‘Lucky Old Sun’

‘Lucky Old Sun’

Kenny Chesney

(Blue Chair/BNA/SonyBMG)

Grade: B

Despite his success, Kenny Chesney has spent the last five years searching: He’s looked for a new sound, a new way to describe his life in his songs and a new approach for incorporating his love of the islands into his music.

With “Lucky Old Sun,” Chesney seems to have found what he wanted: He’s never sounded so relaxed and sure of himself.

Still, it’s a risky venture, as the country superstar steps away from the party anthems and middle-class sentiments his fans expect from him.

Instead, he creates a personal album about escape. The settings often feature beaches, boats and rum drinks: Familiar territory for Chesney, in both his music and life.

But this time he’s not heading into the sunshine to get loose; instead, he’s getting away from it all to find who he is and what matters to him.

Whether singing with Dave Matthews on the atmospheric, modern ballad “I’m Alive” or with Willie Nelson on the sweet American songbook standard “That Lucky Old Sun [Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day],” Chesney focuses on philosophical lyrics about a successful overachiever who knows he should be happier than he is.

Songs such as “Down The Road,” “Spirit Of A Storm,” “Key’s In The Conch Shell” and the agreeable first single, “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven” — with the world-famous Wailers providing the island rhythms this time — shift Chesney’s compass toward a direction for the star to age with grace, as a musician and as a man.

— Michael McCall, Associated Press

‘Little Honey’

Lucinda Williams

(Lost Highway)

Grade: B

I’m happy for Lucinda Williams, the perennially bummed country-soul siren who is engaged to her manager, record executive Tom Overby. But I’m happier for her music and her fans. That’s because Williams, as divine as she can be when turning sorrow into song, had lately grown depressingly one-note in her discontent.

Not so here. “Little Honey,” her ninth studio album, has its share of longing. “If wishes were horses,” she sings, “I’d have a ranch.” But it’s her most rocked-out set to date, and also her happiest. (Happier even than 1980’s “Happy Woman Blues.”)

And while contentedness is quite often the bane of a tortured creator’s existence, it does Williams a world of good.

It spurs her to vary the album’s mood and tempo, and loosen up in heretofore unheard ways, on the likes of “Jailhouse Tears,” a delicious country love-hate duet with Elvis Costello, as well as the raunchy title cut, and a cranked-up cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top [If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll].”

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Snowflake Midnight’

Mercury Rev (Yep Roc)

Grade: B

“Snowflake Midnight” opens with Jonathan Donahue cooing, “Snowflake in a hot world, don’t let them get to you; don’t let them tell you you’re all the same.” It’s the first of many images of transient fragility, and the first of many unabashedly psychedelic (and more than slightly ridiculous) proclamations. But like the Flaming Lips (which briefly included Donahue), Mercury Rev is talented enough to make songs concerning butterfly wings and runaway raindrops compelling.

“Snowflake” relies more heavily on ethereal keyboards and bubbling electronics than prior albums in the band’s two-decade tenure, although the lineup still includes several guitar- and kettledrum-driven crescendos, the thumping “Senses on Fire,” and the grandly trippy “Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower” among them. Mostly, however, “Snowflake” floats and drifts softly and coolly, as it invokes beatific visions, sonically and lyrically.

— Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock’

Dion (Saguaro)

Grade: A-

It’s the voice, still magnificent as he nears 70, that got Dion DiMucci into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lately, however, the Wanderer has also been showcasing his underrated guitar chops, first with two sets of acoustic blues and now this collection saluting some of the six-string aces of his generation.

The material is almost too familiar, but Dion, with the help of fellow guitarist Bob “Crow” Richardson, puts enough of his own stamp on these warhorses to make them rock anew.

Besides celebrating guitarists who were also stars, such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, he also pays tribute to the less well-known accompanists, like Cliff Gallup on Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-a-Lula” and Philly’s Danny Cedrone on Bill Haley’s “Shake Rattle and Roll.”

The set comes with a DVD in which Dion, Bronx accent and attitude still thick, recalls his encounters with many of the fellow greats he honors here, including ill-fated tour mates Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘At 89’

Pete Seeger (Appleseed)

Grade: A-

“At 89” is a summation of sorts, as Pete Seeger reflects on some of his major preoccupations — war and peace, the environment, the power of song.

