‘THE SHADE OF POISON TREES’

‘THE SHADE OF POISON TREES’

Dashboard Confessinal (Vagrant)

Grade: D

Chris Carrabba, the one-time emo king better known as Dashboard Confessional, returns with “The Shade of Poison Trees.” However, unlike 2006’s more upbeat — and somewhat rollicking — “Dusk and Summer,” Carrabba ditches the band and returns to his stripped-down roots, strapping on the acoustic guitar and returns to his glory days. On one hand, this is a welcome arrival for diehards; on the flipside, Carrabba, now 32, still sounds like that sad, frustrated teenager singing of gloom, doom and conflicted relationships instead of the maturing man he really is. Lyrics like “I’ve had enough of your forked tongue / How do you know when the cuts are deep enough? / I know you like your stabs / Your pre-emptive attacks” from “Little Bombs” run rampant throughout the album — to the point of tedium. While “Poison Trees” is quintessential Dashboard, with the dour lyrics and acoustic spunk, it might actually be time for Carrabba to ditch the sad sack approach and grow up.

—Ari Bendersky, Associated Press

‘SOULJABOYTELLEM.COM’

SouljaBoy (Collipark/Interscope)

Grade: C

The success of 17-year-old Atlanta rapper Soulja Boy is a prime example of how to build a novelty act from the ground up. Long before his hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” topped Billboard charts and became a top-selling ringtone, the song reportedly helped him receive 10 million MySpace visits. And on YouTube, a myriad of fans have uploaded homemade video clips featuring their own versions of the song’s accompanying dance steps. The track, now unavoidable on urban radio, centers on electro-pan drum plunks, a nearly indecipherable chanted chorus and lyrics mostly about how Soulja Boy enlivens the party. Now his major-label debut “SouljaBoytellem.com” — an aptly titled nod to his Internet fame — is a largely self-produced collection of similarly rudimentary rhymes, infectious hooks and space-age, synth-heavy beats. Yet the disc is about as formulaic and ultimately disposable as hip-hop can get. He’s got the requisite rump odes (“Booty Meat” and “Donk”), product placement jams (“Bapes” and “Sidekick”) and dance-move ditties (“Snap and Roll” and “Let Me Get Em”). Undeterred by his own lack of depth, on the album closer “Don’t Get Mad,” he says: “Don’t get mad cause the kids like me.” Soulja Boy may have a point: he has a populist’s ear for what the most young rap listeners crave: frothy, party-rocking anthems.

—Brett Johnson, Associated Press

‘REVIVAL’

John Fogerty (Concord)

Grade: A

For all his strengths, John Fogerty never believed much in subtlety. Every aspect of “Revival” drives the point that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member has returned to the classic, big-riff sound of his ’60s band, Creedence Clearwater Revival. He posts signs everywhere: The album title, the iconic, silhouette photo on the cover, even a tribute to the durability of his own music on “Creedence Song.” All of which begs the question: When did he ever waver from this sound? He’s taken a couple side roads, as in his 1973 album, a solo album recorded under the name Blue Ridge Rangers. But since his 1985 comeback album, “Centerfield,” he’s stuck to the same unpretentious mix of swamp rhythms and meaty guitar riffs that made Creedence so catchy and singular. While “Revival” sticks to basics, it rarely sounds as inspired as his best work. The first single, “Don’t You Wish It Was True,” captures that jubilant spirit and the thrill of a good sing-along chorus that’s always been Fogerty’s trademark, and “It Ain’t Right” has a crisp rockabilly energy that celebrates how viscerally the 62-year-old Californian can rock. But too many songs feature riffs that are too simple and stripped down. Also, with the exception of the exhilarating “I Can’t Take It No More,” a high-speed putdown of the current president, too many of the songs strive for a political message but settle for backhanded swipes.

—Michael McCall, Associated Press

‘COWBOY TOWN’

Brooks & Dunn (Arista)

Grade: B

No superstar country act strikes a balance between playing on their strengths and taking new risks quite as well as Ronnie Dunn and Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn. “Cowboy Town” continues their strong, second-decade surge, as they keep rocking harder and incorporating more soul and spirituality into their songs. On their mainstream songs, they find ways to punch up familiar territory. The title song uses a swaggering backbeat, a ringing guitar and sustained organ fills behind a lyric about the righteous toughness of men who live with pride and morality. Similarly, the album’s first single, “Proud of the House We Built,” is a slow-building anthem about a couple who start too young but find a way to hold the course through all the challenges. But it’s in the adventurous album cuts that their on-going inspiration shows. The dark-haired Brooks stretches like never before, whether he’s recalling a pungent night with Lone Star poet Jerry Jeff Walker or getting Southwest psychedelic on the dizzying “Drop in the Bucket.” Tall, big-voiced Dunn gets just as out of his mind on the high-speed Tex-Mex stomper, “Tequila.” As usual, the duo can get too silly (“Put a Girl in It”) or too philosophical (“God Must Be Busy”). But that’s all part of not holding back. In a genre known for playing it safe, Brooks & Dunn show the value of careening out of control.

—Michael McCall, Associated Press

‘THE BLUEGRASS SESSIONS’

Merle Haggard (McCoury Music)

Grade: B

Country’s greatest living songwriter gives “crotchety” a good name on his first bluegrass album. Fortunately, Haggard didn’t wait till he was 70 just to take a stab at “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Instead, the album is dominated by a batch of strong originals, some delightfully cranky, others disarmingly melancholy, rounded out with a few of his classics re done acoustically. The high point is “What Happened?” in which he counts the ways he’s watched the fabric of America come unraveled over the last half century. Hag’s wagging finger points, however, not just at the world outside his window, but also into his mirror, notably in “Learning to Live With Myself.” The song recounts a series of losses and underscores the way the passage of time intensifies a thinking man’s efforts toward self-understanding. His updates of “Big City” and “Mama’s Hungry Eyes” fit nicely in the album’s bent toward giving voice to the common man’s and woman’s travails. Instrumental support from Marty Stuart and a team of hired guns, who recorded this with Haggard in a quick two-day session in Nashville, is expectedly first-rate. If there’s one way to soothe the savage country breast, it’s with music as spirited as this.

—Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times

‘SHINE’

Joni Mitchell (Hear Music)

Grade: B

Joni Mitchell has since the 1960s ranked among songwriting’s most significant and remarkable voices, traversing folk, rock and jazz. But her disdain for the music industry led Mitchell to announce in 2002 that she would no longer record albums. She has lately reconsidered that decision, making a distribution deal with Starbucks/Hear Music. She returns in typically thoughtful fashion with her first collection of new songs since 1998. “Shine” is built with mellow minimalism around the social themes that have long been a mainstay of her work.

Some of these songs were developed for a recently debuted ballet based on the 63-year-old Canadian’s work, among them the frank, dark “If I Had a Heart,” which laments the Earth’s abuse at the hands of those who care less about its fate than she. Mitchell’s voice is lean and husky, as it has been for many years, but it’s a pretty instrument for rendering a delicate contemplation of ecological issues amid the pedal steel guitar of “This Place.” Sparse arrangements enhance the material’s mood and texture, which range from the chipper instrumental splashes that color a revision of her iconic “Big Yellow Taxi” to the supple pulse that lends a meandering flow to the hopeful, grounded meditation of the title track. Mitchell’s clear-eyed poetry is simple but effective alongside trickles of piano and mild saxophone on the haunting “Bad Dreams,” a persistent unapologetic vehicle for the social advocacy that is the centerpiece of her singular artistry’s welcome return.

—Thomas Kintner, Los Angeles Times

‘STILL FEELS GOOD’

Rascal Flatts (Lyric Street)

Grade: D

How did such wimpiness get so popular? These guys have already proven themselves the undisputed champions of mush on their march to the top of the charts. With “Still Feels Good,” Rascal Flatts is not about to give up the title.

“Winner at a Losing Game” is an atypically restrained country ballad that hints at real substance and taste. The rest — big shock — is all overblown and formulaic power ballads with some laughable attempts at sounding macho (“Bob Your Head”). It adds up to a stupefyingly soulless affair. But what do we know?

—Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘WHITE CHALK’

PJ Harvey (Island)

Grade: B

PJ Harvey has long been known as the queen of indie rock ’n’ roll blues; a British rose blackened at the edges. From 1992’s raw debut “Dry” to 2004’s snarling “Uh Huh Her,” she has released an onslaught of fuzzy guitar and worldly lyrics.

“White Chalk,” her eighth studio album, is Harvey’s biggest departure yet — a piano-based collection of 11 solitary and lovely tunes. Co-produced by Harvey and her longtime collaborators Flood and John Parish, the album starts off with Harvey’s normally growled vocals turning airy on “The Devil.” The album ends with a haunted moan on “The Mountain.”

A poet at heart, Harvey always bites with her words, whether they’re lifted in rage as on her early work or plunged down to earth with depression here.

“The ceiling is moving, moving in time. Like a conveyer belt, above my eyes,” she croons scratchily over a refined melody on “When Under Ether.”

Harmonica and staccato piano feed the breakup tune “Silence.”

“I freed myself from my family, I freed myself from work, I freed myself ... and remained alone,” Harvey laments in an elegant vibrato.

True, 1998’s “Is This Desire?” and 2000’s “Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea” mined Harvey’s more atmospheric tendencies, but “White Chalk” proves she has a matured knack for intimacy — without the cushion of loudness or fuzz.

—Solvej Schou, Associated Press