‘Hard Believer’

‘Hard Believer’

Tommy Castro (Alligator) Grade: B+

On “Trimmin’ Fat,” Tommy Castro offers a somewhat lighthearted lament about the current lean times. One thing’s for certain: There’s no fat to trim in Castro’s brand of rocking R&B. The Bay Area singer-guitarist continues to refine a style that’s full-bodied, muscular, and brimming with soul.

With “Hard Believer,” Castro ranges from the intense, Stax-like balladry of the title song to the slippery swamp-funk of “Monkey’s Paradise” and the hell-bent roadhouse rocking of “Make It Back to Memphis,” with its blasting horns and pounding piano. It’s a tour de force that extends to the album’s covers, which include songs by Dylan, Allen Toussaint and the Righteous Brothers, and a take on “Ninety-Nine and One-Half” that gives Wilson Pickett and John Fogerty a run for their money.

— Nick Cristiano

‘I Get Around’

K’Jon (Universal Republic)

Grade: B

Detroit’s auto industry may have money problems, but the Motor City’s R&B scene is booming, what with its biggest star, the laid-back K’Jon, breaking through to the majors after several independent releases.

By mixing the more passionate aspects of Marvin Gaye and R. Kelly with a Bill Withers weariness in his supple voice, K’Jon shows off soul-sonic resources at a time when the Auto-Tune blanches all in its path.

“Fa Sho” and “On the Ocean” would be torch songs if it weren’t for K’Jon’s youthful swagger — the hustler’s shuffling step, an occasional pitter-patter of scat, a musky sensuality. While the title track benefits from breezy vocal melody and jazzy sway, “Fly Away” is robotically synthetic without being icy or distant. “I Get Around” isn’t perfect. The club-hop of “After the Club” is typical stuff, of which the best that can be said is “not bad.” Yet K’Jon manages something oddly innovative on the electronic tip during “On Everything.” Here, a sultry vocal, a sparsely arranged melody buoyed by its piano line — elegant, simple, memorable.

— A.D. Amorosi

‘Twisted’

Rick Estrin and the Nightcats (Alligator) Grade: B

This band used to be known as Little Charlie and the Nightcats, named after gifted guitarist Little Charlie Baty, who has retired from the road. Rick Estrin, however — singer, harmonica player, and principal songwriter — has always been the front man.

Baty expanded on basic blues and R&B by showing a sophisticated jazzer’s touch. New guitarist Kid Andersen displays a similar feel on “Cool Breeze,” but he also veers into the wild surf-rock of “Earthquake” and the propulsively rocking twang of “Bigfoot.” Still, the essential character of the band has not changed. Estrin, a true character with slicked-back hipster flair, offers more colorful variations on the lighter side of the blues. But with numbers such as “Catchin’ Hell” and “Someone, Somewhere,” he shows he can also be drop-dead serious.

— Nick Cristiano

‘Urbans’

Stefon Harris and Blackout (Concord) Grade: B+

Vibraphonist Stefon Harris’ new CD is just the coolest Stevie Wonder album never made. It projects a sly old-style funk and a gentle tunefulness that intermixes electronic instruments with subtlety, as if Harris were cooking with just the right amount of herbs.

“Gone,” Harris’ riff on the Gershwins’ “Gone, Gone, Gone” from “Porgy and Bess,” is a most relaxed melding of pop and hip-hop, while “For You” finds Casey Benjamin singing 1970s-style through the wavy lines of a vocoder. Peter Frampton never sounded so good.

The quintet, which occasionally is expanded with strings and woodwinds, unrolls a gentle take of Wonder’s 1974 tune “They Won’t Go [When I Go]” that doesn’t displease. Jackie McLean’s “Minor March” juxtaposes a marchlike madness with a cooking jazz interlude. Benjamin proves to be mean on alto here, too, and the bandmates — keyboardist Marc Cary, bassist Ben Williams, and drummer Terreon Gully — are clean and pure.

— Karl Stark

‘Elgar and Schnittke Viola Concertos’

David and Aaron Carpenter, viola; Philharmonica Orchestra, Christoph Eschenbach conducting (Ondine) Grade: B+

If there’s such a thing as an overnight-star violist, it’s David Aaron Carpenter. Only a few years ago, he was a lanky Princeton University student who had won a prestigious gig on a Philadelphia Orchestra youth concert. Now, having studied with Roberto Diaz and been an official Rolex prot g of Pinchas Zukerman, the Long Island-born Carpenter is making an ambitious recording debut with a viola transcription of Elgar’s “Cello Concerto” plus Schnittke’s 1985 “Concerto for Viola and Orchestra.” It’s impressive, to be sure, though the kind of explosive energy that Carpenter generates in live performances has yet to be captured.

Purely on the basis of tone and technique, he makes an excellent case for the viola version of Elgar’s concerto, so much that you can’t help making slightly unfair comparisons between him and recordings by the world’s great cellists. Carpenter is in a league with the best, but if you’re expecting him to seize the concerto with the revisionist passion of, say, Jacqueline Du Pre, you’d best listen further into the disc. The Schnittke concerto, which is among the composer’s most popular pieces in that medium, is played here with great imagination and identification.

— David Patrick Stearns

McClatchy Newspapers