Record reviews

Steve Earle

Album: “I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive” (New West)

Grade: B

Veteran singer-songwriter Steve Earle invokes Hank Williams in his new album’s title, “I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive,“ which also serves as the name of his first novel, to be published in May. As Earle well knows, a song with the same title served as Williams’ epitaph: Hank’s ”I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive“ was a radio hit at the time of his death at age 29. But rather than sing about succumbing at an early age, Earle uses this collection of original songs to celebrate survival and struggle.

Working with producer T Bone Burnett, who mixes traditional folk music with bass-heavy rhythms, Earle deals with dark fates, from doomed politicians to dangerous backstreet encounters to an oil spill that threatens the livelihood of a shrimping family that has worked the same waters for generations. He counters those songs with tales about how perseverance can pay off, whether it’s New Orleans rising from disaster in the fiercely stated “This City” (first heard on the HBO series “Treme,” in which Earle has a recurring role) to finding lasting love late in life in the tender ballad “Every Part Of Me.”

Earle’s message, it seems, is that even with life’s temptations and tragedies, redemption and meaning can be found—especially in love, in family and in community.

— Michael McCall, Associated Press

Emmylou Harris

Album: “Hard Bargain” (Nonesuch)

Grade: A

For an album about life’s journey, Emmylou Harris wrote most of the songs herself. Long celebrated as an interpreter with impeccable taste in material, Harris composed 11 of the 13 tunes on “Hard Bargain,” and they’re up to her high standards.

There’s a theme throughout: Time is flying by, the sun is going down, and Harris has spent her life “working on the blues.” Nearly 40 years after the death of country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons, she offers a fresh assessment of their close relationship on “The Road.” Harris sings with equal eloquence on “Darlin’ Kate” about another friend and singer who died last year, Kate McGarrigle.

Harris finds dignity in late-life solitude on “Nobody” and the gorgeous “Lonely Girl.” On “My Name Is Emmett Till,” she contemplates the years stolen from the young man whose killing became a symbol of the civil-rights movement.

Harris still performs in cowboy boots, but she branched out beyond country music some time ago, and there’s little twang here. The album was recorded with producer-guitarist Jay Joyce and multi-instrumentalist Giles Reaves, and the trio creates the sort of gauzy, soft-focus sound Harris first explored on “Wrecking Ball” in 1995. Her silvery soprano is in fine form, and as always, her songs benefit from contributions by the world’s greatest harmony singer: Harris.

— Steven Wine, Associated Press

HOLY GHOST!

Album: “Holy Ghost!”

Grade: B

Holy Ghost! does so much mining of disco grooves and ’80s synth-pop hooks that its debut sounds like a long lost 1982 British import. “Holy Ghost!” (DFA) has nods to “Confusion”-era New Order (“It’s Not Over”), Pet Shop Boys orchestration (“Wait and See”) and Michael McDonald (“Some Children”) — yes, that Michael McDonald, the Doobie Brother, is singing the chorus. All that looking back could seem like a gimmick, but the Brooklyn duo nails the vibe, and singer Alex Frankel keeps it light, with his airy, upbeat delivery.

— Glenn Gamboa, Newsday

CHEMICAL BROTHERS

Album: “Hanna: Original Motion-Picture Soundtrack” (Back Lot)

Grade: A

When the teenage killing machine played so marvelously by Saoirse Ronan in Joe Wright’s stylish action movie “Hanna” asks her rogue CIA agent father what music is — you see, she has been raised in the forests of northern Finland and doesn’t know a reindeer from a Bieber — he consults the dictionary and tells her that “it’s a combination of sounds with a view to beauty of form and expression of emotion.”

That snowshoe fits the British electronic duo the Chemical Brothers as well as anyone, I suppose. And in what is surprisingly their first foray into film scoring, veteran cinematic soundscapists Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands do particularly well on the beauty-of-form front, whether mixing car-alarm intensity with let’s-go-to- the-circus playfulness in “Devil Is in the Beats” or showing off their subtle keyboard and chorus moves on the delicate “Hanna’s Theme.” And while the music works much better in the movie than, say, Cate Blanchett’s strangely cartoonish performance, the Hanna score also functions quite effectively without the visuals, particularly if you imagine yourself as a teenage assassin as you make your way through the world with the Chemical Brothers in your earbuds. (Available on vinyl, on iTunes and streaming for free at the Chemical Brothers MySpace page.)

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer