Em’s show, but what a crew

D12

“D12 World” (Shady/Interscope)

*** 1/2

Is it safe to laugh at Eminem? It is when he’s laughing at himself, something he almost never does except when he’s partying with D12, the lewd, psychotic Detroit crew with whom he began his career a decade ago. On the follow-up to the group’s 2001 debut, “Devil’s Night,” Marshall Mathers III backs off the importance of being Eminem just enough to goof on his own ego, rapping and producing on about half the album and proving once again his ability to both entertain and challenge.

In “My Band,” a compelling spoof of Lead Singer Syndrome, he raps, “I think everybody’s all jealous ‘cause I’m like the lead singer in the band, dood,” with an irritating, nasal chop on the word “dude.” Over the track’s throwaway boy-band beats, D12’s Kuniva, Bizarre, Proof, Swift and Kon Artis deliver a simplistic but spot-on breakdown of what easily could be a real situation with this crew: Em blew up and left his cohorts slim shade.

The D12 crew get the last laugh, however, in a virtuoso display of hard-core rap that’s not all a fast ride to the Pharcyde.

“40 Oz” is a crunked-up club anthem that is sure to be the SUV soundtrack to summer 2004. The Trackboyz beat is built on sinister synths, nothing new, but like everything Shady it smacks just right. The album stays off-balance throughout, with the unnerving pseudo-spoof of “Get My Gun” and the bombastic thuggery of “Keep Talkin.”

It’s Em’s show, for sure, and being surrounded by a talented, fast-talking crew has made him even more engaging than he is on his own.

-- Dean Kuipers

Staking out a distinctive path

Jolie Holland

“Escondida” (Anti)

*** 1/2

With purposefully lo-fi, willfully understated explorations of American roots found everywhere from Miami’s Iron and Wine to Vancouver’s Be Good Tanyas, not to mention the ubiquitous Norah Jones, can anyone stake a distinctive path through that territory?

San Francisco-based Holland (who once worked with the Tanyas) manages to do just that on “Escondida” (in stores Tuesday), building on the captivating combination of jazz, folk, blues and country of her 2003 debut album “Catalpa.”

The opening song, “Sascha,” casts Holland as a slightly more forward, phlegmatic Jones, her mercurial voice slinking over the shards of a magic-turned-tragic love with just piano and a somber trumpet to lend consolation. The dreamlike sense of despair and resignation that runs through the album is matched by spare sounds, ranging from trumpet and guitar to ukulele and musical saw, solidly rooted but never conventional.

Two songs stand out: “Old Fashioned Morphine,” essentially a reworking of the traditional “Old Time Religion,” could be a prequel to the Bessie Smith-Louis Armstrong version of “St. James’ Infirmary,” sporting otherworldly, New Orleans-esque horns -- though with a reference to William S. Burroughs.

And on the English folk song “Mad Tom of Bedlam,” Holland skitters over friskily brushed drums as if she’s cavorting with the spirits of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone. Not bad company, even for ghosts.

-- Steve Hochman

A wide window on an ignored world

Los Tigres del Norte

“Pacto de Sangre” (Fonovisa)

*** 1/2s

This veteran norteno band, which practically invented the narco-corrido 30 years ago, has never shied from social issues in its songs, most recently as defenders of undocumented aliens.

In their latest work, Tigers of the North becomes one of the few top acts to confront one of the most horrifying realities of life along the U.S.-Mexico border: the kidnapping and killing of hundreds of young Mexican women in Ciudad Juarez.

In the blunt and jolting “Las Mujeres de Juarez (The Women of Juarez),” the band takes a swipe at police corruption in Mexico and cries out for justice to the point of inciting vigilantism “if the law does not resolve it.”

Plain language reflecting basic populist values always has been a hallmark of the Mexican corrido, or narrative folk ballad. And in this case, Los Tigres use the genre as it was intended -- to tell a story with a moral. What is disheartening is that more Mexican artists have not addressed this festering outrage.

The song anchors the middle of a 14-track album that gracefully weaves through diverse styles and themes, from the humorous bilingual ranchera “Liar Liar” to the heart-wrenching spoken word “El Nino de la Calle (Street Child).”

With “Pacto de Sangre (Blood Pact),” Los Tigres show once again why they’re the preeminent group in a field that carelessly churns out CDs like tortillas. They take care to make a work of art that offers more than mere entertainment. It gives us a wide window on an often ignored or disparaged world.

-- Agustin Gurza

An engine of inspiration

Patti Smith

“Trampin’ ” (Columbia)

***

Patti SMITH may have matured from rock’s rebel poet into a patron saint of all dissident music, but she still clings tenaciously to values she embodied from the beginning. For her, rock remains the bearer of a utopian vision, an engine of inspiration, a rallying cry for community and action.

Her first album in four years (in stores Tuesday) opens with “Jubilee,” a measured stomp in which Smith, sporting an almost Appalachian twang, sounds the alarm about the clouds of oppression gathering against the spirit of love and liberty.

Smith’s language here and elsewhere is peppered with archaisms -- “What be troubling you?” “And I’ll rise every morn to tend to thee” -- that link her to the tradition of American religious music, culminating in the title song, a vintage spiritual that closes the album on a spare, uplifting note.

But Smith isn’t limited to one language, and “Trampin’ ” is anchored by two epic song-poems of the sort she pioneered in the mid-’70s -- freely structured tribal incantations, with the instruments slowly falling in, feeling for a shape and building up steam behind Smith’s urgent delivery. The titles suggest what these two pieces are about: “Ghandi” and “Radio Baghdad.”

“Trampin’,” which also includes some tender reveries as recounted by a woman observing her daughter, is not a flashy album, and sometimes what’s meant to be stately is sluggish instead. But though the revolutionary jolt of her early work is in abeyance, her fire still burns.

-- Richard Cromelin

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.