Record reviews

October 16, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Martina McBride

Album: “Eleven” (Republic Nashville)

Grade: B

For her 11th album, veteran country-music star Martina McBride does more than change record companies. She also takes a new approach to her sound and style.

During 18 years with RCA Records, McBride grew into one of country music’s most consistent recording stars —and one of America’s most respected vocalists. A petite woman with a huge voice, McBride became known for issue-oriented female anthems while showing off the dynamic power of her instrument.

With “Eleven,” the 45-year-old mother of three presents her most diverse album ever. She still offers a message song, dealing with breast cancer on the touching “I’m Gonna Love You Through It.” More typical of her new direction is the effective single “Teenage Daughters,” which mixes a conversational tone with a wry, wise detailing of the challenges of parenthood.

Among the changes, McBride now contributes more as a songwriter, helping compose more than half of her new album. From the cheerful pop-rock of “One Night” to the island sway of “Always Be This Way” to her cover of the rock band Train’s hit “Marry Me” (performed as a duet with Train’s Pat Monahan), McBride proves she can handle a variety of musical styles with convincing conviction.

—Michael McCall, Associated Press

Joe Jonas

Album: “Fastlife” (Hollywood Records)

Grade: D

Most pop singers are jumping on the super uptempo, European-flavored dance bandwagon. Not Joe Jonas.

Instead, he’s trying to ride the contemporary R&B train. He recruited hit songwriters and producers, from Danja to Brian Kennedy to LaShawn Daniels, for his solo debut. There also are assists from Rob Knox and James Fauntleroy, two-thirds of the production group The Y’s; Justin Timberlake rounds out the trio. Oh, and Chris Brown co-wrote and co-produced two songs, and Lil Wayne appears on a remix.

It seems like Jonas took all the right steps to making a decent album. Too bad the result is poor.

Overall, “Fastlife” is lifeless. Vocally, the 22-year-old Jonas is boring: He lacks energy when he sings, and even he doesn’t seem interested in what he’s singing about. Lyrically, the former boyfriend to Taylor Swift (and Demi Lovato, and Ashley Greene, and Camilla Belle) is mainly singing about the downside of relationships. And sonically, most of the songs play like Timberlake and Brown leftovers. Jonas doesn’t add much to the mediocre tracks throughout the album, and on some songs he even sounds robotic.

Try again.

—Mesfin Fekadu, Associated Press

Joe Henry

Album: “Reverie” (Anti-)

Grade: B

Joe Henry is an unconventional singer. He bobs and weaves and scoops while breathing in the midst of a phrase and even in the middle of words.

The distinctive approach matches Henry’s material on “Reverie” a collection of 14 wonderfully strange songs. Twelve albums into his performing career, Henry — better known as a Grammy-winning producer — has pushed his writing beyond category, avoiding the clich s that define and confine genres. Any time a song on “Reverie” threatens to settle too comfortably into blues, folk or jazz, drummer Jay Bellerose provides a jolt with rude percussion that resembles a broom-closet mishap. Another odd aural thread is the neighborhood noises between cuts: Dogs bark, owners whistle, horns honk and traffic creates a dull whoosh. Henry’s world is anywhere and everywhere.

He offers similes to savor and metaphors that mystify as dreamy images race past. His songs repeatedly reference rivers, fences and walls — things that divide, but also places to gather. There’s a lot of fire and smoke and shadow and darkness, but little narrative and few characters. An eloquent essay in the liner notes offers the best clue as to what Henry’s singing about, but even with the fuzzy meanings, these are songs worth knowing.

—Steven Wine, Associated Press

BJORK

Album: “Biophilia”

Grade: B+

Bjork has always been about the grand statement.

After launching a career in groundbreaking dance music, she shifted to icy electronic music (“Homogenic”) and built an entire a cappella album (“Medulla”). But what happens when her latest development isn’t exactly about the music?

The hook on her latest album, “Biophilia” (Nonesuch), is that all the songs come with iPad apps to enhance the experience. That’s ambitious artistically if not musically.

Much of “Biophilia” draws from previous Bjork incarnations, especially the spare, swirling electronic beauty of the “Vespertine” era. The layers of plinky prettiness of “Moon” and remarkably straightforward “Cosmo gony” show off her clear vocals and a simple interest in astronomy.

Bjork offers a bit of her unique take on the world in the gorgeously memorable “Virus,” where she poetically declares over a clatter of chimes and a trip-hop beat, “Like a virus needs a body, a soft tissue feeds on blood, some day I’ll find you.” It’s that kind of off-kilter point of view that is too often missing on “Biophilia,” as if her creative energy was pointed elsewhere instead of the actual songs.

“Biophilia” also could use an injection of dance-floor swagger at times. When the pounding, drum ’n’ bass rhythm arrives halfway through the lovely “Crystalline,” it reminds us of all the wild sonic places Bjork has been and how much fun that trip can be. “Biophilia,” though pleasant enough, feels like a sonic staycation.

—Glenn Gamboa, Newsday

RYAN ADAMS

Album: “Ashes & Fire” (PAX-AM/Capitol)

Grade: A

Ryan Adams has not always exercised a lot of quality control over his relentless stream of releases, but “Ashes & Fire” follows a quiet period in his career. It’s his first album since disbanding the Cardinals and one of his best since his post-“Whiskeytown” debut, “Heartbreaker.” Like that album and the paired “Love Is Hell” EPs, “Ashes & Fire” is a down-tempo, mostly acoustic affair, focusing on soft, somber ballads.

Gently colored with strings, with organ from Benmont Tench of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and with piano and backing vocals from Norah Jones, “Ashes” contains some of Adams’ most sincere and well-crafted songwriting and best singing. He co-opts the cadences of an old folk ballad on “Lucky Now” and slips into a tender falsetto on “I Love You but I Don’t Know What to Say” and “Rocks.” In the past, Adams could seem like a dabbler in different styles; on “Ashes,” he sounds focused and artistically renewed, phoenixlike.

—Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer

JACKIE DESHANNON

Album: “When You Walk in the Room” (Rock Beat)

Grade: A

This year, Jackie DeShannon was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. So it’s fitting that her new album revisits some of her classics and less well-known material in a way that highlights the strength of the writing (as well as the depth of her expressiveness as a singer).

It’s a quiet stunner. Most of these numbers were highly orchestrated in their original versions, but here they are framed by just acoustic guitar and bass, occasionally accented by electric guitar and strings. They include the title song (a 1964 hit for the Searchers) and a slowed-down take on her 1969 hit “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” which has endured as more than just a hippie-era anthem. She also offers her own version of the Kim Carnes hit “Bette Davis Eyes,” which earned DeShannon a 1982 Grammy for song of the year. “Bad Water,” meanwhile, once cut by Ray Charles’ Raelettes, reveals her bluesy streak.

DeShannon also has had success with outside material, represented here by such numbers as Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono’s “Needles and Pins” (also a hit for the Searchers) and Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love.” She closes with the set’s only new song, “Will You Stay in My Life,” which shows that her muse remains sharp.

—Nick Cristiano, Associated Press

ALICE COOPER

Album: “Welcome 2 My Nightmare” (Universal)

Grade: B

When Alice Cooper (the godfather of horror-core) left Alice Cooper (the band) for 1975’s thrilling solo debut “Welcome to My Nightmare,” the humorously caustic lyricist brought along just enough of his past to make things interesting. The sound of Detroit garage pop, L.A. glam sleaze, muscular melodic rock and vaudevillian schmaltz that he and band member/songwriter Michael Bruce crafted pre-1975 got funneled into “Nightmare’s” sleek dreamscape without losing Coop’s punch and potency. Credit producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” Lou Reed’s “Berlin”) for pushing Alice to mix the eerie and the epic.

This 2011 sequel not only reunites Cooper and Ezrin, it’s as if zero time has passed. The cleanly anthemic tone of tracks such as “Something to Remember Me By,” with original “Nightmare” guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter in place, makes Alice’s nastily nuanced vocals and lyrics sound fresh rather than retro. Bringing in duet guest Ke$ha for the bubblegummy, hair-metal “What Baby Wants” doesn’t hurt where reinvigoration is concerned. Best, though, is Alice’s reunion with original bandmates Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith on the gloriously glam-raggedy “When Hell Comes Home.” Brilliant stuff is “Hell” — the sort you’d kill to hear Alice return to. Here’s hoping.

—A.D. Amorosi, Associated Press

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Album: “The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams” (Columbia)

Grade: B

Hank Williams has been the subject of much historical excavation over the past few years. Boxed sets presented pristinely restored live segments from his 1951 syndicated radio show, and just last month came “The Legend Begins,” a three-CD set that contains Williams’ earliest recordings, as a 15-year-old, and selections from his radio show of 1949.

One thing this single-CD set makes clear is that when he died at 29 on New Year’s Day 1953, Williams left behind lyrics that were as powerful as any he had recorded, and the all-star cast here by and large does them justice in setting them to music.

There are some moments of light — numbers sung by Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow. But mostly this is the darker Hank, plumbing the depths of heartache, despair and recrimination, as on “How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart” by Norah Jones and “The Love That Faded” by Bob Dylan.

Alan Jackson leads it all off with “You’ve Been Lonesome Too,” and sets the tone in the sense that none of these performances offer radical departures from Williams’ spare, hard- country style.

—Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer