‘Amanda Leigh’/Album review

‘Amanda Leigh’

Mandy Moore (Storefront)

Grade: C

Sure, Mandy Moore has grown up. She’s 25, married to singer-songwriter Ryan Adams and pushing past the teen-pop territory of her younger days, as she did on 2007’s decidedly adult “Wild Hope.”

But while her new album, “Amanda Leigh,” sparkles in places, it also shows where Moore needs to grow. The record’s tunes about love and soul-searching, co-written by Moore and Mike Viola, leader of the Candy Butchers, with help from Inara George of the Bird and the Bee, range from country-tinged folk to straight-up alt-country to songs so steeped in harpsichord and harmony, they verge on musical theater.

The songs are recorded with crisp, precise instrumentation, but the lyrics tend to rhyme too much. “I could handle your tortured heart/ Even piece it together whenever you ripped it apart,” she sings on “Love to Love Me Back.”

“I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week,” the album’s main single, is saccharine mixed with saltiness. The chorus of the up-tempo and cheesy blowoff to a guy is catchy, but silly.

At her best, Moore shows that her sweetly tinged voice can be both throaty and twangy. Songs such as “Bug” have a pleasant Joni Mitchell vibe, all clear-eyed ’70s folk.

Moore, though, could use some pointers from hubby Adams, whose music skillfully straddles country, rock and pop without trying too hard.

— Solvej Schou, Associated Press

‘Veckatimest’

Grizzly Bear (Warp Records)

Grade: B+

In 2006, Grizzly Bear released “Yellow House,” a debut so drenched in atmosphere that listening to its songs was like ambling through the halls of a deserted lakeside Victorian. If “Yellow House” had a flaw, it was in song construction. Some tracks were almost coma-inducing in their pacing and too intensely focused on harmonized vocals to the exclusion of everything else.

With their full-length follow-up, the quartet’s songwriters, singer Ed Droste and singer-guitarist Daniel Rossen, have strengthened their craft — and surely it helped to have cross-genre pollinator Nico Muhly contribute choral and string-quartet arrangements on a few tunes. “Veckatimest” is a gorgeously refined statement that isn’t content to be merely pretty — a rippling current electrifies even its most gossamer moments.

Grizzly Bear manages to be delicate and charged at the same time by stitching together compelling styles, including doo-wop, sea chanteys, the stringy interplay of jam bands, jazz time changes and the Anglican choral tradition. On “Fine for Now,” Rossen’s vocals have a touch of lounge to them but are strained and hushed. Christopher Bear’s drums predatorily tick around the vocals before capsizing the whole production in a tidal wave of cymbal crashes.

A feast for repeated listening, “Veckatimest” yields the kind of eccentricities a fan can spend months winding and unwinding. In other words, it affords plenty of amusement until the next album comes out.

— Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times

‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’

Phoenix (Glassnote)

Grade: C

Optimistic high school band teachers and the dapper French quartet Phoenix might be the only people who can envision a wave of “Lisztomania” sweeping today’s youth. But the title of the leadoff track from Phoenix’s new album is an apt synopsis of their mannered yet effervescent romanticism.

“Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” a truly marvelous album title if ever there was one, is danceable but only a little disco, synth-driven but clubland averse, an easy record to like but a more difficult one to love.

It’s fitting that many American fans learned of the band through the “Lost in Translation” soundtrack, as “Wolfgang” evokes that film’s dazed sensuality and sense of fleeting pleasure.

The first single, “1901,” is driven by a thick, shimmering Moog and Thomas Mars’ collar-loosening yelps, and “Lasso” and “Countdown” are especially scintillating rockers.

Yet after a good number of frothy tracks such as “Girlfriend” and a long instrumental doodle, Phoenix’s pleasures become akin to eating a tin of cake frosting: It’s a worthy and delicious Friday night endeavor, but expect a touch of a toothache in the morning.

— August Brown, Los Angeles Times