In Brief

* * * Soul Coughing, “Irresistible Bliss,” Slash/Warner Bros. It’s the same trick as on the band’s 1994 debut, but a pretty good trick: nifty neo-jazzbo grooves (with, on one song here, a sample of Raymond Scott’s cartoon chamber music) buoying Michael Doughty’s occasionally striking (but occasionally monotonous) beatnik sing-speil poetry. Rage Against the Machine without the rage? Like really Zen, Daddy-o.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).