‘Lhasa’

‘Lhasa’

Lhasa (Nettwerk)

Grade: A

Lhasa takes her time. A Mexican-American from Montreal, Lhasa de Sela released her first album, the acclaimed “La Llorona,” in 1998, and her second, “The Living Road,” in 2003. Her third, simply “Lhasa,” came out this year. It’s her first with all English songs, her most understated, and her best. Buoyed by spare guitar-picking and harp-plucking, with minimal bass and drums and glimpses of piano and violin, it’s a stately, acoustic, nocturnal album of roiling emotions. It’s gorgeous.

“Rising” is a waltz-time ballad of stormy sentiment; “Love Came Here” clatters and thumps, but softly; “Where Do You Go” floats on a shimmering harp figure. Throughout, Lhasa sings in an aching, pure alto, with a poetic gravitas that never slips into melodrama. The songs move slowly and deliberately, taking their time. Fans of Sam Phillips, Keren Ann, Marianne Faithfull, or Cowboy Junkies take note.

— Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Don’t Stop’

Annie (Smalltown Supersound)

Grade: B

From La Roux to Little Boots, there was no shortage of indie-approved Euro electro-pop available in 2009. And showing up in the United States a full year after its European release (albeit in altered form) is “Don’t Stop,” the follow-up to Norwegian pop star Anne Lilia Berge-Strand’s 2004 “Anniemal.” But on “Don’t Stop,” Annie’s particularly good at lacing percolating grooves with bummed-out undercurrents, as on the breathy “Bad Times,” in which the escalating beats-per-minute can’t help her escape the reality that “the loneliness reminds you that everything fades.” She’s catty on “My Love Is Better,” which features Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos on guitar, and suggests a boring rock-boy spice up his sound by buying a sequencer in “I Don’t Like Your Band.”

A late arrival to the hipster dance party that’s more than welcome.

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘My Walking Stick’

Jim Byrnes (Black Hen)

Grade: A

Jim Byrnes is better known as an actor, at least in the States — he played “Lifeguard” to undercover agent Vinnie Terranova (Ken Wahl) in the great ’80s TV series “Wiseguy.” But the St. Louis-born singer and guitarist is also a superb roots musician, and in Canada a multiple award-winning one. “My Walking Stick” came out early in 2009, but it’s too good to go without a mention.

The album, named after the Irving Berlin title song and featuring key contributions from producer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Dawson, mixes top-flight self-penned numbers with covers well-known and obscure. Singing in a weathered but warm voice, Byrnes sometimes offers inspired rearrangements — the Band’s “Ophelia” is slowed to ballad pace in the verses, and the horns are replaced by fiddle and a gospel chorus — and sometimes he sticks close to the source, as on the Ray Charles hit “Drown in My Own Tears.” Either way, Byrnes deeply inhabits all the material, weaving the various strains of country, R&B, gospel and folk into a personal vision that manages to sound both age-old and original.

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer