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KRIS KRISTOFFERSON
“Closer To The Bone” (New West)

One of American music’s most celebrated songwriters, Kris Kristofferson, continues his renewed commitment to music on “Closer To The Bone,” the follow-up to 2006’s “This Old Road,” his first album in a dozen years.

As with the previous album, Kristofferson works with veteran producer Don Was, who keeps arrangements stripped and focused on Kristofferson’s craggy voice and rudimentary yet expressive acoustic guitar.

Kristofferson states his purpose when he sings, “Nothing but the truth now,” in the title song. These are heart-laid-bare lyrics from a 73-year-old interested in mining his truths rather than entertaining. He’s still whittling on the same themes, too, with songs that continually explore freedom, love and justice for all.

He writes everything himself, with some help from longtime collaborator Stephen Bruton, who co-wrote “Let the Walls Come Down” and “From Here to Forever,” the latter about a parent’s unending love that Kristofferson directs toward his children. (The album is dedicated to Bruton, who died as the album was being finished.)

Most of the 11 tracks are new works, excepting “Good Morning John,” a tribute to his late friend Johnny Cash, and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” written more than 30 years ago. Even those songs deal with the struggle for individual dignity — something Kristofferson writes about with poetry and precision throughout “Closer to the Bone.”

— Michael McCall, for the Associated Press

THE DEL MCCOURY BAND
“Family Circle” (McCoury Music)

“I got that sweet mountain soul down in my bones,” Del McCoury declares in his familiar pinched tenor on “Sweet Appalachia,” the opening number of his new album. That’s for sure. But at 70, the bluegrass master also continues to burn with a fire that shows no signs of abating.

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But first, one I meant to get on the blog last week, before I got too dad-blamed busy ...

SEAN COSTELLO
“Sean’s Blues: A Memorial Retrospective”
(Landslide)

Sean Costello died in April 2008, one day before his 29th birthday. “Sean’s Blues” is not a complete retrospective — it ranges from 1996 to 2002 — but its mix of album selections and unreleased tracks, including some live cuts, does offer a broad sampling of Costello’s exceptional talents as a guitarist, singer, writer, and interpreter.

Costello could dig deep into the blues, but he also had a jazzman’s nimble touch with jump-blues and swing. Even when he reached back for old material, he always brought a fresh touch to it, and for all his six- string prowess, the onetime blues-rock prodigy and Susan Tedeschi sideman was less interested in flashy soloing than in crafting a taut, dynamic ensemble sound. As he matured and his voice took on a rougher edge, he also at times recalled the great Southern-soul singer and guitarist Eddie Hinton. What a loss.

— Nick Cristiano, The Philadelphia Inquirer
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ROSANNE CASH

"The List"

(Manhattan)

The title of Rosanne Cash’s new album refers to a list of "100 Essential Country Songs" that her father, Johnny, gave her on her 18th birthday. This album contains her renditions of a dozen of them, although, as she has noted, the selections really cover a broad range of roots music.

Hank Snow’s "I’m Moving On" — slowed down, bass-heavy, and horn-accented — gets a radical makeover that works. Generally, however, the arrangements by Cash’s producer-husband, John Leventhal, stick closer to the originals while still managing in most cases to make familiar material sound fresh.

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THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
"The Life of the World to Come" (4AD)

The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle is an expert in dysfunctional relationships, whether it be within the alpha couple of Tallahassee and other albums, or his own with his stepfather on "The Sunset Tree." For "The Life of the World to Come," he tackles an even bigger relationship: the spiritual crises of a doubtful believer (or maybe a believing doubter). In insistent, often understated tunes (mostly an acoustic guitar trio, sometimes laced with strings or piano), Darnielle struggles with faith, mortality, and salvation.

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MARIAH CAREY
“Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel”
(Island)

Mariah Carey’s early records may have functioned solely as vehicles for her spectacular soprano, but what’s been most remarkable about her recent efforts is their tendency toward restraint. “The Emancipation of Mimi,” Carey’s 2005 comeback, found the diva dialing it down, scaling back her theatrics and allowing her voice to be seamlessly woven into the slippery R&B production rather than soaring over the top of it. Last year’s underrated “E=MC2” continued that formula, coming off spry, impish and playful.

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NOISETTES
“Wild Young Hearts”
(Mercury)

The sparkling disco of “Don’t Upset the Rhythm” and jaunty girl-group bounce of the title track of the Noisettes’ “Wild Young Hearts” might sound disingenuous and cynical to anyone expecting more of the same unbridled garage-punk-soul that the U.K. trio premiered on their ‘07 debut, “What’s the Time Mr. Wolf?” But the spirited diversity that defined that album hasn’t disappeared; it just stretches in new, more commercial directions.
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OS MUTANTES
"Haih" (Anti-)

Brought to most Americans’ attention with the 1999 collection Everything Is Possible, the Brazilian troupe Os Mutantes was active in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, juggling politics and romance while reconfiguring psych-, pop-, folk-, and later prog-rock. "Haih" is the band’s first album in 35 years, though you wouldn’t know it. There are giddy vocal harmonies, countless ear-popping revelations, and more than two dozen instruments on display, while fellow Tropicalia legend Tom Ze cowrote much of the album. Politics remain in view, from the Iraq-focused "Baghdad Blues" to the Castro-skewering "Samba Do Fidel." Sung mostly in Portuguese, such defiant lyrics don’t translate as easily as the playful, vibrant music, but they’re the urgent engine driving Os Mutantes’ welcome new chapter.

