their transience and homelessness— as vividly as any Tinariwen album to date. The relaxed and intoxicating album, devoid of anything you could justifiably call a rocker, drones and swirls with loose guitar jams that stretch into endless night; campfire rags featuring call-and-response singing of hymnal austerity and pentecostal fervor. One thing that sets the album apart from other Tinariwen releases is how they’ve opened their caravan to other wayfarers, allowing a number of similarly restless non-African musicians to overdub textures, wrinkles, and vibes of their own. These post-production effects are so organic you might not be able to place them without consulting the album credits; the closest to being ostentatious is probably Micah Nelson, whose spritely mandolin on “Taqkal Tarha” finds the connective tissue between Tinariwen’s African traditionalism and American folk, gospel, and blues. Stephen O’Malley, of the band Sun O))), adds sinister cinema to the ghostly “Wartilla,” a minor-key lament where dexterous finger-picked guitar seems like it’s being sucked into a black hole of electric drone. Bad Seed Warren Ellis shows up several times to add mournful violin, and Cass McCombs enmeshes his own guitars with the band’s thick bramble. These guests all supply welcome accents and color, but they never steal the spotlight from Tinariwen’s endlessly hypnotic weave of guitars, hand claps, and community sing-along vocals. Those with a fluency in the band’s native tongue will identify plenty of agitation in their lyrics, but even if you can’t offer a literal translation, you’ll still feel like you’re basically speaking the same language: Theirs is a musical vocabulary of pilgrimage, of peace and community amidst rootlessness and upheaval. What could be more universal?

On the topic of pilgrims making progress, consider Canadian troubadour Bruce Cockburn, whose close to three dozen (!!) singer/songwriter albums document a lifelong wrestling match with the Almighty, plus an extended inquiry into pancultural musical traditions. Crowing Ignites is only his second album of purely instrumental acoustic guitar music, and what astonishes about it is how it conveys the same characteristics that make his sung poetry so compelling; these compositions are literate, questing, and mystical, seeming at once tranquil and disquieted. A couple of elegiac cycles come toward the front of the album— “Easter” is a contemplative resurrection reverie, “April in Memphis” a procession through actual funeral bells— but his pensiveness is offset here by a handful of earthy surprises. Cockburn doles out snarling blues licks on “The Moan,” but better still is “The Mt. Lefroy Waltz,” swingin’ after-hours jazz guitar complete with brushed cymbals and the sympathetic groan of a muted trumpet (the latter supplied by coronet master Ron Miles). All of this is recorded by producer Colin Linden in immaculate clarity, and suggests that Cockburn is as enraptured by sound and texture as he is high-concept songwriting; consider “Bells of Gethsemane,” where the rustle of acoustic strings stands out against the backdrop of haunted chimes and singing bowls, its very title evoking the Christ-hauntedness that’s always animated Cockburn’s music. There’s a resourcefulness of sound on other songs, too: “Pibroch: The Wind in the Valley” features guitar strings that thrum and drone in simulation of Scottish bagpipes, while “Seven Daggers” cuts a crooked path through chiming kalimba, the tactility of Cockburn’s playing shrouded in otherworldly mist. Such excursionary arrangements mirror the album’s probing spirit: His fleet-fingered playing keeps these songs in perpetual motion even when the mood is reflective, trying to lay his hands to revelation beyond words.