record reviews

August 22, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

BRIAN WILSON

Album: “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin”

Grade: B

On “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin” (Walt Disney Records), the summer mash-up between the surf-sound maestro and the Jazz Age composer, the most obvious retooling is on “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.”

Far from Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s wistful yet playful version, or any other classic take, Brian Wilson casts the song as a sock-hop shimmy with bouncy piano rhythms.

This album finds Wilson clearly invigorated by material he feels an affinity with; thankfully, he’s not so precious that he can’t flood it with sea salt, sunshine and all the qualities that make his music individual.

At 68, his voice sounds roughened but expressive, an aged root growing through all the squeaky clean orchestration made for starry drives with the convertible top down.

Wilson listened to more than 100 Gershwin compositions before narrowing it down to these songs, which run the gamut from the traditionally covered to rarities.

He also was given permission from the Gershwin estate to finish two songs, “The Like in I Love You” and “Nothing But Love.” “The Like in I Love You” is one of the best for showing Wilson’s deft hand at taking a scrap of melody and blowing it out so that it hits on many different emotional levels.

A smile that maybe came after a few tears, the melody refracts but never leaves its sentimental but complex center.

— Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times

JOHN MELLENCAMP

Album: “No Better Than This”

Grade: B+

The John Mellencamp of “No Better Than This” (Rounder Records) is not the John Mellencamp most would expect. The artist seems to know as much: “I caught a glimpse of myself as others see me, and I wasn’t the feller that I thought I’d be,” he sings on “Coming Down the Road.”

His trademark scratched vocals are there, but the backdrop is intimate, relaxed and more than a little quaint.

The album was produced by T Bone Burnett, who consistently proves he has a knack for turning vintage blues and folk sounds into something rather raw and intricate, and recorded with archaic techniques.

Add the detail that Mellencamp worked only at spots steeped in rock myth, including Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn., and “No Better Than This” risks being written off as retro gimmick.

Instead, such tracks as “Right Behind Me” go for the throat, with each slow pluck of the guitar haunting the shadows, and Mellencamp singing his voice hoarse.

For much of the record, he’s eyeing death and laughing at the devil or, as in the back-porch-folk of “Easter Eve,” bonding with his son by brawling with strangers. A little cranky, but far more carefree Mellencamp slips into a rocking chair groove on the lost-lover lament of “Don’t Forget About Me” and concedes that he’s “spotty at best.” Over the course of his 30-plus-year career, sure, but not here.

— Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times

RAY LAMONTAGNE AND THE PARIAH DOGS

Album: “God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise”

Grade: B

Ray LaMontagne, folk-rock’s reluctant laureate, takes his trademark accessibility to new heights on the excellent “God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise” (RCA).

Accompanied by a stellar backing band, the Pariah Dogs, LaMontagne pairs his raspy croon with a distinctly ’70s sensibility, drawing on the Band, Faces and Nick Drake to guide his experimentations with country and Americana.

The rocky opener “Repo Man” has a seductive twang reminiscent of Rod Stewart or the Band, and there’s something endearing about the shambling “Old Before Your Time,” on which the thirtysomething LaMontagne mourns a lost youth.

But it’s the melancholy “New York City’s Killing Me,” which relocates Nick Drake to the Big Apple, that centers “God Willin’.” Wistful and touching by turns, it’s a reminder of just why LaMontagne became the face of modern folk.

— Emily Tartanella, Philadelphia Inquirer

THE BLUE SHADOWS

Album: “On the Floor of Heaven: Deluxe Edition”

Grade: A

Before he died in February 2006, Billy Cowsill, one of the lead singers and writers for the Blue Shadows, expressed the wish that the Canadian quartet’s 1993 debut album would be reissued so it could find a wider audience — it had never been released in the United States.

Cowsill, who had been part of the ’60s pop group the Cowsills, had a right to be proud. “On the Floor of Heaven” was, to use the clich , a lost classic. Now, with this two-disc set (on Bumstead Records), we can lose the “lost.”

Certain comparisons are inevitable with the Blue Shadows. Cowsill and his co-front man, Jeffrey Hatcher, mixed country and pop, but not in the kind of vanilla way that passes for country these days.

Rather, they cut their twang with crisp, Beatlesque tunefulness and Everly-like harmonies. The result sounds more timeless than retro, although the approach certainly was a throwback even in ’93.

The second 12-song disc contains self-penned outtakes that could stand with the dozen cuts on the just-about-perfect original album, as well as sharp covers of Merle Haggard and Joni Mitchell and a killer take on the George Jones-sung stone-country ballad “Hell Stays Open All Night Long.”

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer