record reviews

October 3, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

KENNY CHESNEY

Album: “Hemingway’s Whiskey”

Grade: B

Stars who dominate their genres the way Kenny Chesney has ruled country the past few years usually have two options: They hang on to the formula or they change to something else entirely. (Remember Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines?)

With “Hemingway’s Whiskey” (BNA), Chesney tries to do both. He offers plenty of the good-time country anthems fans flock to him for — especially effective with the chugging “Live a Little,” built around the chorus “I need to live a little, have some fun, take some time waste it on No. 1,” and the clever, island-tinged “Coastal,” which twists the idea of “going postal” into going “coastal” and enjoying some time vacationing in Florida.

He also serves up some touching, story-driven ballads, such as the gorgeous, bittersweet “You and Tequila” with Grace Potter, and the struggle-filled “Where I Grew Up.”

But Chesney also takes some artistic risks. The first single “The Boys of Fall,” a six-minute epic ode to football, is a strange success. On “Small, Y’all,” he teams up with George Jones for a playfully weird warning against arguments, that’s almost a PSA to stop adult bullying.

Sometimes, that goes a bit too far. On “Somewhere With You,” he goes from jam-bandish lite-jazz to an odd, rapid-fire, almost R&B-like delivery. “Seven Days” unspools like it arrived from a Broadway musical gone awry.

However, the energy from the experimenting seems to have helped Chesney recharge, making “Hemingway’s Whiskey” his best album since “When the Sun Goes Down.”

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

JIMMY EAT WORLD

Album: “Invented”

Grade: B

“Invented” (Interscope) shows why Jimmy Eat World is one of the few bands from the Aughts’ Emo Explosion to survive the post-emo age. Whether it’s the epic “Little Thing,” with its soaring strings and grand guitar riffs built over the lyric simplicity, or the clever, airy “Stop,” which could easily have been on the new Taylor Swift album, Jim Adkins’ adaptable vocals make it work. The stomping single “My Best Theory” and the buzzing “Coffee and Cigarettes” serve as links to the past successes like “The Middle,” but “Invented” soars with Jimmy Eat World spinning out new ideas.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

GRINDERMAN

Album: “Grinderman 2”

Grade: B+

Nick Cave didn’t spend too much time coming up with a title for his second album (Anti-) leading his red-meat-and-testosterone-raging blues-rock project, Grinderman. That’s OK though, because the God-, sex- and death-obsessed Australian rocker, along with bandmates Martyn Casey, Warren Ellis, and Jim Sclavunos (also members of Cave’s long-standing, more piano-heavy project, the Bad Seeds) has concentrated on coming up with nine songs that hold up from start to finish instead. Grinderman’s 2006 debut was a gas, all right, but it also ran out of gas after a few mesmerizing, cathartic, midlife-crisis-inspired cuts. This time, Cave once again delivers the cartoonish carnality in high style. “Well, my baby calls me the Loch Ness Monster” — he sings on the howling “Worm Tamer” — “Two great big humps and then I’m gone.” But amid the thundering stomp, this time he also delivers spooky haunters like “What I Know,” which impart as much dread with a whisper as with a scream.

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

NEIL YOUNG

Album: “Le Noise”

Grade: A

Neil Young is an experimental artist working in a pop mode; he wants his music to be relevant, but he doesn’t care about either proving himself great or staying hip, the usual stumbling blocks for aging baby-boomer rock stars. Young just wants to hear how something (a choir, an R&B band, a concept like the history of automobiles) sounds when it collides with his fundamental warped-folk sound. A strong sense of entitlement, the bane of many in his generation, is his ace in the hole. Not caring what anybody thinks keeps him attuned to himself.

He does make room for collaborators, though, and on “Le Noise” (Reprise), his 34th solo studio album, he engages in a clarifying dialogue. Young recorded the tracks in the home of producer Daniel Lanois, using just his voice and mostly electric guitar; the studio master then remixed and enhanced them. The result lands in the same ballpark as work by younger artists such as Joseph Arthur or even Best Coast, though the mood is more reflective.

At times, the sound heats up, as on the earnest “Walk With Me” and the Bo Diddley-touched “Rumblin’.” But in general, this is an easy album to enjoy, something not always true of Young’s recent output. “Le Noise” is not an epic — if it were a book, you could read it in an afternoon — but it’s statement enough from a man who’s already said so much.

— Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times

PHIL COLLINS

“Going Back”

Grade: C

“Going Back” (Atlantic) suggests a return, a nostalgic retreat even, to music Phil Collins obviously loved — specifically, classic R&B, heavy on the ’60s Motown sound.

Collins takes on 18 tracks in an outing as understandable as it is unnecessary, a karaoke spin for the ersatz prog-rock-percussionist-turned-master-of-the-’80s-pop-single. He’s largely re-created the arrangements of Motown standards such as “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” “[Love Is Like a] Heatwave,” “Uptight [Everything’s Alright]” and “Going to a Go-Go.” But Collins’ bamboo-reed-thin voice is no substitute for towering oaks like the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs and the others who sang them the first time. He has his greatest success conjuring a thin but silky Marvin Gaye-like elegance on a couple of numbers.

— Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times

ERIC CLAPTON

Album: “Clapton”

Grade: A

Eric Clapton soars with the elemental styles he’s lived and breathed for most of his 65 years on his new self-titled (Reprise). Sharing production duties with Texas guitar whiz Doyle Bramhall II, they move effortlessly from Texas bluesman Lil’ Son Jackson’s sinewy minor key workout “Travelin’ Alone” through the Mills Brothers-Louis Armstrong ’30s standard “Rocking Chair” to his pal J.J. Cale’s soulful “River Runs Deep” and the ebullient New Orleans jazz treatment of Johnny Burke and Harold Spina’s endearing marriage proposal, “My Very Good Friend the Milkman.”

Clapton and Bramhall also have pulled off a minor miracle in assembling an ad hoc group that manages to sound like a blues band whose members have been absorbing one another’s abilities to the point of musical osmosis. Fabulous Thunderbirds harpist Kim Wilson, New Orleans R&B godfather Allen Toussaint and steel guitar ace Greg Leisz pop up on different tracks adding their distinctive touches — but it’s really Clapton’s show.

— Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times