RECORD REVIEWS

Lady Gaga

Album: “Joanne”

Grade: 3 stars (out of 4)

Lady Gaga has spent the last few years proving her vocal chops — the Grammy-winning album with Tony Bennett, the show-stopping “Sound of Music” tribute at last year’s Academy Awards, her performance of “Till it Happens to You” for her Oscar nomination this year — and her strong voice is the star of the promising but uneven “Joanne.”

Those performances may have hinted at what this album could be: a stylistic departure from her dance-pop past. “Joanne” is more like a rock-and-country album with a few dance songs sprinkled in. It doesn’t feel like a new persona as much as an artist exploring her boundaries. The result is a little haphazard, but it’s interesting to hear where she might be heading.

“Joanne” is named for the pop star’s late aunt. The title song is fittingly tender, though Gaga’s voice sounds affected. Backed by acoustic guitar and simple percussion, it ultimately lends the track a timeless feel.

Gaga employs an equally obvious vocal technique — this time a stiffened vibrato — to lesser effect on the downtempo ballad “Angel Down.” She sounds more natural, even fierce, elsewhere, particularly on the heartfelt “Million Reasons” and the rocker “Diamond Heart.”

There’s a lot going on, and there’s no real cohesion, but there are a few catchy standouts likely to merit replays.

—Sandy Cohen, Associated Press

The Pretenders

Album: “Alone”

Grade: 3 stars (out of 4)

Chrissie Hynde reverts to her Pretenders moniker on “Alone,” a soulful production helmed by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and starring her tough-as-nails vulnerability.

Hynde’s wonderful voice, one of the rock’s best, can weaken knees even by reading a phonebook. While the album sports all kinds of modern-retro sounds, her vocals propel the fast ones and elevate the ballads with her usual empathy and authority.

Opening with the declarative title track, which has a piano riff with shades of Allen Toussaint’s “Fortune Teller,” Hynde immediately clears the room — “I’m at my best, I’m where I belong, alone.” That could bear bad tidings for what is supposed to be the band’s first effort since the dynamic “Break Up the Concrete” in 2008, but she doesn’t sound at all isolated.

Instead she gets is feistily involved in fellow Akron native Auerbach’s quirky production, which echoes a long list of rock and R&B idols, from Doug Sahm’s Tex-Mex organ to T. Rex and even Duane “Twangy Guitar” Eddy himself on “Never Be Together.”

“Roadie Man” is another moaning complaint by the long-suffering wife from “Watching the Clothes” and first single “Holy Commotion” has some jungle drums and whirling sounds of steel pans. “Chord Lord” is probably closest to Pretenders from 30-odd years ago, while “I Hate Myself” would suit Lou Reed or a certain controversial Nobel Prize winner. There may not be towering classics on “Alone,” but it’s a rewarding listen if you accept that these are not your parents’ Pretenders. And, oh, that Hynde vibrato!

—Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press

Norah Jones

Album: “Day Breaks”

Grade: 3 stars (out of 4)

The line on Norah Jones’ sixth album and first since 2012’s “Little Broken Hearts” is that it’s a return to the jazzy, piano-based sound of her 2002 Grammy-gobbling debut, “Come Away With Me.” But whereas that album was full of late-night confidences and the comforting, honeyed vocals that are a Jones trademark, it was really a pop album with jazz trappings.

“Day Breaks,” by contrast, is more thoroughly a jazz record, down to its Horace Silver (“Peace”) and Duke Ellington (“Fleurette Africaine”) covers and guest appearances by Lonnie Smith and Wayne Shorter. Which is not to say “Day Breaks” is by any means inaccessible to pop ears: Jones’ inviting purr is as pleasurable an instrument as ever, and she does well with her own revved-up and swinging “Flipside,” subtly sophisticated ballads such as the title cut, and the churchy lead single “Carry On.”

But what really distinguishes “Day Breaks” is that it finds Jones back on the piano bench, putting a decade and a half’s worth of lessons learned into the music that meant the most to her in the first place.

—Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer