An Unpoetic Start to the Revolution

** 1/2

MANA

“Revolucion de Amor”

Warner Bros.

You have to admire a band--a Mexican one especially--that uses revolutionary slogans as lyrics and still sells millions. Mana sings about racism, pollution and violence, and makes it sound fun.

In its first studio album in five years (due in stores Tuesday), the Guadalajara-based quartet continues its Latin/rock fusion, a la Carlos Santana, with whom the band recorded 1999’s “Corazon Espinado.” Santana returns the favor here with a plaintive guitar solo on the opening track, “Justicia, Tierra y Libertad” (Justice, Land and Liberty). Singer Ruben Blades also does an arresting guest vocal on the aching “Sabanas Frias” (Cold Sheets).

Too often, though, the band’s message bombs with the simplistic thud of adolescent idealism. In “Fe” (Faith), singer Alex “El Animal” Gonzalez bemoans the human condition: “I can’t understand how this world can be this way/That someone could hate, hurt and betray/Why?”

And it’s no more poetic in Spanish.

In another tune, “Pobre Juan” (Poor Juan), a ballad about an immigrant’s death at the border, a mournful harmonica evokes Bob Dylan. But it also invites comparison with Dylan’s “I Pity the Poor Immigrant,” far superior to this routine tale of woe.

That said, Mana’s unabashed innocence can be captivating. And so can its smooth musicianship and abundant pop appeal.

Agustin Gurza

*** 1/2

SPOON

“Kill the Moonlight”

Merge

Britt Daniel again shows that propulsive rock songs don’t have to sound big. On the Austin, Texas, band’s fourth album (due Tuesday), frontman Daniel discharges tense gems that all ought to be stamped “urgent,” if they’d stand still long enough.

Those lean and inventive rhythms emerge from the sparest of guitar-bass-keyboard-drum environments. On one number, “Stay Don’t Go,” breathy grunts are looped to form a human beat box, while Daniel’s stuttery vocals, which range from Doorsy on “Small Stakes” to Stonesy on “Don’t Let It Get You Down,” are just prominent enough to be your conscience.

Spoon even manages to match the intensity of 2001’s “Girls Can Tell,” which featured the indie classic “Fitted Shirt”--a song catchy by fits and starts, with smart lyrics and a metaphor to boot. On “Moonlight,” Daniel remembers “Jonathon Fisk,” the bully who, while acknowledging his sin, whupped him on the way home from school. To him, Daniel writes, “religion don’t mean a thing/It’s just another way to be right wing.”

Kevin Bronson

** 1/2

SLEATER-KINNEY

“One Beat”

Kill Rock Stars

After five albums, this grrrl-powered Pacific Northwest trio still gets a lot of mileage out of how it reinvented rock to suit its own feminist-indie ideals. But is it really reinvention if a good portion of your sixth album (due Tuesday) recalls “The Scream”-era Siouxsie & the Banshees?

Well, kinda. Following the streamlined, angular punk of 2000’s “All Hands on the Bad One,” singer-guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss broaden their sonic vocabulary with new wave and soul elements. After all, we expect protest tunes from S-K, but not with a distinctly Motown beat, as on the people-get-ready number “Step Aside.”

Tucker and Brownstein apply their trademark vocal and instrumental back-and-forth to such subjects as the lock-step state of the union (“Combat Rock”), 9/11 (“Far Away”), heartbreak (“Funeral Song”) and the tale of a rock-liberated bookworm (“Prisstina,” featuring their first male guest vocalist, Stephen Trask of “Hedwig” fame). Still, although the warped pop of the Go-Go’s-esque “Oh!” is giddy fun, it’s slightly disappointing that S-K has picked up the whole ‘80s synth-pop thang. Just like--sob!--so many other bands.

