A Little Bit Country, a Little Bit Rock ‘n’ Soul

The unusual thing about this edition of the Guide is that three of the six recommended albums come from Nashville-based artists, which hasn’t been a normal mark of excellence for years. Vince Gill, Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams, however, sidestep the bland trademarks that make so much of today’s country music product seem like, well, just product.

JULY

Vince Gill, “The Key,” MCA Nashville. This might be the most remarkable of the three Nashville packages because Gill, unlike Welch and Williams, doesn’t operate on the arty fringes of the country music scene but instead faces the pressures that accompany working in its commercial center. A singer who sometimes matches the sweet, soulful sincerity of Otis Redding, Gill has made some exquisite singles but never approached the consistency or inspiration of this collection, which reflects with a sometimes heartbreaking intimacy the breakup of his marriage and the death of his father. A gem.

Gillian Welch, “Hell Among the Yearlings,” ALMO Sounds. Once you get past the fact that Welch is from West L.A. rather than the Appalachia that you’d expect from someone who frames her music in such an old-time, mountain music tradition, you’ll realize that she writes about faith and trials with a passion and command rarely found anywhere in contemporary pop. Masterful.

Lucinda Williams, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” Mercury. Williams is a writer who operates on the line that connects folk, country and rock much like the one Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen sometimes cross, and her greatest strength is her patience, which might sound like a joke considering she went some six years between albums. But that patience in not trying to hook listeners in the opening lines of a song enables them to venture well into the album before realizing they’ve been captured by the seductive melodies and the slowly unfolding stories about the breakup of a relationship.

AUGUST

Sinead Lohan, “No Mermaid,” Interscope. This young Irish singer-songwriter serves up one song after another on her first U.S. album that speaks about love and life with the maturity, grace and wonder that you’d have found in the ‘60s on a Judy Collins collection, which is impressive company indeed considering those albums are where most people first heard the music of such writers as Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell.

Liz Phair, “Whitechocolatespaceegg,” Matador/Capitol. Part tease, part delight, this pop-rock punk-angel (who boasts that she was born to lead a double life) catches your ear with a delicious melody, then draws you in with the whip-smart bite of her often wry, unflinching lyrics about ‘90s relationships and rites. Phair weaves the lyrics into interlocking puzzles that change direction so fast that you can end up adoring the album before even beginning to think what she’s saying in the songs. All of which means things get better with each listening.

Tricky, “Angels With Dirty Faces,” Island. This Englishman is widely heralded as the pioneer of trip-hop, the moody, trance-like music also associated with Portishead, but it’s easiest to think of him as a classic bluesman. Rather than express defiance and despair chiefly through a guitar, he employs elements of rock, hip-hop, soul, reggae and electronica to give the music a decidedly late-’90s sensibility.

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Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached by e-mail at robert.hilburn@latimes.com