But these new recordings, including new and old original material and the traditional sources the folk legend has always built upon, reveal that while age may have taken some of the robustness from his voice, it hasn’t robbed him of the idealistic can-do spirit that makes him such an inspiring figure.

The sense of community Seeger always seeks to forge is reflected in the approach of the album: The lanky banjo and guitar picker is content at times to take the role of accompanist, ceding the spotlight to other singers and instrumentalists. But there’s no doubt whose vision rules.

What he wrote in 1968’s “False From True” and sings here still rings true: “I promise you and you, brothers and sisters of every skin/ I’ll sing your story while I’ve breath within/ We’ve got to keep on keeping on ...”

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘The Sound’

Mary Mary (Columbia)

Grade: B

Mary Mary is one of the few contemporary gospel acts to gain mainstream appeal by blending urban R&B beats with traditional church music.

That approach helped the sisters, Erica and Tina Campbell, reach platinum status on their debut album “Thankful” and gold on “Incredible” and the self-titled “Mary Mary.”

The duo sticks to the same formula on the CD “The Sound.” Mary Mary churns out solid songs praising Jesus Christ alongside signature uptempo hooks on songs such as “Get Up” and “Boom.”

Mary Mary uses trendy vocoder vocals on “God In Me,” featuring Kierra Sheard. The group also teams up with rapper David Banner on the anthemlike “Superfriend.”

But the CD isn’t filled with just vibrant, danceable grooves. On the guitar-driven ballad “Dirt,” the sisters deliver a message that could rejuvenate anyone as they both bellow in harmony, “Champions never accept defeat/ You fall and get back on your feet.” And on ballad “Forgive Me,” the singers talk about past failings and how tribulations helped their maturation as women.

— Jonathan Landrum Jr., Associated Press

‘Gossip In the Grain’

Ray LaMontagne (RCA)

Grade: C

There’s something inherently unsatisfying about music so obviously meant for film and television soundtracks as Ray LaMontagne’s “Gossip in the Grain.” All the pieces are in place for a lovely folk-pop outing; the pedal steel guitars are tuned to “mournful,” and LaMontagne’s whisper-wail has enough bayou in it to stand out from the pack of bearded hangers-on.

But the album seems a purposefully thin broth of domestic sadness that needs something else, something more immediate with which to identify.

It’s almost enough to send a boy walking in the rain with “Gossip” on repeat, hoping for a limousine to drive by and splash sad, sad water on him from the gutter and finally reveal what LaMontagne is getting at.

It’s a shame LaMontagne isn’t from Ireland, as the success of the “Once” lovebirds and Damien Rice suggest a bull market for the opaque pastoralism LaMontagne’s shooting for.

Songs such as the title track and “A Falling Through” dissolve in a haze of underfed emoting, but whenever LaMontagne introduces specific sounds or images to hang your hoodie on, he gets more inviting.

“Meg White” is a worthy celeb-stalking indie anthem (is Meg the new Winona Ryder in that regard?), and lead single “You Are the Best Thing” is a relieving slice of Stax soul. It’s a sound a bit beyond LaMontagne’s vocal reach, but at least it doesn’t need to be on Nick and Norah’s infinitely tedious playlist to make its point.

— August Brown, Los Angeles Times

‘Peace Queer’

Todd Snider (Aimless)

Grade: B

As Todd Snider explains it, the cover of his self-released EP “Peace Queer” shows him blindfolded and held hostage at gunpoint by a shirtless hippie demanding protest music.

Snider’s muse can be amusing, and as songs with a political bent go, this batch is a hoot. It starts with “Mission Accomplished [Because You Gotta Have Faith],” a jab at George Bush with a George Michael beat.

The finale “Is This Thing On?” is a parable about a school bully that applies to American foreign policy.

Those are the bookends to an eight-song set that’s more funny than angry but passionate, too.

Snider performs a stinging acoustic cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” tells the tale of a resolute disfigured vet on “The Ballad of Cape Henry,” and sings a eulogy for his flawed Uncle Sam on “Dividing the Estate [A Heart Attack].”

A line in the opening tune sums up the theme: “Fighting for peace — that’s like screaming for quiet.”

— Steven Wine, Associated Press