Maybe he’s getting too confident

Brad Paisley

“Time Well Wasted” (Arista)

* * 1/2

THIS West Virginian has been one of country music’s bright lights in the new millennium, and halfway into a new decade, he’s reached the point where he sounds completely self-confident in the studio.

That mostly works to his advantage on his fourth album but occasionally undermines him with tracks that are here because they can be, not because they needed to be.

On the plus side, he further hones the songwriting sharpness he’s demonstrated, while taking some admirable opportunities to stretch.

“I’ll Take You Back” is a good-humored tale of romantic comeuppance offered at a breakneck pace, far more skilled than, say, Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?” Paisley’s references to lying politicians and drug use would be jarring for his mainstream audience if they weren’t tossed off so slyly.

The single “Alcohol” likewise takes a serious topic and gets a point across with humor, not preachiness, and “You Need a Man Around Here” is as smileinducing a proposal as you can imagine.

On the other hand, “Out in the Parking Lot” is a countrified answer to Jackson Browne’s “The Load Out” that ends up equally self-conscious and far less fun than it wants to be. And the closing track, “Cornography,” gives some well-deserved exposure to several country veterans (including George Jones), but it’s a comedy bit that goes on too long, for too little payoff.

The challenge in the kind of success, artistically and commercially, that Paisley has racked up is recognizing that if time is to be wasted, it should indeed be wasted well.

-- Randy Lewis

*

They’re better without the buzz

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

“Howl” (RCA)

***

THERE is something endearing about a onetime Los Angeles buzz band finding and embracing its musical roots. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club was once poised to be the dark shadow of garage rock, a beat-poet counterpoint to the Strokes playing high-volume rock ‘n’ roll in black leather jackets, a lo-fi Jesus and Mary Chain. Like most buzz bands, its reputation preceded it and its sales never matched the media frenzy.

The band was dropped by Virgin Records last year, and out of desperation or depression or whatever comes over people when they’ve lost all options, its members dug deep and came up with a record that is not in the least interested in target markets, it-band status or the puddle-deep scenester hipness that is often behind a “buzz.”

“Howl” (due in stores Aug. 23) is a love song to American blues, gospel, country dirges and classic songwriting, rife with harmonica, soulful harmonies and dark lyrical themes anchored in notions of loss and redemption. “Gospel Song” is the most sincere and affecting song any recent it-band has recorded, and though “Howl” doesn’t quite match the generational cry of Allen Ginsberg’s namesake poem, it’s nice to know that angel-headed hipsters still burn for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo.

-- Mikel Jollett

*

Three albums, or maybe just one

Michelle Shocked

“Mexican Standoff”

(Mighty Sound)

* *

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”

(Mighty Sound)

* * 1/2

“No Strings” (Mighty Sound)

* 1/2

IT’S not easy to get a handle on this musical sprawl. The free-spirited singer-songwriter has issued these three works simultaneously on her own label, apparently because she likes trilogies and possibly as a nose-thumbing gesture at conventional record-business wisdom.

But if you’re a fan, it might make more sense to impose your own release schedule and pick them up at set intervals, maybe a month or two apart. Better yet, use a CD burner to boil down the two albums of original songs to the one solid collection she could have made if she hadn’t spread herself so thin (and toss in “No Strings,” a pleasant but slight set of Disney film songs done western-swing style, as a bonus disc).

Though “Standoff” and “Don’t Ask” are thematically unified albums, their concepts aren’t strong enough to bind the songs inextricably together, and many of the tunes from both could easily coexist.

“Mexican Standoff” starts as an ambitious border-blues exploration that’s highlighted by “Picoesque,” a gospel-fueled tour of L.A.’s Pico Boulevard, but it eventually peters out in a series of faceless blues exercises. The bluesy and folk-rocking “Don’t Ask” is more relaxed and personal, with many of the songs reflecting on Shocked’s recent divorce.

In both albums, Shocked’s strengths as a storyteller are bolstered by strong backing from some of L.A.’s top roots musicians and are offset by her tendency toward vocal affectation.

The lesson? Independence can be liberating for an artist, but without discipline it can do you in.

-- Richard Cromelin

*

She ponders, but it’s not ponderous

Adrienne Young

“The Art of Virtue” (Addiebelle)

* * *

YOUNG is a Floridian who approaches bluegrass as though it, not she, was born yesterday. The freshness and spark jumps out of her songs, in which she ponders the meaning of virtue in America today.

The title song outlines her manifesto assertively yet cheerily, quickly letting listeners know they’re not in for a sermon: “Gonna start a revolution / Made of action, not of words / Practicing the Art of Virtue / A joy ride on a learning curve.”

She wrote or co-wrote most of the original material, into which she intersperses a couple of traditionals delivered with a voice like that of Alison Krauss’ older sister. Her not-so-hidden message is that real virtue emerges not in easy pronouncements from political pulpits but in difficult choices individuals make every day.

Her “Pretty Ella Arkansas,” about a woman who gloriously transcends the limitations of her birthright, sounds as though it’s been handed down through the mists of time.

And she turns Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s “Brokedown Palace” into an elegiac folk-gospel benediction that brings the album to a close.

-- R.L.