'A LIVELY MIND'

'A LIVELY MIND'
Oakenfold (Maverick)
Grade: D
The second song-based album by superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold -- who, in his lively mind at least, has ascended to last-name-only cultural eminence -- is a distressingly flat effort to expand his audience beyond his techno-rave kingdom. Sporting a Benicio Del Toro hairdo, the record-spinning Brit has enlisted the assistance of a motley crew of guest stars, making more than you might expect of actress Brittany Murphy on the club track "Faster Kill Pussycat," and considerably less than you would hope for of Pharell Williams on the inane "Sex 'n Money." "Set It Off," with Grandmaster Flash, is similarly desultory, and would-be rocked-out cuts such as "No Compromise" suggest that Oakenfold should leave this sort of thing to his countrymen the Chemical Brothers. "A Lively Mind," in fact, really excels only when Oakenfold sticks to what he does best, as on the thumping, hypnotic and excellently titled "Save the Last Trance for Me."
--Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer
'AMERICAN V: A HUNDRED HIGHWAYS'
Johnny Cash (American)
Grade: A
As gut-wrenching a listen as you'd might expect, this posthumous release from Johnny Cash, "American V: A Hundred Highways," features some of the final recordings he made before his death in September of 2003, including "Like the 309," the last song he ever wrote. A sense of mortality hangs over every note of this mournful and moving album, but so do feelings of everlasting love and a grateful release from earthly bonds. It's understandable if you need a box of tissues to get through it but inexcusable if you miss out on some of the last statements from a true music icon.
Hearing Cash sound so totally lost and in need on his rendition of Larry Gatlin's "Help Me," recorded two months after his wife, June Carter, passed away and two months before his own demise, is certainly tough sledding. His many late-life infirmities are also clearly evident as he struggles through Gordon Lightfoot's classic "If You Could Read My Mind," but his frailness only adds to its gravity and poignancy, not unlike what Billie Holiday achieved on her 1959 "Lady in Satin" album. Cash sounds stronger on Hugh Moffatt's "Rose of My Heart" and Bruce Springsteen's "Further on Up the Road."
Cash didn't live to hear this album fully arranged and fleshed out, but he is in safe hands with his longtime producer Rick Rubin, so instrumental to Cash's late-career revival over the last decade. There's nothing fancy or extraneous here, just picture-perfect accompaniment from the likes of Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, plus session stalwarts Smokey Hormel and Randy Scruggs.
The most attention will undoubtedly go toward the train song, "Like the 309," which is an instant classic that has Cash imagining his own death with grace and even humor as he somehow manages to laugh at his own infirmities.
--Martin Bandyke, Detroit Free Press
'NINETEENEIGHTIES'
Grant-Lee Phillips (Zoe/Rounder)
Grade: B
Reinterpreting 1980s post-punk tracks in an acoustic setting might strike some as a dubious concept, but the former leader of critically acclaimed alternative rock band Grant Lee Buffalo proves here that great songs can easily survive and thrive whether they're plugged in or not.
Beyond the admitted novelty value of hearing the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way" and Joy Division's "The Eternal" with a violin and harmonica in the mix instead of synths and electric guitars, one also hears how seriously well-written these tunes are. With tempos pretty much slowed down across the board, whether covering the Cure, the Smiths or the Church, Phillips finds a creamy, melancholy groove in material that has had an obvious influence on his own style.
Also fascinating is the way that the acoustic instrumentation helps demonstrate how Robyn Hitchcock's "I Often Dream of Dreams" is so heavily indebted to the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood." This project won't make you throw out your copy of the Pixies' "Doolittle" album with the original version of "Wave Of Mutilation," but that doesn't make it any less worthwhile or fun to listen to.
--Martin Bandyke, Detroit Free Press
'FAST MAN RAIDER MAN'
Frank Black (Back Porch)
Grade: B
Maybe it's age or growing sage. But the weirdest thing about this 11th solo record from the occasionally reformed Pixies' front man is how settled Frank Black has become.
Not because, at 41, Black is neither writing nor singing the obtusely paranoid crunchers he did at 21 when Pixies began.
Rather, it's because this Black seems so comfortable -- muddling through shambling funky folk and crusty sophisticated soul -- as if the other Black had never existed.
Stax/Dylan instrumentalists Steve Cropper and Spooner Oldham get joined by scads more session cats (Al Kooper, Levon Helm) to roar, roll, hoot and toot -- gently, exquisitely -- across smoothly complex roots jazz ("If Your Poison Gets You" is like Tom Waits fronting Steely Dan), huffy ballads ("Don't Cry That Way"), cinematic folkies, and Cajun corkers. And Black? He's just gruffly cooing, ruminatively but coolly, about adoration, coal miners, Katrina and parenthood, leaving the tweaked sorrows of that other Black far behind. If he ever was there to begin with.
--A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer