‘Along Came a Spider’

‘Along Came a Spider’

Alice Cooper (Steamhammer)

Grade: B-

Missed Steven lately?

Longtime Alice Cooper fans will recognize the little psycho who had a thing for necrophilia, violence and black widow spiders on Cooper’s classic concept album “Welcome To My Nightmare” (1975). Like filmdom’s Michael Myers, Jason and Freddy, you can’t keep a good ghoul down. Schizo Steven has popped up on several subsequent albums and slithers back in a big way on Cooper’s latest horror show set to music, “Along Came a Spider.”

For his 25th album, Cooper’s alter ego is a serial killer who wraps his victims in silk and removes a leg from each of them until he can collect eight and build his own super spider.

Though lacking the musical sophistication of “Welcome to My Nightmare” or any one song on par with enduring rock staples like “School’s Out” or “Poison,” the more brutal hard rock of “Along Came a Spider” nevertheless contains enough hooks to please the faithful. At 60, Cooper’s sneering delivery hasn’t deteriorated. Guest guitarist Slash, a longtime Cooper compatriot, enlivens the catchy “Vengeance is Mine” to such a degree, the track sounds like an outtake from Guns ’N Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction.”

— Howard Cohen, The Miami Herald

‘The Motown Collection’

Various artists (Time Life)

Grade: B

In the lexicon of music history, Motown’s place in it will never be in doubt. This is a label that gave the world musical stalwarts such as Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, the Temptations and Marvin Gaye — just to name a few.

So it’s fitting that to mark the label’s 50th anniversary, Time Life has issued a 10-CD retrospective that encompasses the label’s rich history from the 1960s onward.

But it goes without saying that there’s no dearth of similar compilations or reissues from individual artists ranging from the Jackson Five to the Commodores. Still, this set is one of the more complete ones and deftly blends the discography of Berry Gordy’s stable of artists.

For neophytes to Motown, this set is a veritable Wikipedia. For those intimately familiar with it, it’s like a visit from an old friend.

— Matt Moore, Associated Press

‘venus in overdrive’

Rick Springfield (New Door)

Grade: B

Sometimes context matters too much.

Several tracks from Rick Springfield’s new “Venus in Overdrive” (New Door) could easily find fans in a variety of genres — “Time Stand Still” in pop; “One Passenger,” which oddly opens like British Sea Power, in alternative, and the title track in rock — if, they weren’t coming from, you know, Mr. Jesse’s Girl. Never mind that Springfield left the bubble-gum stuff behind in the early ’80s or that the snarling “3 Warning Shots,” in which he fantasizes about killing John Lennon’s killer, is brainier and more aggressive than any Nickelback single.

As a former pop idol and current soap star, Springfield has his niche and he knows it, but “Venus in Overdrive” shows that he’s not going to stop trying to bust out of it.

— Glenn Gamboa, Newsday

‘Object 47’

Wire (Pink Flag)

Grade: A-

Formed during the clamor of Brit punk’s first wave (its 1977 debut, Pink Flag, came months after the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols”), Wire has never made things easy. Ominous vocalists/songwriters Colin Newman and Graham Lewis, guitarist Bruce Gilbert and drummer Robert Grey leapt from sharded art punk (“Chairs Missing”) to noir electronics (“154”) to irked industrial (“The Ideal Copy”) to aggressive skronk (“Send”) during the band’s stop ’n’ start career. But two things they’ve never done are record without Gilbert and create gorgeously celebratory pop.

Wire starts this new adventure with its most chipper track, “One of Us,” a speeding, hummable tune with an epically melodic bass, an impassioned Newman vocal and one of its most spiteful lyrics in “one of us will live to rue the day we met each other.” Neither the catty catchphrases nor the contagious choruses end there. While Newman provides warm crunching guitar sounds, Lewis’ rueful voice picks through the Dadaist lyrics and tipsy melody of “Are You Ready?” with oddball tenderness. Wire does big rock with dense layers (”Perspex Icon”). Wire does lean funk with colorful choruses (”Hard Currency”) while maintaining its patented looming, distanced, cool demeanor.

Wire may sound warmer than ever, but you’ll never hear them sweat.

— A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Singles 06-07’

Jay Reatard (In The Red)

Grade: C-

Reatard has all the makings of a punk hero: dropped out of high school to make music at 15, released 7-inch records like subscription magazines, and adopted an unforgettable stage name hoping to class himself with Johnny Rotten. That aptitude for doing as he pleases — be it posing in blood-drenched skivvies for an album cover or photographing his own puke for his blog — won him a deal with Matador.

This CD of vinyl-only singles is jumpy enough to make you believe he’d punch an audience member in the face after any one. But the songwriting is out of reach, spirited and not very memorable. Compare the Go-Betweens cover (“Don’t Let Him Come Back”) to everything else and only the catchy “Hammer I Miss You” quite stands up. Maybe he’s saving it for the real album.

— Dan Weiss, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Partie Traumatic’

Black Kids (Columbia)

Grade: C

Letdown of the season: “Partie Traumatic,” the awfully titled debut by Jacksonville, Fla., quintet Black Kids, was supposed to be a giddy dance-floor delight that would put the bomp in 1980s Morrissey and The Cure revivalism. That’s what last year’s terrific “Wizard of Ahhs” EP would have led you to believe, and the standard that the shined-up version of the absolutely fabulous single “I’m Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You” lived up to. But the best songs on this disappointing “Partie” — along with “Boyfriend,” “Hurricane Jane” and “I’ve Underestimated My Charm [Again]” — were on Wizard, and singer Reggie Youngblood seems to have run short of ideas before he really got started. Another case of a blog buzz band being rushed to market before being ready for the big time.

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘A Larum’

Johnny Flynn (Lost Highway)

Grade: A

Every so often comes a new voice so unique and assured that the level of talent is never in question: Norah Jones, The Strokes and Amy Winehouse come to mind. Add to that list 25-year-old British troubadour Johnny Flynn, whose baby face masks a truly old soul. His brand of energetic, traditional folk-rock predictably brings to mind the Waterboys and Proclaimers, but intricate nods to the Grateful Dead, Jethro Tull and Bob Dylan also permeate “A Larum” (Old English for “alarm”).

Flynn — whose pleasant, just-a-bloke vocals recall Ringo Starr’s deliberate, slightly stiff delivery — makes the mishmash of influences truly his own. He’s first and foremost a storyteller, but he also happens to excel on guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, accordion and even trumpet.

On the stomping single “The Box,” Flynn convincingly evokes the life of a hobo with lines such as “When you live in a box by the rails/You don’t comb your hair, don’t comb your tail” and “Sweep my mess away, leave my body, leave my bones/Leave me whole and leave my soul/Leave me nothin’ I don’t need at all.” Listening to the jaunty, tavern sing-along “Tickle Me Pink” (”Pray for the people inside your head/For they won’t be there when you’re dead”), you half expect to see sailors merrily brawling. The stoned, slow-as-molasses folk of “Brown Trout Blues” is lifted by drawling country harmonies and muted trumpets — it sounds like a spontaneous jam on a front porch.

But the loveliest moments are found in “Shore to Shore,” with “Eleanor Rigby” cello accents adding mournful weight to Flynn’s confession: “There lies a lady — she’s gone, she’s gone/She’ll be a fine lady before too long/But I hit her head and she finished her walking/She shouldn’t be dead/She was too busy talking.”

Here’s hoping newcomer Flynn has another decade of stories to tell.

— Michael Hamersly, Miami Herald