Alvin’s California bloodlines

Dave Alvin

“West of the West” (Yep Roc)

* * *

DAVE ALVIN, from humble little Downey, Calif., aims high with this album (in stores Tuesday) devoted to songs written by California-born or -reared songwriters and largely about what it means to live and love in this land of grand dreams and broken promises.

In a larger sense, it’s a look at the legacy of life in the frontier, which by extension is the story of the American experience. No surprise, since that’s been a regular focus of his songwriting since his days with the Blasters, through his tenure with X and his solo work.

Because his own writing contains a deeply ingrained sense of time and place, it’s no surprise that’s what emerges in most of these tunes from such celebrated Californians as Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, John Fogerty and Brian Wilson, and respected cult figures including Kevin “Blackie” Farrell, Jim Ringer and Kate Wolf.

The tone is set in his gentle reworking of John Stewart’s “California Bloodlines,” which finds peace in the knowledge that “There’s California bloodlines in my heart / There’s a California woman in my song ... And a California heartbeat in my soul.”

Farrell’s “Sonora’s Death Row” is a Western fable that examines the high price of acting out of greed, fear and anger, emotions that aren’t contained within this state’s borders. He recasts the rockabilly flavor of Fogerty’s Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Don’t Look Now” into a meaty blues shuffle.

His dry, flat voice isn’t an instrument ideally suited to interpretation, and the tracks with richly detailed narratives (Farrell’s, Haggard’s melancholy “Kern River,” Alvin and Tom Russell’s heartbreaking “Between the Cracks”) come off stronger than an R&B; ballad of woe such as “I Am Bewildered,” from “Louie Louie” composer Richard Berry and Joe Josea.

Closing with a sweetly delicate rendition of the first song Wilson ever wrote, “Surfer Girl,” Alvin not only works in a nod to the California coastline and the surf music it inspired, he uses it to put a wistful, burnished glow on his loving yet clear-eyed paean to the Golden State.

Randy Lewis

**

As DJ he shines, as a writer ...

Paul Oakenfold

“A Lively Mind” (Maverick)

* *

SOME 20 years into his career, Oakenfold remains a masterful DJ, as he demonstrated last month with his pre-Madonna set at the Coachella festival.

But four years after his first “artist album,” “Bunkka,” the Englishman remains lost when he leaves the world of the DJ booth and dance floor, as he demonstrates on the follow-up to that collection.

Instead of finding a different voice as a writer and producer of original material, Oakenfold seems trapped by dance-music genre conventions. The music on “A Lively Mind” (due in stores June 6) is busy and dynamic, but the songs, from New Order-like dance-rock to limpid Euro-pop, are anonymous, and the artist’s vision is hazy.

At least “Bunkka” had some intriguing guests -- Perry Farrell, Grant Lee Phillips, Ice Cube, Hunter S. Thompson. “A Lively Mind” does have Pharrell Williams, but you can barely hear him on “Sex N’ Money.” Actress Brittany Murphy vamps through the dance-rock workout “Faster Kill Pussycat,” but most of the album’s vocals are lifeless.

The last song, “Feed Your Mind,” conjures a Manchester dance sound that pays homage to one of Oakenfold’s best production jobs -- Happy Mondays’ 1990 album “Thrills ‘n’ Pills and Bellyaches.” It comes too late to save the album, but it gives him a place to start if he decides to try this again.

Richard Cromelin

**

This whine isn’t aging very well

AFI

“Decemberunderground” (Interscope/Tiny Evil)

* * 1/2

IT’S subtle: On the Bay Area punk-goth quartet’s seventh album (in stores June 6), singer Davey Havok seems to tone down the nasal whininess of his voice. Though standard-issue for just about every neo-punk vocalist these days, for Havok it was always part and parcel to AFI’s distinct brand of solipsistic wallowing, culminating in the commendably ambitious 2003 album “Sing the Sorrow,” which traced an everykid journey recalling Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” an epic of solipsism.

So is he growing up -- and out of himself -- recognizing that there’s plenty of drama in the world, plenty of crises to address that might render one’s own existential issues trivial? That might be too much to ask. The evocative lyrics still sketch self-absorbed despair with references to suicide, ineffective “designer drugs,” loveless isolation and such. And the contempo-punk arrangements are varied and powerful, though they lack the sonic sweep of the previous album, even as there are sonic allusions running from hard-core (“Kill Caustic,” “Affliction”) to U2 (“The Interview”) to Depeche Mode (“37mm”). But the effect is less cathartic and/or uplifting than the models.

In “Summer Shudder,” Havok sings “Our lives look so small,” at least hinting at big-picture perspective. But by the closing “Endlessly, She Said,” he’s still whining, regardless of how his voice sounds. One step at a time.

Steve Hochman

*

Albums are rated on a scale of four stars (excellent), three stars (good), two stars (fair) and one star (poor). Albums are in stores except as indicated.