record reviews

January 22, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Jessie Baylin

Album: “Little Spark” (Thirty Tigers)

Grade: B

Lana Del Rey has sucked the air out of the pop chanteuse genre this month, but we’d like to point out Jessie Baylin for your listening consideration.

The Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s third album “Little Spark” offers a similar kind of promise — lush, thoughtful pop music in a post-Adele era where everyone’s looking for just that kind of thing.

Baylin’s got a pretty good backstory. The wife of Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill, she opted out of her major label record deal because she wanted to chart her own path, and went indie, founding her own label and teaming with Thirty Tigers on the release.

The 11-track album that emerges plays on the mind like late afternoon sunshine filtered through layers of gauze. It kicks off with the sophisticated California pop of “Hurry Hurry” and “Love is Wasted on Lovers,” strings and harps and chimes and loaded looks across crowded rooms. “I Feel That Too” is a lazy day spent swinging in the hammock, “Yuma” is a languid dream and “Dancer” bounces along on a breezy piano line.

— Chris Talbott, Associated Press

THE BIG PINK

Album: “Future This” (4AD)

Grade: C

London’s the Big Pink debuted in 2010 with “A Brief History of Love” and its irresistibly catchy single, “Dominos.” They favored the densely distorted guitars of shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine, but their heart was in the hooks and the big beats rather than in the dreamy feedback. On “Future This,” the duo of Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell lay bare their grandiose aspirations. It’s an album of stadium-size sing-alongs full of optimism, skyward-swirling synths, and stomping beats.

It’s stuff the Brits do well — Oasis and the Verve come to mind, but also Depeche Mode — and “Future This” has its triumphant tracks: the Laurie Anderson-sampling “Hit The Ground [Superman]” and the “Dominos”-esque “Stay Gold,” in particular. But they also get all worked up over trivialities, and “Rubbernecking” and “Jump Music” sound overblown and relentless rather than irresistible.

— Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer

IDLE WARSHIP

Album: “Habits of the Heart” (Black- smith / Element / Fontana)

Grade: B

The mystery of why Res — the soulful Philadelphia rock singer born Shareese Ballard — hasn’t achieved wider name recognition is a head-scratcher for fans who heard her 2001 debut album, “How I Do,” in which she sang songs mostly written by Santi White, who would go on to make a name for herself as Santigold. Unfortunately, there weren’t all that many of those people, largely because Res was mistakenly marketed as a neo-soul artist, rather than the genre-hopping alt-pop act she is at heart.

“Habits of the Heart” isn’t likely to turn Res into a major star, either, partly because it’s another hard-to-categorize project. It’s a collaboration with well-respected rapper Talib Kweli that is much more of a thinking person’s dance-floor party starter than a conventional hip-hop album. Res, for her part, comes up with a steady supply of memorable, grabby hooks and makes you impatient for the next proper Res album.

— Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

ELVIS PRESLEY

Album: “I’m 10,000 Years Old: Elvis Country” (RCA/Legacy)

Grade: A

Released in January 1971, “Elvis Country” shows Elvis Presley still enjoying the artistic renaissance he launched with his 1968 TV special. In short, that means the King was fully engaged and working with better material than he did during the ’60s. It’s a potent combination.

Some of the numbers here exude countrypolitan elegance, such as the truly great, string-kissed version of Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” and Dallas Frazier’s “There Goes My Everything.” But the album employs the unusual gimmick of featuring snippets of a gospel rocker, “I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago,” between all the tracks, and many of the performances have a similar down-home, loose-limbed feel. They include a bluegrassy take on Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt’s “Little Cabin on the Hill” and a hard-edged R&B version of Bob Wills’ “Faded Love.” The highlight of the three bonus cuts is the Frazier ballad “Where Did They Go, Lord.”

This two-CD reissue includes the subsequent album “Love Letters From Elvis.” It featured material recorded at the same Nashville sessions that produced “Elvis Country,” but it’s not as consistent. Elvis does tear it up, though, on “Got My Mojo Working/ Keep Your Hands Off of It.”

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

MATTHEW DEAR

Album: “Headcage” (Ghostly International)

Grade: B

“Headcage,” the latest release by DJ and solo artist Matthew Dear, is a testament to the often- overlooked power of EPs. Only four songs long, it is creative and engaging for its entire 15-minute duration — all killer, no filler. It’s also a new direction for Dear, whose last release, 2010’s “Black City,” was a dark, atmospheric, Philip K. Dick-esque affair. Although in line with 2007’s “Asa Breed” and its indie-rock influences, “Headcage” is still a departure from Dear’s previous work. It’s both poppier and more rooted in DJ and electronic culture. Songs are lively, with an emphasis on definitive beats. Yet there is still an eerie undercurrent of temptation and danger, as Dear’s David Bowie- inspired vocals slide and tumble around alluring melodies and rhythms.

— Katherine Silkaitis, Philadelphia Inquirer

MAC MILLER

Album: “Blue Slide Park” (Rostrum)

Grade: C

Best known for his dippy rap rip on “Donald Trump,” Mac Miller of Pittsburgh is one strange bird. On his debut full-length album, he does the unthinkable where hip-hop is concerned and uses not one guest chorus or verse. You’d have to go out of your way to find any contemporary hip-hop album, let alone a first-time outing, that isn’t laced with outside MCs. Then again, Miller’s charmed, frat-boy pop-hop sound is strangely old school. It borrows beats from DJ Kool, makes merry with the subjects of girls, green, and beer, and finds the MC using a voice not unlike Eminem’s — if you can imagine Slim Shady’s “Stan” as a jolly sort who killed his victims with kindness and candy.

Miller is overly chipper, yet that enthusiasm — like his sense of melody — is contagious as all get-out. “Party on Fifth Ave.” is cloyingly celebratory. The punky “Up All Night” and the reggae-fied “Under the Weather” come with catchy, very persuasive choruses.

— A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer