‘Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8’

‘Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8’

Bob Dylan (Columbia)

Grade: C

There had never been anything quite like Bob Dylan in the 1960s, and there’s nothing quite like him today.

Once he burned with revolutionary fervor, songs spilling out of a man in a hurry. Now, at age 67, he’s a walking history book of the United States, keeping alive stories and musical styles that might otherwise be forgotten. His work has grace and majesty, and the breadth of his late-career resurgence is better illustrated in this collection than on any of his individual albums.

“Tell Tale Signs” is a two-disc set spanning the years 1989 to 2006, part of the ongoing official “bootleg” series of alternate takes, unreleased tracks, random live recordings and overlooked soundtrack material.

Songs are never quite done with Dylan. They’re living organisms, subject to rewriting and recasting. The “Time Out of Mind” rocker “Mississippi” is here in two versions, each dramatically different than the one eventually released — a solo acoustic take and one where the band sounds adrift on a Southern summer afternoon.

Some of the alternate takes sound better than the versions already known, like “Most of the Time” freed from the shackles of a confining producer. Some aren’t: the rockabilly version doesn’t dignify “Dignity.” All are fascinating peeks at creativity in progress.

Dylan also leaves you shaking your head at songs somehow left on the cutting room floor, like the gorgeous “Red River Shore” or adventurous “Dreamin’ of You.”

For Bob Dylan, these are outtakes. Most musicians would call them their greatest hits.

— David Bauder, Associated Press

‘break up the concrete’

The Pretenders (Shangri-La)

Grade: D

Pretenders fans with high expectations for the group’s first studio album in six years will be sorely disappointed: “Break Up the Concrete” is nothing more than singer Chrissie Hynde sowing her rockabilly oats at age 57.

There’s no hint of the songwriting mastery of Pretenders standards such as “Brass in Pocket,” “Talk of the Town,” “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” “Message of Love” or “My City Was Gone.” Instead, we get stripped-down garage guitars, watered-down punk attitude and plenty of predictable chord progressions.

Hynde is clearly having fun — and trying. But her energetic, staccato vocals are unable to lift either the title track or “Don’t Cut Your Hair” above empty rockabilly.

— Michael Hamersly, The Miami Herald

‘Unexpected’

Michelle Williams (Columbia)

Grade: C

Outside of Destiny’s Child, Michelle Williams is best known for gospel tunes, but the 28-year-old takes on a new sound with her third solo CD, “Unexpected.”

The singer topped the gospel charts with her solo debut, 2002’s “Heart to Yours,” and saw similar success with 2004’s “Do You Know.” But with “Unexpected,” Williams successfully breaks out of her comfort zone, singing mainly European-pop flavored, sweet sounding dance jams.

Producer Rico Love (Usher, Natasha Bedingfield) assists on the catchy “Lucky Girl,” Solange Knowles co-writes the fun single “We Break the Dawn” and on “Till the End of the World,” Williams yearns “Would you be my lover, forgetting all others/Even till the end of the world?”

The disco-flavored “Hello Heartbreak” starts off nicely, but when a voice chimes in with the corny phrase “it’s time for the percolator” three minutes into the song, it’s time to press the skip button. Williams also falls short on “Private Party” and the out-of-tune “Hungover.”

But she brings back the momentum by slowing things down with mid-tempo jams like “Thank U” and “The Greatest,” a beautiful love song.

— Mesfin Fekadu, Associated Press

‘Dig Out Your Soul’

Oasis (Big Brother)

Grade: C

Oasis has long worn its psychedelic influences on its sleeve, and on its latest album, “Dig Out Your Soul,” the band often sounds as though it wishes it were 1969 all over again. There’s a forward motion to the backward glances, but the spiritual-philosophical bent of many of the songs suggests that brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher preferred the era when rock stars set out to explore the meaning of life rather than maximize the monetization of their brand.

“The Turning” references the Rapture, fallen angels and a messiah in its sense of the impending arrival of something ominous, hopeful or both. “The Shock of the Lightning” might be an expression of physical or spiritual ecstasy, and its lyric “Love is a litany ... a magical mystery” is yet another of this band’s acknowledgments of its eternal debt to The Beatles.

There are likewise musical quotations from “Helter Skelter,” “Dear Prudence” and other “White Album”-era Fab Four songs, along with nods to The Who circa “Tommy” and the Stones a la “2000 Light Years From Home.”

— Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times

‘Appeal to Reason’

Rise Against (Geffen/Interscope)

Grade: C

Rock radio probably should be grateful for a band such as Rise Against, which can move units and wax emotively on leftist politics — all the while sounding like Journey covering late ’80s skate punk. One just wishes the band did it with a bit more grace and inventiveness than on “Appeal to Reason,” where straight-outta-the Nation song titles such as “Collapse [Post-Amerika]” and “Re-education [Through Labor]” disguise some pretty conservative ideas about how modern mainstream punk should sound.

Rise Against earnestly evokes the vague political angst of a Warped Tour moppet who just made his or her first trek away from the main stages and over to the PETA tent. The galloping “Kotov Syndrome” begins with a promising scene of a military guard purporting to be “keeping the peace, whatever that means” before a hugely harmonized chorus reels it back into red-meat alt-rock territory.

The band’s more believable when it veers from righteous bro-core, like on the effortless, Green Day-bouncy “The Dirt Whispered” and the requisite California-is-full-of-phonies anthem “Entertainment.” Such songs are nothing revolutionary. If kids wanted their own politics screamed back at them, they could watch cable news.

— August Brown, Los Angeles Times