RECORD REVIEWS

ED SHEERAN

Album: “X”

Grade: A-

Armed with only his acoustic guitar and his charming personality, Sheeran quickly established himself as an arena-filler with his brutally honest tales like “The A-Team.”

On his follow-up, “X” (Atlantic), pronounced “multiply,” Sheeran manages a remarkably difficult task - broadening his sound without losing the immediacy of his raw, intimate tales.

Astonishingly, superstar Sheeran is still willing to wear his heart on his sleeve. (No other arena headliner is likely to be as revealing as Sheeran is in “I’m a Mess” - except maybe his BFF Taylor Swift.) But he’s also ready to hide it away for a bit.

The Pharrell-produced “Sing,” with its Justin Timberlake-influenced falsettos and unshakable groove, is a musical shock from Sheeran. But he makes it work because, at his core, Young Ed is a storyteller and “Sing” is a great story.

“The Man” is an even better one, as Sheeran raps about how “success is nothing if you have no one there left to share it with” as believably as Eminem and then sings his own hook of “I don’t love you, baby.” His worries about falling into a booze-and-weed-fueled spiral that leads him to “die from a thrill” at 27 is both eloquent and poignant.

However, Sheeran’s strength is still the acoustic guitar ballad, though “One” and “Tenerlife Sea” show how he has improved in structuring those songs as well. And, as powerful a pop statement as “Sing” is for Sheeran, it’s likely that the lovely “Thinking Out Loud” will outlast it.

— Glenn Gamboa, Newsday

NIKKI LANE

Album: “All or Nothin’” (New West)

Grade: A

The connection with Dan Auerbach — the Black Keys’ front man cowrote five songs, duets on one, and served as producer — will likely draw some folks to Nikki Lane’s second album. One thing’s for sure: Once she has your attention, Lane doesn’t let go.

The title “All or Nothin’” hints at the attitude that enlivens much of the album. Lane is country with an edge, and if she’s a bit presumptuous to compare herself to Willie Nelson (“Hell, we’re both outlaws”), she displays the talent to back up the bravado. The key is savvy material that presents a full-bodied personality, not a caricature. In other words, she’s a spitfire who’ll warn a loafing romantic partner to “Man Up,” but in another moment, as in “Seein’ Double,” she’ll reveal an aching vulnerability: “I got a hole in my heart / Mighty deep, cold, and dark.”

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

LANA DEL REY

Album: “Ultraviolence” (Interscope)

Grade: A

First thing you’ll notice about Lana Del Rey’s new album is that, like its predecessor, “Born to Die,” the melancholy “Ultraviolence” is filled with stories about lousy guys and the ladies who love them, accompanied by retro, down-tempo melodies more at home in a Douglas Sirk film than in the present. Does that mean Lana Del Rey is obvious or tedious? Is Springsteen, when he sings about the working class?

What Del Rey, her septet, and producer Dan Auerbach have done differently is to remove all elements of hip-hop from her self-described “narco-swing” and move to a live, vintage-soundtrack vibe. “Pretty When You Cry,” “Shades of Cool,” and “West Coast” have the feel of Chris Isaak at his best, but with a psychedelic ambience for gauzy measure.

In a fragile yet effortlessly breezy voice, Del Rey sings of femmes fatales now willing to dispense with bad men (in “Cruel World” the singer “shared my body and mind with you / that’s all over now”), even if those women slept their way to the top. Beyond that, “Ultraviolence” is unobvious, contagious music that sounds like nothing else.

— A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer