Porcupine Tree’s album-length 2009 song cycle The Incident is given a full concert reading here, and what Octane Twisted lacks in studio dynamics, it more than makes up for with visceral power.

In a gritty reimagining of the old Animals sound, Eric Burdon has joined up with Cincinnati garage rockers the Greenhornes — featuring the rhythm section from the Raconteurs — for a raggedy-ass street-fighting EP.

Proof that every one’s guilty pleasure is their own: We reached almost no consensus on this particular version of Desert Island Discs, with only the Carpenters, the Electric Light Orchestra, Hall and Oates and Olivia Newton-John garnering more than one mention.

It doesn’t really matter what Isis is defined as anymore. The band called it quits in 2010 after the release of a final studio album, the remarkable Wavering Radiant, and has ridden off into the proverbial Boston sunset.

Just three years out of the Berklee College of Music, pianist and composer Julian Shore has figured out a couple of important things pretty early on in his career: mind your melodies and present them in the best possible light.