RECORD REVIEWS

Dierks Bentley

Album: “Riser” (Capitol Nashville)

Grade: B

Contemporary country singer Dierks Bentley has changed producers for “Riser,” his seventh album, and the results play up a long-held U2 influence. The chiming guitars and slow-boiling melodies add a simmering passion to Bentley’s distinctive vocal and writing style, while the lyrics and subtle instrumental touches tie it to country music.

Working with producer Ross Copperman, Bentley’s ambitious reach comes charging back in such new gems as the spiritual “Here On Earth” and the personal statements of “I Hold On” and “Damn These Dreams.”

The album’s arrangements — a refinement of a sound Bentley has drawn on since his 2003 debut — mix atmospheric touches with steady rhythms that percolate and at times explode into fist-pumping anthems. The sound accentuates the strengths of Bentley’s voice, which nicely articulates narrative story songs like “Bourbon In Kentucky” and the tangled emotions of “Say You Do.”

Bentley’s often shown a sly sense of humor, and it surfaces on the entertaining “Drunk on a Plane,” which manages to turn a poignant portrait of heartbreak into a party song.

— Michael McCall, Associated Press

Beck

Album: “Morning Phase” (Capitol)

Grade: A

It’s hard to put a finger on Beck. He can steer into many moods, as he has in the two decades since he had a breakthrough with the commercial success of “Mellow Gold.” On “Morning Phase,” his first studio album in six years, Beck takes us to an intimate, gray landscape that is haunting and beautiful.

The 13 songs are complex tapestries, woven from the same hue. They are slow, mostly, and touched with melancholy. Even when simple, such as on “Turn Away,” they are rich. Spare guitar work is spun into vocal layers and orchestration that mixes the sounds into blurs.

The effect is gorgeous.

— Michelle Morgante, Associated Press

ST. VINCENT

Album: “St. Vincent” (Loma Vista)

Grade: B

Annie Clark got her start as a guitarist in the large ensembles of the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens before launching her solo career as St. Vincent. She’s an inventive, often noisy, guitar player, but on her fourth record, her guitar often takes a secondary role to heavy electronic grooves. It’s an album full of disruptions, lyrical and musical.

Even relatively quiet songs get upended: “Huey Newton” starts as a softly sung, beautiful keyboard ballad and then shifts, abruptly, to a distorted, heavy-metal guitar trudge punctuated with angry screams.

Clark’s last project, “Love This Giant,” was a collaboration with David Byrne. “Rattlesnake” and “Digital Witness” possess the playful, artful mix of groove and noise of Talking Heads’ “Remain In Light.” But mostly, “St. Vincent” is brash, bold, and deliberately uneasy.

—Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer