RECORD REVIEWS

Little Big Town

Album: “Pain Killer” (Capitol Nashville)

Grade: A

How do the four vocalists of Little Big Town respond to the platinum success of the group’s most rewarded album, 2012’s “Tornado?” Certainly not by playing it safe.

On their sixth album, “Pain Killer,” Little Big Town — Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook — experiment endlessly with harmonies, arrangements, loops and sound effects. The whistles, odd beats and unconventional guitar work that woozily circle through the first single, “Day Drinking,” only hint at the shenanigans the singers and their producer Jay Joyce cram into these 13 new songs.

Most of it is for the sake of fun — you can hear how gleeful the group is as they test outlandish ideas on such songs as “Quit Breaking Up With Me,” “Good People,” the Lorde-like “Things You Don’t Think About” and the title song. But they also show off the beauty of their blended voices on the hushed “Silver and Gold” and the stunning “Live Forever,” written by the group with Jeremy Spillman and Ryan Tyndell.

The Grammy-winning band only stumbles on “Faster Gun,” with its awkward cowboy similes. The rest of the album keeps raising the bar: Little Big Town, from early on, never followed country music formulas. With “Pain Killer,” their boldness continues to pay off.

—Michael McCall, Associated Press

Neil Diamond

Album: “Melody Road” (Capitol)

Grade: B

Two years ago, shortly after he married for the third time, Neil Diamond told The Times that he intended to write his next album “on the run.” He owed his new wife a honeymoon, he said, and she’d given him the OK to work while the two were traveling.

Judging by the love-drunk tone of “Melody Road,” Diamond followed through on his plan. “Marriage is not an easy thing / But look at all the joy it brings,” he sings in “Marry Me Now.” Elsewhere, the 73-year-old rhymes “what a little bit of love can do” with “took me to a place that I never knew.” Imagine scribbling in a notebook aboard a yacht somewhere; these are precisely the sort of lyrics one might create.

A shift from the gloomy austerity of his recent collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, “Melody Road” sets those optimistic thoughts against swelling arrangements lacquered with strings and brass — the secular-gospel sound, more or less, of classic Diamond hits like “Sweet Caroline.” Are these new tunes likely to move arena audiences in the same way? Nah. But Diamond sings as though they will. He’s still a believer.

—Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times

ANNIE LENNOX

Album: Nostalgia (Blue Note)

Grade: B

Nostalgia seems inevitable. On it, Annie Lennox essays jazz and pop standards, mainly from the ’30s and ’40s. It’s a late-career move made by many pop artists, from Linda Ronstadt to Rod Stewart. The song selection favors familiar classics with blues roots — “Georgia on My Mind,” “Summertime,” “God Bless the Child,” “Strange Fruit” — with a special nod to Hoagy Carmichael, who wrote three of the album’s 12 songs. The arrangements are mostly spare, with washes of keyboards providing orchestral flourishes, and almost all are slow-paced ballads, with earthy versions of “I Put a Spell on You” and “Mood Indigo” being the exceptions.

In the Eurythmics or on her previous solo albums, Lennox’s forceful, soulful voice injected a warm humanity into synth pop and dance-club hits, and her commanding alto, still strong and clear at 59, is certainly up for the challenge of these jazz tunes. On Nostalgia, however, it too often sounds deliberate and sometime ponderous.

—Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer