'WEST'

'WEST'
Lucinda Williams (Lost Highway)
Grade: B
Nobody luxuriates in melancholy like Lucinda Williams, and the Southern country-soul-blues woman is once again making beautifully bummed-out music on her eighth studio album, West. Grieving for her late mother and sorrowful over a broken relationship, Williams seeks emotional grounding on a richly textured set of 13 songs produced by Hal Willner, who puts studio aces such as guitarist Bill Frisell to use, and deftly employs samples of the singer's own voice on the 9-minute talking blues "Wrap My Head Around That."
At times, the territory Williams travels is overly familiar. She recites south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line place names on "Where Is My Love?", largely sticks to her midtempo comfort zone and, when flipping off an ex on "Come On," and misses the majesty of such previously aggrieved epics as "Changed the Locks" and "Joy," coming off as shrill instead. But West's easy-flowing groove serves well the life-and-death issues at stake in such sad, sweet, compassionate musings as "Are You Alright?" and "Fancy Funeral," and gives her devastating voice plenty of room to do its work.
-- Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer
'A WEEKEND IN THE CITY'
Bloc Party (Vice)
Grade: B
Everything about Bloc Party's "A Weekend in the City" is big, as if the multiracial British quartet consciously decided to avoid the ubiquitous Gang of Four comparisons that accompanied "Silent Alarm," its debut. Instead, U2 becomes the reference point, with guitars that are ringing and crunchy rather than jagged and angular, and politics that are more generalized and less overt.
"I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity" are "A Weekend's" first words, and the album is full of arena-size anthems that ride on important-sounding proclamations, although most concern the escapist desire for entertainment. "Lord, give me grace and dancing feet and the power to impress," Kele Okeneke sings to begin "The Prayer," and the song grows from a percussive rumble to a synth-laced climax.
Bloc Party's anthems impress, but "A Weekend's" relentlessly outsize emotions are a bit one-dimensional -- even if that dimension is huge.
-- Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer
'PUSH COMES TO SHOVE'
John Hammond (Back Porch)
Grade: B
It took him four decades, but John Hammond has finally gained the confidence to include his own songs among his masterful interpretations of legendary bluesmen and other American music giants. After putting one original on 2003's "Ready for Love" and two on 2005's "In Your Arms Again," he ups the ante to five on "Push Comes to Shove."
That doesn't mean this is the best of the three -- that honor still goes to "Ready for Love," perhaps his career peak. But it's testimony to how well Hammond has absorbed his influences that his five numbers here stand up well against songs by Junior Wells, Little Walter, Tom Waits and Dion. G. Love produced the album, but aside from a brief semi-rap on "I'm Tore Down" (he also wrote one song), the youngster doesn't mess with Hammond's gutbucket stew, which is well-seasoned with his gravelly, smoke-cured voice.
-- Nick Christiano, Philadelphia Inquirer