Meet the new boss, rock fans

The Hold Steady

“Boys and Girls in America” (Vagrant)

* * *

CRAIG FINN may not look so hot in tight jeans posed before an American flag, but the Hold Steady’s balding, bespectacled frontman is our best shot at a new Springsteen. In between a throbbing Wurlitzer and massive, hug-the-guy-in-the-next-seat power chords, indie-rock’s boozy poet laureate tackles young love on the band’s third and best album.

The Hold Steady’s unlikely mix of arena-rock exuberance and Finn’s sloshed-professor rambling was fresh at first, but felt contrived by their second album, “Separation Sunday.” “Boys and Girls” (in stores Tuesday), however, is packed with forceful, nuanced songwriting that makes room for face-melting guitar riffery, lovelorn Midwestern teenagers and even, by Hold Steady standards, a bit of actual singing.

The plinking piano and Kerouac quotes of “Stuck Between Stations” capture the hormones and dashed hopes so familiar to fans of emo-focused Vagrant Records, the Hold Steady’s new label. But the textured, Big Star-inspired power pop of “First Night” and “You Can Make Him Like You” makes Finn’s vivid rants cut deeper. All the single guys and girls downing shots at their concerts will appreciate that the Hold Steady is now breaking beer bottles and hearts alike.

-- August Brown

Something’s missing here

Sleepy Brown

“Mr. Brown”

(Purple Ribbon/Virgin)

* * 1/2

AS an integral member of the Organized Noize production team, Sleepy Brown has been behind the music for some of rap and R&B;’s best material, most notably tunes for OutKast, Goodie Mob and TLC. Three years ago, Brown’s velvet-smooth, Curtis Mayfield-esque falsetto thrust him into the limelight thanks to his classy crooning on OutKast’s smash “The Way You Move” single.

On his first solo album (in stores Tuesday), the singer-producer brings warm, soulful sonics -- Brown’s vibe is more the Stylistics than Chris Brown -- to complement his mostly enjoyable cuts about lovemaking and keeping his wardrobe sharp.

Brown’s classic feel extends throughout the album, thanks in part to his use of strings, horns, guitar and hand claps. The joyous “Me, My Baby & My Cadillac” celebrates the bliss of cruising, while the funky, meandering “Underwater Love” features Brown describing one of his takes on sex.

Despite the style oozing throughout “Mr. Brown,” the album’s main -- and consistent -- shortcoming is that there seems to be something missing, lyrically and musically. It’s an intangible sense of urgency or purpose that would push the collection from above-average to the creative heights that OutKast and Organized Noize typically achieve.

-- Soren Baker

Taking country

beyond its borders

Solomon Burke

Nashville (Shout! Factory)

* * *

WE’RE always reading about the close interplay between blues and country music, but it’s another thing entirely to come face to face with the living, breathing thing. The third album in the veteran soul singer’s career resurgence is ostensibly a foray into country, but Burke is such an individual force that he bends all borders and definitions into a configuration all his own.

Actually, his first hit, 1961’s “Just Out of Reach (of My Two Open Arms),” was a remake of a Patsy Cline record, so this isn’t exactly uncharted territory for him. Produced by singer-guitarist Buddy Miller, a longtime Emmylou Harris associate and respected genre-bender himself, “Nashville” has a casual feel and a largely acoustic setting where country instrumentation easily adapts to a soul-music progression, and a fiddle is welcomed into a Muddy Waters-style blues.

The most conventionally “country” cuts might be Don Williams’ “Atta Way to Go” and the modal murder ballad “Does My Ring Burn Your Finger?” There’s also a powerful duet with Dolly Parton on her “Tomorrow Is Forever,” and elsewhere he’s joined by Harris, Gillian Welch and Patty Loveless.

At 66, Burke might have lost some vocal force and fullness, but his singing is agile, elastic and, most important, packed with sorrow and humor that pull you in no matter what the genre.

-- 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.