Recent album reviews

Before it came to a widely promoted end last year, Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn‘s two-decade ride on the country music charts and on the concert trail was built on songs that were among the catchiest -- and most calculated -- in country history. The duo’s taller half, Ronnie Dunn, was long regarded as the more distinctive singer, and on his solo debut, there’s no more sharing of the spotlight to hold him back. That’s about the only difference between a Brooks & Dunn record and this similarly hit-and-miss collection of odes to blue-collar empathy, patriotism and the transformative power of love.

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Mark Ronson knows a thing or two about handling boozy musicians (he produced Amy Winehouse‘s “Back to Black,” after all). But on the Atlanta rock band Black Lips’ latest, he plays less of a cleanup man and more of an enabler. The Lips are known for spilling all sorts of alcoholic and bodily effluvia at their insane live sets, and Ronson gives them an open bar of sounds to try on “Arabia Mountain.” From the sweaty sax skronk of “Mad Dog” to the goofy singing saw of “Modern Art,” the flourishes are a nice addition to the Lips’ longstanding affection for mind-dripping ‘60s proto-punk.

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For a guy who once sang bitterly of Los Angeles, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie sure seems to have made a nice new life here. Marrying Zooey Deschanel will brighten anyone’s mood, but on his band’s new album, “Codes and Keys,” he’s picked up a bit of L.A.’s sun-scarred optimism and a droll domestic satisfaction that’s alternately smug and insightful. Fortunately, it’s all bolstered by some of the most enticing production of the band’s career. The title track has a nifty orchestral swoon and the ethereal guitars on “Underneath the Sycamore” back up one of the band’s strongest choruses in years. Sounds as if Gibbard’s just starting his 500 days of summer.

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My Morning Jacket, on its sixth studio album and after establishing itself as one of the most monstrously compelling live acts of the last 10 years, returns to a more disciplined form on “Circuital,” a welcome tightening of the reins after the downright goofball antics of 2008’s “Evil Urges.” There are moments when Jim James and company sound like they’re scraping an old dinner plate for a last lick, but then they strike on something inspired enough to renew their license to rock-trot all over the globe. The title track hangs on a pristine needle of a guitar part, and “Holdin’ On to Black Metal,” built from a Thai pop song, is giving Lucifer the shivers. “Hello, Tokyo,” you can practically hear James saying. “Looking good tonight!”

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Eddie Vedder has said this solo outing began with no intention of the music going public, for understandable reasons: A solo ukulele record from the leader of one of the great alt-rock bands of the last quarter century doesn’t exactly brim with marketing potential. The narrow musical scope carries with it both freedom and isolation, and the nakedness of the sonic palette -- this is truly folk chamber music -- also leaves him emotionally exposed, lending power to songs of separation, alienation, romantic yearning and vulnerability. Who knows? Perhaps this experiment will inspire him to take on that last bastion of uncharted rock-star territory: Accordion Anthems.

Read more.  (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

Lady Gaga is the perfect vessel for a broad message of unity, defiant self-respect and personal liberty, themes that the pop star returns to over and over again on “Born This Way,” her new album that comes out Monday. The artist born Stefani Germanotta is writing music for the People of the World, so her message needs to be clear as she stands perched upon the massive, gaudily ornate platform she and her collaborators have constructed for this moment.

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Brad Paisley is one of the savviest guys in country music, often finding crafty ways of pushing the tightly controlled envelope of what reaches the mainstream audience, but on this outing Paisley doesn’t move the musical conversation forward the way he’s done in several previous albums. Last time out, with “American Saturday Night,” he broached social issues that don’t get much time in the spotlight in the happy-go-luck world of contemporary country, and there are hints of the same here. But in carrying out the idea of touching all the bases of country, he treads into overworked territory.

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Dave King formed this Celtic-inspired punk band here in L.A., but for the last several years the frontman and his wife, violinist Bridget Regan, have lived in her hometown of Detroit, its ravages informing the working-stiff lyrics. If King maintains a tight focus for much of Flogging Molly’s fifth studio album, his bandmates (on guitar and drums, as well as tin whistle and Uilleann pipes) employ broader strokes, pushing the music toward arena-rousing Bruce Springsteen territory. They come closest to that ideal in “Revolution,” a fuzzed-out hard-luck tale that King narrates from the perspective of a “working man without any work.”

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