RECORD REVIEWS

April 17, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

FOO FIGHTERS

Album: “Wasting Light”

Grade: A

There’s a moment of pure alt-rock bliss about halfway through the Foo Fighters’ “White Limo” when Dave Grohl lets loose a true, throat-ripping shriek, “Yeahhhho! Limmmmmohhhhh!” over a thunderous, incessant metal-guitar assault.

That’s when you know “Wasting Light” (Roswell/RCA), the Foo Fighters’ seventh studio album, is for real, that Grohl and the gang have shaken off the responsibilities of being torchbearers and moneymakers and arena-fillers, and simply have found a way to rock again.

Though they get help from some important pals from the ’90s — “Nevermind” producer Butch Vig is onboard, as are Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and once-and-future Foo Pat Smear — this is no nostalgia trip.

Something has clearly clicked with this lineup, which once again includes guitarist Smear, and the Foos seem renewed. As tough as it is to top 1997’s “The Colour and the Shape” in their catalog, “Wasting Light” might just do it.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

PAUL SIMON

Album: “So Beautiful or So What” (Hear Music)

Grade: B

It’s been 20 years since Paul Simon, now 69, made an album of note. That would be 1990’s “Rhythm of the Saints,” the Brazilian-flavored follow-up to 1986’s South-African-rooted “Graceland.” With “So Beautiful or So What,” Simon gets his groove back by returning to the template of those two discs, melding his singer-songwriter observations with percolating rhythms delicately and deftly employed. Mortality is on his mind, most effectively on “The Afterlife,” which imagines the way into heaven as a bureaucratic process akin to waiting in line at the DMV.

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

Alison Krauss & Union Station

Album: “Paper Airplane” (Rounder)

Grade: A

Even though Alison Krauss is known as an exactingly deliberate record maker, she had remained persistent about releasing new music every two or three years since her 1985 debut — until lately.

It’s been seven years since the last Alison Krauss & Union Station album, and four since her Grammy-winning collaboration with Robert Plant on “Raising Sand.”

Several songs open with a single instrument and vocal, whether it’s guitarist Dan Tyminski behind Krauss on the title song and the stunning “Lay My Burden Down,” banjoist Ron Block setting up a rolling run that pushes Tyminski’s vocals on “Dustbowl Children,” or dobroist Jerry Douglas’ wonderfully melodic opening to “Sinking Stone.” Throughout, each note seems necessary and right in its place.

— Michael McCall, Associated Press