Risks and Safe Plays in Surprising Places

**1/2

CELINE DION

“A New Day Has Come”

Epic

Returning to pop life with her first new collection since 1997’s smash “Let’s Talk About Love,” the Canadian chanteuse tries fresh ideas while delivering the sweeping romantic ballads fans expect. All the while she radiates a gratefulness that reflects the personal life she’s focused on these past few years.

Dion’s work has always emphasized the power, the wonder, the magic of love, and this 16-song album (in stores Tuesday) is a testament to defining yourself through the adoring eyes of another. Abetting her apparent goal of offering something for everyone are such contributors as youth-pop producer-writer Anders Bagge, fellow Canadian pop artist Corey Hart, and Shania Twain’s hubby and producer, Mutt Lange.

Although the folk-rocking “Ten Days” offers the quirkiest departure, it’s the modern dance-music styles on some selections that make Dion sound au courant. Needing no boosts from electronic processing, her lovely voice lends these numbers a more human quality than most current pop divas can muster.

Indeed, the pulsing, soaring “radio remix” of the title track is much springier than the non-souped-up ballad that comes later on the album. She doesn’t particularly oversing, but the love songs tenderly celebrating motherhood and surrendering oneself to romance are still overwrought and blandly sentimental.

The standards “At Last” and “Nature Boy” provide better material, but although Dion’s straightforward take on the former is far less histrionic than Christina Aguilera’s, her renditions aren’t noteworthy.

Natalie Nichols

***

R. KELLY & JAY-Z

“The Best of Both Worlds”

Jive/Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam

Money and sex have become requisite themes in R&B; and rap. But this collaboration between two of the biggest stars in those respective fields carries some unwanted baggage, with recent lawsuits about alleged sexual improprieties involving Kelly and minors.

All that may cast an eerie shadow on the album every time Kelly croons about making love, as he does on the sensuous tracks “Naked,” “Break Up to Make Up” and “Take You Home With Me A.K.A. Body.”

If you get beyond that, there’s plenty of lyrical and musical firepower present, with Jay-Z’s street-based verses merging with Kelly’s thugged-out R&B; meditations, set to polished, radio-ready production from the Track Masters, Charlemagne and others.

As strong as the album is, though, there’s a nagging sense that Kelly and Jay-Z didn’t always push themselves to make a revolutionary work, settling instead for something that fans would simply accept and enjoy.

Soren Baker

***1/2

CASSANDRA WILSON

“Belly of the Sun”

Blue Note

Cassandra Wilson’s fascinating new album is a defining demonstration of the fact that jazz singing is not about repertoire. It is, instead, about individuality, artistry, invention and rhythm--the qualities that allowed Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to transform mundane pop tunes into imaginative jazz classics.

“Belly of the Sun” deals with more contemporary material--Robbie Robertson’s “The Weight,” Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From the Storm,” James Taylor’s “Only a Dream in Rio”--as well as blues-based tracks from Fred McDowell (“You Gotta Move”) and Robert Johnson (“Hot Tamales”).

But the jazz foundation of the album is substantial, rooted in the tunes’ attractive harmonies, the pervasive presence of the blues, and the improvisational recasting of the material with her associates (including, among others, singer India.Arie and guitarists Kevin Breit and Marvin Sewell).

Wilson sounds marvelous throughout, employing a colorful range of sounds--cooing, growling, teasing and whispering--to tell her musical stories over gorgeously sparse but dramatic accompaniment. In the process, she affirms, as Armstrong and Holiday did, that for jazz singers, the primary encounter takes place between the singer and the music--unlike most pop vocals, in which the primary encounter takes place between the singer and the audience. It’s a big difference.

Don Heckman

****

VARIOUS ARTISTS

“Pinero” soundtrack

Universal Music Latino

In the opening boogaloo on this sizzling soundtrack, the voice of actor Benjamin Bratt as poet-playwright Miguel Pinero is heard declaring: “This is street reality. This is where we shout it out.” The spoken intro could be a slogan for the musical movement that bubbled up during the ‘60s and ‘70s from the barrios of New York, a concrete crucible for the art of transplanted Puerto Ricans. The music is not just a fitting background for one artist’s troubled life story. It’s the soundtrack of an era.

When Pinero came of age in the late 1960s, Latin upstarts such as Eddie Palmieri and Willie Colon were creating grooves filled with grit and aggression, love and hope. The selections here reflect the menace of crime-filled communities, in Colon’s edgy “Calle Luna, Calle Sol,” and nostalgia for an idealized island of enchantment, in Palmieri’s pulsating paean to the homeland, “Puerto Rico.”

Beyond the era’s salsa classics, the producers also wisely included rare cuts, such as the blistering “Agueybana Zemi,” by Jerry Gonzalez and Frankie Rodriguez, with all the trance-inducing force of a street rumba.

One quibble: no liner notes to explain the source of or the rationale for these selections. As always, this enduring music must speak for itself.

Agustin Gurza

In Brief

*** Christy McWilson, “Bed of Roses,” HighTone. The second solo album (in stores Tuesday) by the Seattle singer kicks off with a stunner--”Life’s Little Enormities” is Richard Thompson meets the Bangles, with wry, self-analytical wordplay, shimmering harmonies and psychedelic folk-rock guitars. The closing “Tightrope” is a boisterous honky-tonk garage-rock stomper. In between are relatively straightforward country-rock variations, but a strong band (featuring producer Dave Alvin and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck) and McWilson’s full-bodied voice and probing lyrics keep the album from ever seeming mundane.

Steve Hochman

*** Ying Yang Twins, “Alley the Return of the Ying Yang Twins,” KOCH/In the Paint. Best known for the “Snow White” knockoff “Whistle While You Twurk,” D-Roc and Kaine know how to upgrade parties into frenzies. With their second album (due Tuesday), the Twins remain raucous, churning out such rowdy, rapid club cuts as “Say I Yi Yi” and “By Myself.” Light on substance and heavy on celebration, this collection provides plenty of bounce. S.B.

*

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.