Radney Foster
This World We Live In (3.5 stars)
Texas singer/songwriter Radney Foster is one of Americana's purest sons. His music has always been a mix of traditional country, R&B and song-crafty pop. Think of a male Sheryl Crow with more of a Beatles influence. On This World We Live In, Foster continues what he does best but he does it with a different band this time.
Instead of using regular Nashville session men, Foster went to Los Angeles and tapped two members of Keith Richards's solo band (guitarist Waddy Wachtel and drummer Charley Drayton) Wallflowers keyboardist Rami Jaffe and Jackson Browne bassist Bob Glaub.
The result: catchy honky-tonk pop from a true troubadour.
South
Adventures in the Underground Journey to the Stars (4.5 stars)
Along with Coldplay, Elbow, Doves and Travis, South is a post-Radiohead band from the U.K. that tries awfully hard to do their own thing while paying tribute to the best English rock band to come on the scene in the last 20 years.
On South's third and latest CD, the band succeeds wildly in expanding their sound—a prog-rock mix of anthemic guitar textures and groovy dance beats.
The album's opener, "Shallow," even features New Order-ish guitar strums that burst in between the song's mesmerizing and propulsive drums.
South's music celebrates the sweat of the dance floor and the romance of spacey melodic atmospherics.
It's simply stunning.
Editors
The Back Room (2.5 stars)
Not nearly as good as Interpol but much better than all those other Interpol clones swirling around, Editors start off their debut album with the kind of tension and hooks that makes sweet-sad teenagers paint themselves black, read poetry and smoke cloves (if teenagers even do that anymore). Opening tracks "Lights" and "Munich" are dark and mysterious and pretty damn catchy, with Tom Smith's voice quivering, shaking like, well, he really does have "a million things to say," as he tells us in "Lights." Things quickly fade away for this British band, though, as songs start to resemble photocopies of photocopies. "Camera," for example, is the band's best try at a ballad, but anybody who's listened to Britpop has seen this picture many times before.
Elefant
The Black Magic Show (3 stars)
Elefant is sort of like the indie-rock version of Boyz II Men, obsessed with women and how to make them swoon, ready to plead for a kiss and beg for one more chance at every moment. On the brilliant ballad "Why," lead singer/modelizer/Lindsay Lohan pal Diego Garcia sounds like Morrissey with a testosterone injection as he drives himself crazy convincing some lady of the night that, really, that he can change. But Garcia runs into problems a lot because he knows how goddamn pretty he sounds and looks; on songs like "Uh Oh Hello" he's too busy preening to be taken seriously. It's enough to get him a one-night stand, surely, but you just feel that he wants more.
Ms. John Soda
Notes and the Like (3.5 stars)
What started as a cutesy electronic-pop side project for Couch's Stephanie Bohm and the Notwist's Micha Archer has grown unexpectedly sturdy legs with this second full-length and third overall release in four years. Without sacrificing the sweeping panoramas of previous efforts, the German duo has upped the ante with more robust melodies, most notably the playful-yet-ominious "No. One" and the soaring, Stereolab-esque "Hands."
At times, Ms. John Soda's gimmicky laptop wizardy can prove distracting, but not enough to spoil an otherwise laudable album.
Spencer Patterson
Calexico
Garden Ruins (3 stars)
The Tucson desert-rock collective's gradual shift from lo-fi, mariachi-flavored, spaghetti western scene-setting to fully realized, pop-influenced composition finally feels complete with Garden Ruins. Calexico still gets weird now and again—as on French-language shanty "Nom De Plume"—but, mostly, the disc leans toward more accessible fare, from dusty alt-country ("Yours and Mine") to joyous power pop ("Letter to Bowie Knife") to haunting folk-rock ("All Systems Red"). The appeal of that transformation will depend almost entirely on each listener's attachment to the old sound, and his or her willingness to adapt with the band.
Charlie Hunter Trio
Copperopolis (3.5 stars)
Are you a rock lover who's jazz-curious? This might be the right starter disc for you. Guitarist Hunter frequently departs from the more atmospheric plucking called to mind by the phrase "jazz guitar" and bends into nicely frayed blues riffs. Which means there'll be sounds you, the tentative listener, can glom onto. ("I was just feeling rocky, I guess," Hunter has said of this album.) In the terrific opening number, "Cueball Bobbin'," Hunter lays a trail of fire across a driving, funky base laid down by drummer Derrek Phillips and saxman/organist John Ellis, and Copperopolis is off and grooving. Rock-inflected jazz usually gets filed under the derisive lable "smooth," but this is lively stuff worth a listen whether you like guitar rock or bop jazz. Nothing "smooth" about it.
Rhett Miller
The Believer (3.5 stars)
Rhett Miller, frontman of the Old 97's, is back with his second solo album, The Believer. Miller has created lyrics that amuse, torture and inspire, and music that textures layer upon layer of detail and melody. His solo focus turns from hard-core alt-country songs about drinking and whoring to zero in on sensitivity, love and hope. On the duet "Fireflies," Miller and Rachael Yamagata make the story of longing and loss play out like a movie. Also included are new versions of Old 97's hits "Singular Girl" and "Question," and for those needing a helping of rock in their diet, Miller obliges with the blues-inspired "Ain't that Strange."
The Corrs
Home (3 stars)
The Corrs were dubbed Irish pop culture's first sex symbols, but the three sisters and one brother are less concerned with looks and more with creating songs that span borders, cultures and eras. The Corrs have a knack for writing pop songs that offer hints of traditional Irish instruments and creating a gentle genre that doesn't push too hard in any one direction. On their eleventh album, the Corrs have fine-tuned songs like "Peggy Gordon" and "Black is the Colour" by finding the perfect tempo, most gorgeous tunes and adding the perfect amount of personality and Irish flavor to each.
Shooter Jennings
Electric Rodeo (3.5 stars)
On his second album in two years, Waylon's son delivers the same mix of country and Southern rock with outlaw swagger and a sly sense of humor. He invokes the spirit of his dad both explicitly (on the closing ballad "It Ain't Easy") and implicitly, in his iconoclastic attitude and rejection of the dominant, slick style of country music.
The sound is slightly looser than on Jennings' debut, and there's nothing quite as pop-oriented as last year's single "4th of July." The result is grittier but often more fun—how can you resist a song whose first line is "If I get too drunk tonight / Jesus is going to drive me home"?
Teddy Geiger
Underage Thinking (2 stars)
Seventeen-year-old singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger is like John Mayer with training wheels. For sensitive teens or tweens who can't handle the icky sexuality of "Your Body is a Wonderland," Geiger's debut album offers wholesome, sincere acoustic pop that is safe for all ages. He even apologizes to his mom and dad for his rebelliousness on "Thinking Underage."
Geiger deserves credit for writing or cowriting all but one of the album's 12 tracks, and playing many of the instruments himself. But his songs are so bland and gloppy that they'll make you long for the edginess of John Mayer.
DJ Icey
Y4K Presents (3.5 stars)
Eddie Pappa continues defining the funky breakbeat genre with his 14-track album, part of the Y4K series from Distinct'ive Records.
It's DJ Icey's first release in two years and shows the Orlando native still at the top of his game, mixing tracks full of sultry vocals, driving rhythms and beats that make your hips want to do the lambada and other forbidden things. The disc works as one giant song (or after-hours party), starting slow and easy with haunting sampled vocals eternally echoing, then moving up to a multi-track crescendo before bringing it back to an exhausting, mellow close.