— Doug Wallen, The Philadelphia Inquirer
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BRANDI SHEARER
“Love Don’t Make You Juliet” (Vinyl Tiger) Most of Brandi Shearer’s fourth album sounds easygoing and seductive. Pristine acoustic guitars, closely recorded with lots of finger squeaks, ride a gentle pulse behind Shearer’s intimate, bluesy alto. Producer Craig Street has done similar work with k. d. lang and Cassandra Wilson, although Shearer is more understated than the former and less jazzy than the latter.
But the cover photo of “Love Don’t Make You Juliet” shows Shearer brandishing taped knuckles, ready to fight, and the album is full of bruised and vengeful love songs. “When you go, I’m going to find you,” Shearer sings on the swampy, banjo-driven “When You Wake Up,” getting ready to demand an explanation from a (former?) lover. Even “How Glad I Am,” the Nancy Wilson standard and lone cover here, sounds obsessive, as if Shearer is enthralled but desperate.
Shearer is trapped between “I Don’t Love You” and “I Just Want You To Love Me.” It’s an uncomfortable but compelling place.
—Steve Klinge, The Philadelphia Inquirer

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III
“High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project” (2nd Story Sound) Charlie Poole, a string-band hitmaker of the 1920s, died at 39 in 1931, giving birth to a legend that has long fascinated folkies and bluegrassers. Loudon Wainwright III celebrates the North Carolina banjoist’s legacy in this two-CD set, and as you’d expect from the sharp-witted Wainwright, it’s no dry, dusty homage.

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JOE HENRY
“Blood From Stars” (Anti-)
Reviewing “Blood From Stars” is daunting because Joe Henry has already done so eloquently in a three-page essay included in the liner notes.
Henry’s a marvelous writer of song, too, and “Blood” rivals his best work. It laments a world where “the stars have gone astray,” “true revelation is a thug” and “reason is traded for rhyme.”
Such sentiments are attached to music that mitigates the gloom, the way the blues can. Henry borrows from that genre, and jazz as well. A Grammy-winning producer, he throws in clangs, crashes, squeals and other spasms of odd noise.
The quirky rhythm of the record is crucial, too. Songs punch and jab and run together. Drums thunder. Henry breathes in the middle of vocal phrases. The result is exhilarating.
Helping Henry pull it all together is an excellent supporting cast that includes guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Jay Bellerose, jazz pianist Jason Moran and Henry’s 17-year-old son, Levon, a precocious saxophonist who shines on the instrumental “Over Her Shoulder.”
Henry’s introductory essay shows he’s of a generation that believes in the album as a form of artistic expression. It’s a form he has mastered.
CHECK THIS OUT: The lovely “Light No Lamp” serves as bookends. Moran plays it as a solo instrumental prelude, and Henry sings it as a coda and hopeful benediction.
— Steven Wine, Associated Press

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STEVE KUHN TRIO WITH JOE LOVANO

"Mostly Coltrane" (ECM)

Pianist Steve Kuhn explores the lyrical side of tenor saxophonist John Coltrane.

Kuhn holds a direct link to the tenor titan, having served as the pianist in Coltrane’s first quartet just before McCoy Tyner.

Kuhn here takes an approach far different from Tyner’s. Kuhn’s quartet — with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist David Finck, and drummer Joey Baron — comes to the Coltrane songbook with soft gloves and candlelight. Much of the set is sweet without fawning, mystical without being New Age.

Even "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," studded with audio fireworks, exudes a simpatico nature, while Coltrane’s classic "Crescent" is deep and gorgeous and Kuhn’s "Trance," a solo piano piece, proves to be full of elegant reverie.

Just when the set could begin to sound safe, it veers into later Coltrane, with slashing modernist tendencies on "Configuration." But here, too, "Jimmy’s Mode" provides some peace, and on "Spiritual," Lovano plays the Hungarian, oboe-like tarogato, on which he eerily conjures up Coltrane’s sound on soprano saxophone.

All in all, a nourishing set.

— Karl Stark, The Philadelphia Inquirer

MATT WILSON QUARTET

"That’s Gonna Leave a Mark" (Palmetto Records)

Drummer Matt Wilson’s quartet makes for one steamy congregation. The drummer, whose collaborators include Dewey Redman, Philly trumpeter Terell Stafford, and the Either/Orchestra, presents his eighth recording here — all are on the Palmetto label — and it’s acidic, energetic, and never boring.

Tenor and soprano saxophonist Jeff Lederer takes turns blowing some muscular stuff with alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo.

The tunes are shapely and well chosen. John Lewis’ "Two Bass Hit" creates a bebop interlude featuring bassist Chris Lightcap, while "Area Man" projects a slinky, secret-agent feel.

The title track is shrill and playful — the shrieking qualifies as part of the fun — while "Getting Friendly," which Wilson bills as a quirky love song, makes for a romantic ditty.

War’s "Why Can’t We Be Friends?" is a stitch, featuring the backup singing of guest vocalists known as "The Swayettes," a perfect cap to this often madcap recording.

— K.S.