'REVELATION'

'REVELATION'
Joe Nichols
Universal South
ss 1/2 Joe Nichols is one of country music's brightest talents, a master of the new traditionalist movement pioneered by Randy Travis, Alan Jackson and George Strait two decades ago. Both Travis and Nichols share a burnished baritone and have a good ear for finding top-shelf material.
Nichols' follow-up to his 2002 breakthrough "Man With a Memory" is a more difficult disc, though. His father died when that CD was selling, and it obviously framed the tone of "Revelation." All but two tracks are ballads with heavy themes -- lost love, divinity, lost values and the loss of his father. When the barroom boot-tapper "What's a Guy Gotta Do" rolls around as track 10 it comes as blessed relief.
Any individual song here is good, including the Top 20 single, "If Nobody Believed In You," a song about the healing power of believing in somebody -- mortal or divine -- but taken as a whole the CD becomes a little much, flirting just a bit too close to sentimentality in spots. Nichols also lacks the gravitas to pull off Waylon Jennings' Vietnam-era title track.
That said, "Revelation" doesn't sully Nichols' reputation. He's still worth championing.
'CROSBY NASH'
David Crosby and Graham Nash
Sanctuary
ss Nothing less than the weight of the world bogs down David Crosby and Graham Nash's latest release, a dour affair that preaches politics when it's not freighted with big thoughts. And these guys have a lot on their minds, which makes "Crosby Nash" a two-disc, 70-minute buzz kill.
No one can question their sincerity, and their track record as socially conscious singers is unassailable. But that doesn't mean they should take themselves so seriously. About halfway into the third track, "Through Here Quite Often" -- which is a ballad about reaching out to strangers and finding "secret kindness" in a waitress's eyes -- it's difficult not to start squirming at the over-arching sincerity of the entire effort.
And so it continues for 20 songs that are self-help odes with messages like "if everyone would open their hearts they'd see that every human is holy to someone," paeans to the benefits of meditation or shrill broadsides about the evils of big business.
At least one of the protest songs, "Don't Dig Here," creates some rock 'n' roll tension, and on the ballads the harmonies are predictably sublime, the production pristine and the musicianship top-notch. None of which saves "Crosby Nash" from its own ponderous weight.
'BABY, DON'T YOU TEAR MY CLOTHES'
James Cotton
Telarc
ssss Legendary blues harpist James Cotton cut his teeth with Sonny Boy Williamson in the '40s and further honed his skills with Muddy Waters in the '50s and '60s. He continued to gain fame as he moved out and fronted his own band, gaining several Grammy nominations and finally winning the award in 1996 for "Deep In The Blues." In 2002, he nailed down the Handy Award for Best Traditional Album of the Year with "35th Anniversary Jam."
Now, following throat surgery in the '90s that made much singing impossible, Cotton has assembled a Who's Who of vocalists in the roots-music world to collaborate on a sizzling blues package saturated with gritty, passionate performances.
Colleagues from country, folk, Cajun and blues join him on a collection that winds its way through the Mississippi, Memphis and Chicago blues styles. Among those lending a hand are such luminaries as Odetta, Bobby Rich, Rory Block, Doc Watson, Jim Lauderdale, C.J. Chenier, Dave Alvin and Marcia Ball.
'CONCERT IN THE GARDEN'
Maria Schneider Orchestra
Self-produced
sss 1/2 Maria Schneider says her pieces have little personalities when she finishes them and that the set's ambitious closer, "Buleria, Solea y Rumba," "wrote me more than I wrote it."
The notion that she gives birth to these compositions and serves as their medium conveys how rich and involved Schneider's work is. A devotee of arranger Gil Evans and arranger-trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, Schneider lives up to her rep as one of jazz's eminent composers on this orchestral jazz CD, available on her Web site, www.mariaschneider.com
The pieces borrow "choro" music from Brazil and harmonies from Spain and Argentina, though "Pas de Deux" sounds closer to Ravel. Each piece has a lifespan in which a theme is stated and built and reaches a cool climax in a more artful way perhaps than a life can.
Schneider, who only performs publicly with her orchestra, stocks it with up-and-coming and under-recognized players, including Canadian trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, pianist Frank Kimbrough and guitarist Ben Monder.
Schneider, who is keenly interested in dance, begins the set's epic finale with elegant drums. The piece rises and falls like the rhythms of a busy day, and the Spanish touches added by Donny McCaslin's saxophone and Luciana Souza's wordless singing give the piece mystery.
'GODFATHER BURIED ALIVE'
Shyne
(Gangland-Def Jam)
s Shyne's personal story has caused more buzz than his music itself.
Signed by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Shyne's deep voice and sometimes insightful lyrics were compared to the late Notorious B.I.G. when his first recording hit the radio. But just a few months later, his just-launched career was derailed by a famous nightclub shooting that led to charges against both Combs and Shyne in 1999. Though he managed to release his debut album in 2000, he was convicted in the case the next year; Combs was acquitted.
He's now serving a 10-year prison sentence, lending credibility as well as logistical problems to his second album, "Godfather Buried Alive."
The 12 songs include dated material (he references the 1999 New York City police shooting of African immigrant Amadou Diallo several times) as well as raps Shyne delivered recently from behind bars. The hard-to-understand 50 Cent dis track "For The Record" was literally phoned in.
Clear-eyed criticism of government and culture is blended with bleak depictions of ghetto life, a refreshing tack for a mainstream gangsta rapper. The opener, "Quasi O.G.," succeeds with a mournful Bob Marley sample, an angry jab at President Bush and the question: "Black people don't own no ports or boats, so tell me how ... we getting all this coke?"
Cleverly phrased, occasionally smart verses abound, but the album as a whole is too cold to enjoy. Beats are predictably repetitive, and Shyne suffers a glaring lack of charisma that undermines his arrogance, apparent on the forced R & amp;B-rap of "Jimmy Choo."