The $50 Guide

Two album of the year candidates highlight this edition of Calendar’s guide to keeping up with the best in pop music on an album budget of $50 per month.

-- Robert Hilburn

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May

PJ Harvey’s “Uh Huh Her” (Island)

If this were the splendid English singer-songwriter’s debut, she would probably be accused of jumping on the White Stripes’ lo-fi, blues-rock bandwagon, but Harvey was making records with those stark, intense emotional shades long before Jack and Meg White. After the slightly sunnier tones of her “Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea” album in 2000, she returns to bleaker territory, speaking about relationships with the desperation and desire of someone whose doubts about ever finding a healthy one only add to the tensions of her search. One of the album of the year contenders.

Jamie Cullum’s “Twentysomething” (Verve)

This young English singer-pianist is considered a jazz artist, but there is such a strong pop sensibility at work, especially when he is performing his own tunes, that it’s easy to see it’s something Billy Joel might do if he were in a supper club phase. The even more inviting comparison might be to the late Bobby Darin, whose brash, confident attitude is echoed in some of Cullum’s work, both when he’s doing classic pop tunes (Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You”) or giving his own spin to such unexpected material as Jimi Hendrix’s “Wind Cries Mary” or Radiohead’s “High and Dry.”

Patty Griffin’s “Impossible Dream” (ATO)

Griffin’s warm, wistful “Living With Ghosts” was one of the most engaging singer-songwriter debuts of the ‘90s, but the New Englander didn’t fully live up to that promise in subsequent albums, even though some of Nashville’s brightest talents, including Emmylou Harris and the Dixie Chicks, championed her by recording a few of her tunes. Griffin justifies their faith in an album that does live up to that early promise. “Dream” is packed with impassioned folk-minded sketches that capture the lonely ache of a restless soul searching for a comfort that always seems just out of reach.

June

Wilco’s “A Ghost Is Born” (Nonesuch)

In following up 2002’s acclaimed “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” Jeff Tweedy and the rest of Wilco leave behind some of the quirky, eclectic production touches in favor of music as tuneful and often as traditional as that of the Band and the country underpinnings of the Beatles. There are lots of references in the lyrics to bees and bugs, but the subject matter is the human heart, and it’s wonderful to hear optimism pushing aside some of the old, bad memories. The album’s hopeful tone might best be expressed by the closing number, “The Late Greats.” It’s an ode to all the great rock ‘n’ roll tunes that never found commercial acceptance, including radio airplay, but whose spirit and individuality keeps inspiring bands like Wilco.

Blanche’s “If We Can’t Trust the Doctors ...” (Cass)

This Detroit band has loose ties to the Stripes (two members even join Jack White on Loretta Lynn’s new “Van Lear Rose” album), but its sound is more country-tinged and mocking. It turns out singer-songwriter Dan John Miller doesn’t only mistrust doctors, but almost everything -- especially true love (not that he doesn’t race after it). In one key tune, he snaps, “Who’s to say that I’m obsessed with everything you do/ just because it seems my schedule seems to shadow you.”

Usher’s “Confessions” (Arista)

Usher was so colorless a performer when he opened for Janet Jackson on her Velvet Rope tour in 1998, I can’t remember anything more about him than I do about the snack bar attendant who sold me a pretzel and soda that night. But Usher, now 25, makes a major step forward in this album, turning in not only one of the most satisfying high-energy tracks of the year in “Yeah!” but also capturing the various temptations and dangers of sexual relationships with a candor that must strike a strong nerve in every young person who is trying to sort out the issue. The year’s biggest selling CD.