record reviews

February 20, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

BRIGHT EYES

Album: “The People’s Key”

Grade: B+

For Bright Eyes, less has always been more. And on “The People’s Key” (Saddle Creek), which ambitiously focuses on Conor Oberst’s thoughts on religion and modern life, he’s honed the music into the most direct Bright Eyes album yet. Sure, there are still odd, spoken-word observances from Randy Brewer, but there also are compact, indie-pop nuggets centering on doubts about the Holy Trinity (“Triple Spiral”) and spare, electronic soundscapes about belief systems (“Approximated Sunlight”). This time, Bright Eyes got the balance right.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

PJ HARVEY

Album: “Let England Shake” (Vagrant)

Grade: B

You don’t have to be an Anglophile or a student of the First World War to love PJ Harvey’s eighth album, but it would help. The powerhouse singer and guitarist’s first album under her own name since 2007’s piano-based “White Chalk” takes a measure of her homeland’s bloody past and present, from Gallipoli to Afghanistan, with a 12-song set that rewards attention.

Recorded in a cliffside, 19th-century church in Dorset with usual collaborators John Parish, Mick Harvey and the producer Flood, “Let England Shake” starts off examining the battle for the Bosphorus on the title cut, wittily borrowing a xylophone melody from “Istanbul [Not Constantinople]. In similarly crafty manner, she quotes Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” while summoning a sense of timeless sorrow on “The Words That Maketh Murder,” on which she plays autoharp and saxophone. I’m betting Harvey spent some time reading World War I poets such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke as she composed the acoustic-based, often-wispy songs here, which gather commanding force, quietly, as they consider what it means to be English.

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

TWILIGHT SINGERS

Album: “Dynamite Steps”

Grade: A

Indie-rock bad boy Greg Dulli has been luring us to the wrong side of the tracks for more than two decades now, by himself and as the leader of the underappreciated Afghan Whigs, Gutter Twins and Twilight Singers.

For the ever-changing Twilight Singers’ fifth album, “Dynamite Steps” (Sub Pop), Dulli’s tools are all in order — the soulful growl and croon, the late-night imagery and macho come-ons, and the growing arsenal of musical styles, from electronica and grunge to R&B and rock — all designed to get listeners to come along for the ride.

The craftsmanship here is so good, it’s invisible. The first single, “On the Corner,” starts with a simple electronic beat, some New Orleans piano and some string-section flourishes, before bursting into full Afghan Whigs-like heroics, including a fiery guitar solo, while the story line moves from seduction to betrayal and murder to the courtroom.

The spare, stunning “She Was Stolen” harks back to the best of the Twilight Singers’ “Powder Burns” album, while the epic title track shows that Dulli’s ambitions continue to grow.

Maybe that’s why “Dynamite Steps” shows why Dulli is one of the rare songwriters who gets better with age and has set the bar for 2011’s album of the year very, very high.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

ROBIN THICKE

Album: “Sex Therapy”

Grade: A-

What makes Robin Thicke’s “Sex Therapy” (Interscope) so addictive is the way he bends the latest hip-hop styles to his will. Whether he is surrounded by the spacey stomp of “Elevatas” with Kid Cudi, the Dirty South-fueled “Shakin’ It 4 Daddy” with Nicki Minaj or the playful bossa nova of “Meiple” with Jay-Z, Thicke and his smooth vocals remain remarkably on target. He even makes a mash-up of Eurodance rhythms and James Brown funk on “Rollacoasta,” with help from Estelle, sound as effortless as his Princely falsetto.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

TEDDY THOMPSON

Album: “Bella” (Verve Forecast)

Grade: A

“There is a place where the happiness flows,” Teddy Thompson sings on “Over and Over.” To be sure, that’s not a place the prodigiously talented son of English folk-rock greats Richard and Linda Thompson has visited often in his own work. And that holds true through his fifth and best album.

The songs on “Bella” wallow in longing and ache, unease and unflinching self- appraisal (“My longing for control is leaving me cold,” he laments on “Gotta Have Someone”). But if the emotions are unvarnished, the music is another matter. Thompson and producer David Kahne frame these downbeat tales in exquisitely crafted, hook-happy pop. Some numbers (“Looking for a Girl,” “The Next One”) lean toward rock. Others employ strings, such as “Take Me Back Again,” which echoes the romantic sweep of the Drifters. Either way, the results have a classic feel, and they are irresistible.

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

HOT CLUB OF COWTOWN

Album: “What Makes Bob Holler” (Proper American)

Grade: B

The “Bob” in the title is, of course, Bob Wills, the American music titan whose Western swing, made with his Texas Playboys, is one of the prime inspirations for Hot Club of Cowtown. And what the trio of fiddler Elana James, guitarist Whit Smith, and bassist Jake Erwin do with Wills’ music would no doubt make Bob let out his trademark “Ah-haaa!” (Especially if Hot Club’s efforts send listeners to seek out the originals, as they should.)

The trio gets to the essence of Wills’ appeal with a set that approximates the live-in-the-studio immediacy of Wills and the Playboys’ radio transcriptions, while providing a showcase for the members’ own instrumental virtuosity, whether it’s James and Smith dueling on “The Devil Ain’t Lazy” or Erwin taking the spotlight on the instrumental “Osage Stomp.”

With the more familiar material, Hot Club seems to make an extra effort to provide a fresh angle. Smith and James, who generally alternate lead vocals, tackle “Time Changes Everything” as a duet, while “Faded Love” is done as an instrumental, James’ mournful fiddle carrying the melody.

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer