SOUNDCHECK

Lucinda Williams


West

(4 stars)

In real life, she's madly in love and engaged to a record-label exec. But one wouldn't know it from West. Going by the album's 13 stripped-down meditations on heartbreak, despair and longing, these are dark days for the Grammy winner Time magazine once named America's best songwriter. Her mama died ("Fancy Funeral," "Mama You Sweet"). Her relationship's gone sour ("Learning How to Live," "Everything Has Changed"). Heck, she can't even find a man to get her off ("Come On").

Though death and lost love were always dominant themes in Williams' repertoire, here she finally appears fed up with the constant drain. Witness "Wrap My Head Around That," nine minutes of droning, nearly obsessive-compulsive chanting about another in a long line of lover/liars. There's also the bleak, reverberating "Rescue," in which she reminds herself, "He can't save you from the plain and simple truth/The waning winters of your youth/He can't save you. He can't fix you."

But with endings come new beginnings, and more than anything, Williams seems anxious to put the past behind her. "I'll make the most of what you left me with ... they say the best is yet to come," she promises in "Learning How to Live," before inviting a kindred spirit to explore what might be in the wistful title track/album closer.

The singer/songwriter behind West is not the defiant outlaw of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road or the world-weary storyteller of Essence. Less bluesy and ballsy; more confessional and focused, this is an open-road rambler of a musician yearning, once and for all, to fully move on.

The Apples in Stereo


New Magnetic Wonder

(3 stars)

"Turn up your ster-eee-oooo," demands a vocoder-treated vocal at the start of New Magnetic Wonder's opening track, "Can You Feel It?" What follows is four minutes of the bright, catchy pop-rock goodness that is The Apples' hallmark. Guitars chime, treated vocals swell with enthusiasm and you're put in mind of Electric Light Orchestra and The Cars—two bands that managed to distill a perfect pop formula, much as The Apples have. (Despite frontman Robert Schneider's claim of having developed a new musical scale just for the record, this is profoundly familiar stuff—about as new and different as the mullet.) The song ends with a heckler who angrily contradicts the song's crank-it-up abandon: "Turn it down! Everything's feedbacking; can't your hear it?"

That joke ending is a good example of why New Magnetic Wonder gets three stars instead of four. Schneider and company make some terrific music, more than worthy of its influences (there's lots of Beach Boys and Cheap Trick here, in addition to the aforementioned ELO), yet the final product is blunted by whimsy and self-awareness. For every perfect radio single like "Play Tough" and "Sunndal Song," there's a piece of ill-advised business—a tuneless instrumental based on Schneider's "new scale," or a transitional piece that does little but pad the record's length. Still, when the man says to turn up your stereo, you may take him at his word. Just bear in mind you'll want to leave the room, you know, when everything's "feedbacking."

Various artists


Endless Highway: The Music of The Band

(1 1/2 stars)

Tribute comps wake up in the morning aspiring to be spotty and clock in for work hoping to litter CD collections with their near-abject worthlessness. I say "near" because without them, I might never have heard The Pixies' cover of Neil Young's "Winterlong," the Chili Peppers' take on The Ramones' "Havana Affair," Beck's rendition of Skip Spence's "Halo of Gold" or dozens of other standout cuts embedded deep within such otherwise forgettable homages. Endless Highway, a 17-track attempt to pay reverence to roots-rock progenitors The Band, lives up to that miscarried tradition, utterly failing to be a cohesive listening experience, yet producing a handful of songs worth buying individually, assuming iTunes gets around to adding the silly thing to its inventory.(3 stars)

That which succeeds—My Morning Jacket's radiant "It Makes No Difference," The Roches' twangy "Acadian Driftwood," Rosanne Cash's earnest "The Unfaithful Servant" and Death Cab For Cutie's surprisingly warm "Rockin' Chair"—wraps complementary modern tones around the source material's still-crimson heartland heart light. The rest, from Jack Johnson's colorless "I Shall Be Released" to Jakob Dylan's detached "Whispering Pines" to Josh Turner's over-countrified "When I Paint My Masterpiece," not only fail to freshen the originals, but actually go that grisly next step, managing to dishonor the very band they set out to glorify.

Patty Griffin


Children Running Through

(3 stars)

Even if you've never heard of Patty Griffin, there's a good chance you've heard one of her songs, especially if you're a country music fan. Her work's been interpreted by Martina McBride, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Wreckers and Dixie Chicks, among others, but Griffin herself has retained only a dedicated cult following. Her fifth album, Children Running Through, isn't likely to change that, although it continues to prove Griffin is a gifted songwriter who also has a voice as strong as many of the more well-known performers who cover her songs.

At her best, Griffin seamlessly blends folk, country and a bit of R&B into poignant and buoyant tunes like "Heavenly Day" and "Crying Over," which showcase her rich, soaring voice and honest, direct lyricism. But too much of Children is sedate and somehow incomplete, like a songwriting demo for Griffin to send out to big-name singers. The plaintive piano ballads tend to run together, but it's not hard to imagine someone like McBride or the Chicks dressing them up, fleshing them out, and turning them into huge hits.

Sondre Lerche


Phantom Punch

(3 stars)

Funny how the off-kilter Norwegian pop of 2007 sounds so much like the off-kilter American pop of the '70s, '80s and '90s. The fourth Sondre Lerche album is a playful triumph that'll make you think of how fun it was when you first discovered Elvis Costello or The Violent Femmes or Nada Surf. Lerche has finally graduated from sensitive singer-songwriter to a dude who creates buoyant rock, with hooks that stick to you the way proper bubblegum should.

Yes, he still writes elaborate lyrics like a love-sick poet (in frickin' cursive, even!), but there's no denying that songs like "The Tape," "Face the Blood" and "Say it All" will have you saving money now so you can buy that convertible when summer comes around. Until then, you can try to figure out cryptic lyrics like this: "There is no way to say it all/Play it again and say it all/I say a little/The rest is a riddle. Our night's too short to say it all ... You know the punch line/It's all in the punch line."

Nonsense? Maybe. But definitely fun, too.