Future may hold a true awakening

Josh Groban

“Awake” (143/Reprise)

* *

THE kid from Hancock Park has reached his mid-20s, yet on his third studio album (in stores Tuesday), he seems stuck between boy and man, pop performer and classical artist, hopeless romantic and concerned citizen of the world.

The 13 songs yearn for connection or strive toward awareness. Groban sings in the usual mix of Italian, Spanish and English, and collaborates with such artists as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Herbie Hancock -- interesting ingredients that get blended into Groban’s usual pop puree.

Songs conveyed with poetic restraint, including “February Song” (one of four pieces Groban co-wrote), prove to be anomalies among tunes, such as “You Are Loved (Don’t Give Up),” that reduce stirring emotions to trivialities. Tender verses surge into hard-sell choruses. Everything sounds the same.

Late in the album, Groban turns to social commentary, addressing fear and repression in “Lullaby” and “Weeping.” He doesn’t say anything decisive, but at least he holds out the possibility that one day he might.

-- Daryl H. Miller

Lofty ambitions

of a wild Irish rose

Damien Rice

“9” (Heffa/Vector/Warner Bros.)

* * * 1/2

THE final 15-plus minutes of Irishman Rice’s second album is what seems to be silence. Turn it up and it’s actually a nearly inaudible ambient tone. Pretentious? Sure. But also practical. After the preceding 52 minutes of sometimes vertiginous swings between anger, tenderness, despair, joy, loving embraces, enraged rejections, sketch-like understatement and purposeful overkill, you’ll need some time to just breathe.

The album (in stores Nov. 14) starts with a different kind of breath, the gorgeous soprano of Rice’s regular vocal partner, Lisa Hannigan, rather than Rice himself. From there, Rice and his chamber-like band achieve Van Morrison-Jeff Buckley expressiveness as he traverses the treacherous contours of modern love with the deft, literary dynamics of an audacious novel.

There are not as many revelations as on Rice’s acclaimed 2002 debut, “O,” but it still can be sonically thrilling.

He also extends his talent for turning the seemingly prosaic into the starkly poetic: “Do you brush your teeth before you kiss?” he asks a departed lover, a solitary piano shadowing the words. It’s so involving that by the time Hannigan’s voice, solo again, trails out resignedly on “Sleep Don’t Weep,” there is nothing left but to breathe.

-- Steve Hochman

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