The group’s singular, piercing-wail urgency still vividly captures personal and political upheaval, but the chewed-up/spit-out message of “Hollywood Ending” is just tired. And the bluesy “Sympathy,” an agonized prayer for a baby’s life, favors the artlessly maudlin over the righteously direct. Sleater-Kinney plays next Sunday at the Sunset Junction festival in Silver Lake.

Natalie Nichols

** 1/2

FRANK BLACK

& THE CATHOLICS

“Black Letter Days” and

“Devil’s Workshop”

spinART

Ex-Pixies mastermind Frank Black has a bad case of white line fever, and he needs to let his music catch up with his runaway lyrical talent. The Little Tokyo sessions for “Black Letter Days” stretched on to 17 songs, so he adjourned to a North Hollywood space and laid down 11 more for “Devil’s Workshop.” Now he’s recording more. Somebody stop him!

Despite auspicious beginnings on “Black Letter Days” (both albums come out Tuesday), there’s barely enough here for one satisfying album. The opening version of Tom Waits’ “The Black Rider” is classic Pixies-era punk: lyrically deranged, with a screaming chorus and urgent, chiming guitars. Track two, “California Bound,” strums to a great run-on lyric that builds to a dark promise of salvation.

The rest of these well-written poems of heartbreak, death, workaday ennui and goodbyes, however, drift from Jonathan Richman-style girlfriend songs to a plaintive, pedal-steel-inflected, early-’70s Stones/Gram Parsons feel, especially “The Farewell Bend” and “Southbound Bevy.”

The strange, astonishing twists of fate, passion and song structure of even the first two Catholics albums are absent--except on “1826,” which starts out as Roky Erickson and ends as Black Oak Arkansas. “Devil’s Workshop” continues with more of the same, closing with one of the strongest songs on either disc, “Fields of Marigold,” a heavy guitar goodbye. Is there anything as good as “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven” or “Here Comes Your Man”? No there is not.

But with time and editing, there could have been.

Dean Kuipers

***

NICKEL CREEK

“This Side”

Sugar Hill

This fresh-faced San Diego trio hasn’t been intimidated by the surprise success of its debut album, 2000’s “Nickel Creek,” which has sold 640,000 copies to date, phenomenal in the folk-bluegrass world it came from.

The approach on this follow-up is even more ambitious, as the threesome and returning producer Alison Krauss poke, punch and kick with all their might at the boundaries of acoustic music.

You might even call what mandolinist Chris Thile, fiddler Sara Watkins and her guitarist-brother, Chris Watkins, do on their sophomore album “ambi-grass.” The ambience they create with various instrumental textures is as important as what’s in the song’s lyrics, most written by one or the other of the three and a variety of co-writers. Thile, especially, is showing greater reach and confidence in evoking emotion, often with excruciating subtlety.

Despite many differences with their musical forebears, they haven’t lost the “blue” in bluegrass. Love is elusive and life is hard, two truths that go straight back to bluegrass patriarch Bill Monroe and the ancient mountain folk who preceded him.

Randy Lewis

In Brief

*** Plankton Man and Terrestre, “Plankton Man vs. Terrestre,” Lakeshore. This battle of the bands, Nortec-style, might not include the Tijuana collective’s brightest star, Bostich, but both Terrestre and Plankton Man do a fine job of expanding the group’s trademark fusion of liquid electronica and quirky norteno samples. The artificial samba beat and jazzy flute solos on “California 70” show that success has not spoiled Nortec’s effervescent sense of humor.

Ernesto Lechner

*** Clipse, “Lord Willin’,” Star Trak/Arista. After cranking out hits for Britney Spears, Jay-Z, Usher and a host of others over the last few years, the producing team the Neptunes put their beat-making prowess to the test by kicking off their own label with the debut album (due Tuesday) from the Virginia rap duo of Pusha T and Malice. The results are blissful, as the body-rocking, futuristic beats mesh magically with the clever, straightforward rapping of the two MCs, who inject sly humor and hard-core boasting into nearly every lyric.

Soren Baker

*

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.