Psychedelic Cowboys and Would-Be Rock Heroes

* * * BEACHWOOD SPARKS “Once We Were Trees” Sub Pop

Want to get away from it all without leaving home? Darken the room, light a candle, lie back and take a trip through inner space with this L.A. quartet’s second album (due in stores Tuesday). While continuing to draw colors from the Gram Parsons and Buffalo Springfield paint boxes, the players use a broader palette than on last year’s self-titled debut, adding subtle variations to their space-dusted, high-lonesome atmospherics.

Blending organ, pedal steel, banjo, guitars, piano, harmonica and airy vocal harmonies, the band plays moody, psychedelic country-rock with a low-key yet precise intensity on such numbers as “The Sun Surrounds Me,” in which emotional darkness and lightness collide.

Introspection gives way to environmental concerns in the twangy “You Take the Gold,” with its shimmering sheen of noise underscoring a lament on how progress obscures the wonders of the world.

All the trippy, Zen-cowboy sonic effects at times make “Trees” feel a bit cerebral, but the band tempers its head-music aspects with some unexpected emotional twists, most notably singer-guitarist Chris Gunst’s soulful devotion on the Sade ballad “By Your Side.” This selection slyly emphasizes that while Beachwood Sparks may sound out of time, it creates its own sense of place.

Natalie Nichols

* * 1/2 THE STROKES “Is This It” RCA Even the Rolling Stones’ first album was mostly made up of material by American R&B; and rock heroes, so this much-buzzed-about New York quintet’s unabashed allegiance to an assortment of ‘60s and ‘80s icons is not by itself reason for dismissal. But the glimmers of raw greatness and original vision evident in the earliest Stones (or Who or Kinks) music are clearly lacking on this debut (in stores Tuesday).

The key word is “raw”--the Strokes simply aren’t. The clipped rhythms and compact riffs lifted almost wholesale from such faves as the Velvet Underground and particularly the Smiths, the Jam and New Order are just too clean. The distortion effect used nearly throughout on singer Julian Casablancas’ voice approximates a sense of edge, but doesn’t convey any real danger or darkness and quickly becomes an annoying gimmick.

Yet there’s a spirit and sincerity that make this more than a mere relief from the over-the-top approaches dominating rock these days. The fuel of the Velvety title song and “Last Night” (recalling the Jam’s mid-period Motown-derived bounce, if not actual Motown sources) is a youthful exuberance and nave faith in rock’s power to rise above rather than wallow in the muck.

But ultimately the Casablancas-written songs get by on what they echo and evoke, not on what they themselves achieve. If you’re looking for a band that might be a blueprint for rockers 20 or 30 years hence, this likely isn’t it.

Steve Hochman * * 1/2 CHARLOTTE CHURCH “Enchantment” Columbia The cover photo of 15-year-old English vocal phenom’s new album spotlights the sweet ingenue quality that has characterized the first few years of her skyrocketing career. But take a look at the elegant, more mature images on the back cover and in the album’s liner, and the real perspective of her fourth album comes into focus: ambitious crossover.

Church wisely embraces her core audience with pleasantly delivered renderings of “The Laughing Song” (from “Die Fledermaus”) and the “Flower Duet” (multitracked, from “Lakme”), as well as contemporary versions of “Habanera” (from “Carmen”) and “From My First Moment” (Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedie No. 1” with words). But the repertoire widens beyond her earlier albums via Broadway tunes (“Tonight” and “Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” “A Bit of Earth” from “Secret Garden,” among others), traditional songs (notably “The Water Is Wide”), and the pop-tinged rhythms of “The Prayer” (by David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager).

The performances have familiar pluses and minuses. Church’s voice is a natural wonder, and she is sometimes (not always) capable of enhancing it with surprisingly mature musicality. Here, that quality is most apparent in the less demanding Broadway, traditional and pop items, suggesting that Church may indeed be moving in the right direction.

Don Heckman

In Brief

* * * Ralph Stanley & Friends, “Clinch Mountain Sweethearts,” Rebel. Classic tales of ill-fated love carry this stellar session pairing the bluegrass patriarch with 15 female partners, including Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch, Iris DeMent, Lucinda Williams, Joan Baez and Pam Tillis. Stanley also knows his way around spiritual issues, and he sprinkles in such gospel standards as “Oh Death” (with Welch), “Farther Along” (with Williams) and “Angel Band” (with Chely Wright) as relief for temporal suffering. An ideal next step for anyone who discovered the joys of mountain music with the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.

Randy Lewis * * 1/2 Lomax Monk, “Back on the Burnout,” Creampuff. Clinging merrily to the same cloth tie-dyed by a young Neil Young and uncloseted by Mercury Rev on 1998’s “Deserter’s Songs,” this project from ex-Film Star stalwarts James Fletcher and Geoff Harrington deserves better than to languish in the “locals” bin at a Costa Mesa record store. Wobbly vocals weave in and out of warbling guitars and wavering keyboards, all building up to “Toe to Toe,” a triptych of punk, funk and roots that changes gears so quickly you’re happy to be in the passenger seat.

Kevin Bronson

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted