After hitting their stride on their third duo LP in 2025, Rachael & Vilray begin ’26 with a master class in expanded reissues.

Outfitted with the previously unreleased bossa-nova-by-way-of-Italy swing of “One Wonders Why,” West of Broadway (Deluxe Edition) goes on to deconstruct the album and show listeners how it was built beginning with “Off Broadway” minus guest Stephen Colbert.

Lo-fi phone demos of six album cuts—“Is it Jim?” and “Closer,” on which composer Vilray sings scratch vocals for his partner from Lake Street to Dive into, among them—and finished, stripped-down duo versions of full-band album cuts like “Forever Never Lasts” and “The Stuff” round out this masterful revisiting.

Of course, these extras would mean little without the original album.

With Lake Street Dive’s Price on co-lead vocals and the mononym guitarist, composer and velvet-voiced Vilray backed by a big band playing mid-20th-century jazz, Rachael & Vilray for the first time sound like a full-time gig rather than the side project it is.

And as LSD moves increasingly toward pop music, Vilray’s songs on West of Broadway give Price the opportunity revisit the music she initially embraced. And she shines in doing so.

Spanning the sprightly humor of “Is it Jim?,” in which the narrator’s lover turns into a tortoise (rhymes with enormous and laborious) to the languid romance of “Closer,” whose long instrumental interlude of vibes and clarinet qualifies as a sonic sex scene, West of Broadway is as much a love letter to New York as to love itself.

This is revealed in such songs as “My Key to Gramercy Park,” “Manhattan Serenade” and “Off Broadway,” on which funny man Colbert reveals himself a serious vocalist capable of harmonizing with these top-shelf singers.

This is old-time music authentic enough to appeal to the Greatest Generation and refreshed in a way to appeal to those who listen in their footsteps.