Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
Jacksonville City Nights (4 stars)
Jacksonville City Nights is the second of three planned albums this year from prolific singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, who is returning to his alt-country roots after experimenting with neo-garage on 2003's Rock N Roll and Smiths-style mope-rock on last year's Love is Hell. Like his double-album, Cold Roses, which was released only a few months ago, Jacksonville finds Adams backed by his touring band the Cardinals and exploring the whisky-soaked country that served him so well on his first two solo efforts.
Adams has only two concerns, booze and broken hearts, and on Jacksonville he explicates both like an old pro, whether on the deceptively upbeat "The Hardest Part" or the self-explanatory melancholy of "My Heart is Broken." It doesn't get much bleaker than the opening lines of "Pa" ("Pa drove to town yesterday / To pick out her grave"), but Adams makes sadness beautiful, and Jacksonville doesn't come across as depressing or cynical. It's a celebration of country music's best traditions, with moaning pedal steel, tinkling piano and haunting lyrics, and it's easily Adams' strongest album in years.
Claude Challe
The Best of Claude Challe (4 stars)
From his base in Paris comes this three-disc set of work from the founder of the internationally famous Buddha Bar. Divided into the sweeping, mood-evoking categories of Love, Life and Dance, the music covers more than a decade of Challe's career.
More of a multicultural musical tour of the world than a compilation of electronic dance, the 41 tracks are an auditory buffet. Getting off to a graceful start is Love's opening number, Pink Martini, a jazzy cocktail band from—of all places—Portland, Oregon, and their 1997 hit, "La Soledad."
From there, things just get odd but stay familiar with songs such as the Beatles' "And I Love Her" performed by Jose Alberto and "La Vie En Rose," perhaps made most famous by Louis Armstrong but presented here in Indian by Pascal of Bollywood.
Fun classics such as "Showroom Dummies" make an appearance, and Challe shows his love for famed film composer Ennio Morricone (who scored Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns) by blending the musical pocket watch from For a Few Dollars More into Audio Delux's "60 Seconds." Another standout track is Louie Vegas' rendition of the Chakacha's "Jungle Fever," which also has a movie pedigree from Boogie Nights.
Impossible to sum up and maddening to try and categorize, The Best of Claude Challe offers hours of tireless listening, with new discoveries around each bend.
B.B. King
Original Greatest Hits (5 stars)
Las Vegas resident B. B. King turned 80 this past month and that fact is being celebrated with a new disc, 80, that predictably revisits past glories with assists from today's young acts, and when you're 80, new stars include Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Elton John and members of the Eagles—thanks, kids! No tribute, of course, is too much to offer to the undisputed King of the Blues, Ambassador of the Blues and whatever else they call the last man standing from the generation of founding blues performers.
But for those who really want something so special that it is worthy of the man, the real present for King's fans is Original Greatest Hits, that compiles on two discs many of the sides King recorded from the late '40s (starting with his first 45, "Miss Martha King," backed with "When Your Baby Packs Up and Goes") to the early '60s for the RPM and Kent labels. Amazingly until now, despite the many King anthologies available, outside of investing in a box set, this material has been relatively hard to find gathered together. And it is here that King's classics found original expression, such as "3 O'Clock Blues," which kicks off this collection, as well as other now-familiar and essential tracks such as "Sweet Sixteen Pts. 1 & 2" and "Every Day I Have the Blues."