record reviews

MAROON 5

Album: “V”

Grade: B

Another formulaic Maroon 5 album, but don’t ignore the exciting bits. On TV, Adam Levine can be funny, spontaneous, unafraid to come across as the irritating truth-teller, full of feisty repartee with bro-rival Blake Shelton. As the frontman for Maroon 5, the L.A. band best known for smash earworms from “This Love” to “Moves Like Jagger” to “Payphone,” Levine is the falsetto-bot who submits to a hitmaking formula that is getting more rigid with every album. It can be a fantastic formula — “Feelings” begins with ’70s wah-wah guitar and a Levine whoop, kicking off a lust anthem that misses the cut for summer single.

Early on, Maroon 5 was a collaboration, drawing power from the partnership between Levine, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael and guitarist James Valentine; today it’s Levine, those guys and superhot producers, including Shellback and Benny Blanco, churning out not rock-band chemistry but big electro-beats and odd vocal affectations. Levine’s Rihanna-style “yehs” on “Animals” aren’t the most annoying part of the song — “baby I’m preying on you tonight/hunt you down, eat you alive,” goes the chorus, appending a creepy “maybe you think that you can hide.”

- Steve Knopper and Glenn Gamboa, Newsday

Robert Plant

Album: “Lullaby and ... The Ceaseless Roar”

Grade: B

Robert Plant could be making millions on a reunion tour with Led Zeppelin, but instead he’s become the black sheep of the Zep family — roaming in search of new adventures. In a quirky solo career that has now carried on three times as long as Zeppelin, Plant has had some hits and misses, but he’s never taken the straight or predictable path.

With his band the Sensational Space Shifters, Plant turns his 10th studio album, “Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar” (Nonesuch), into an exploration of three broad areas of music that have obsessed him for decades: West African polyrhythmic groove, Appalachian country desolation and Southern blues. The music lives in a space where melodies and drone mix, and where beats snake through soundscapes splashed with noise.

Plant doesn’t bring down the hammer of the gods. Instead his voice is supple and gentle, almost tender. He sings at the upper part of his diminished range, the aural equivalent of incense smoldering in a cathedral.

His latest tri-continental band is a typically excellent one, including the ritti (one-string violin) accents of Gambian musician Juldeh Camara, and the textural influence of Justin Adams, a multi-instrumentalist whose production with the Saharan desert blues group Tinariwen is a major influence. They give Leadbelly’s “Poor Howard” and the Appalachian folk song “Little Maggie” a haunting otherworldliness. The three-dimensional mixing of Tchad Blake turns “Rainbow” into a pop song that feels like it’s orbiting in from another planet.

- Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

MIKE SCOTT & FRIENDS

Album: “The Old Country Church”

Grade: B

Tennessee-native Mike Scott and his banjo have been on the bluegrass circuit since 1972 — when he was 10 years old. He started with The Rocky Mountain Boys, moved to The Tennessee Four and then The Cumberland Mountain Boys.

In 1980, Scott landed a job with the legendary Carl Story & The Rambling Mountaineers and then went on to work with Jim & Jesse McReynolds & The Virginia Boys.

In 1986, he formed his own band, Mike Scott & The All-American Band. “The Old Country Church” is his fourth album on the Rural Rhythm label and his second for Rural Rhythm Christian, following 2011’s “Take Me Lord And Use Me.” Most of the songs should be familiar to anyone in America today.

The list includes “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” “I Saw The Light,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” “When The Saints Go Marching In,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “Precious Memories,” “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” and similar songs.

The “friends” include Bryan Sutton, Tim Stafford, Aubrey Haynie, Adam Steffey, Rob Ickes and Ben Isaacs. If you like instrumental bluegrass albums, this is a good one.

- Keith Lawrence, Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer