Josh Ritter

Josh Ritter

Album: “Fever Breaks”

Grade: B+

Josh Ritter’s “Fever Breaks” is a work of stacked marvels, the result of an auspicious collaboration with Jason Isbell – who also produced – and his band, the 400 Unit.

In places raw, chilling and emphatic, while sensitive and compassionate in others, the 10 songs cover murder, love and politics while ruminating on the wonders and burdens of our existence and its expiry date.

Opener “Ground Don’t Want Me” is a brisk-paced story of murder and a frustrated search for rest, if not redemption. It is followed by “Old Black Magic,” where piles of guitars help illustrate the blinding, confused environment – “And I can’t see the lighthouse/And the lighthouse can’t scream.”

An unrelenting acoustic guitar underscores the intensity of “On the Water,” which urges its target to make their long-distance relationship an intimate one, while the thirsting “I Still Love You (Now and Then)” recalls an old flame who is far from extinguished in his heart.

Protest songs have benefited from the age of social media – which has expanded their reach – while also having to overcome short attention spans and sensory overload. So “All Some Kind of Dream” shrewdly wraps its political message in a graceful, acoustic arrangement, calling for compassion and appealing to the best in us in “darker days than any others I’ve seen.”

Horrifying in its description of a bureaucratic dystopia, “The Torch Committee” is a nightmare song that feels all too possible, while “Losing Battles” kicks off like The Grays’ “Very Best Years” but quickly reveals its Neil Young & Crazy Horse fierceness.

There have been plenty of highlights in Ritter’s nearly 20-year recording career but it’s the intensity of the music and imagery that makes “Fever Breaks” an especially engaging outing.

–Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press

Alan Parsons

Album: “The Secret”

Grade: B

Magic is one of the themes of “The Secret,” Alan Parsons’ latest project, and it is best represented by the instrumental opening tune, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Its many moods over nearly six minutes are like an orchestrated soundtrack to a ’60s animated Disney film or a magician’s stage act, with Steve Hackett, Nathan East and Vinnie Colaiuta helping to embellish Parsons’ passion.

On his first solo studio album since 2004, Parsons – without longtime collaborator Eric Woolfson (who died in 2009) – is back with a familiar approach: a handful of lead vocalists, crystal, smooth sounds and pop songs with classical and progressive rock elements.

Parsons recently turned 70 and won his first Grammy this year after more than a dozen nominations, picking up best immersive audio album for “Eye In the Sky – 35th Anniversary Edition.” His first nomination was at the 1974 Grammys for his work as an engineer on Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon,” so it’s no surprise then that many songs on “The Secret” have autumnal lyrics dealing with the passing of time.

Parsons himself sings “As Lights Fall,” which has myriad echoes of “Eye In the Sky,” and it sounds autobiographical: “My sword was cast in songs of light/In sparks and waves, enchanted nights.”

Former Foreigner singer Lou Gramm takes lead on “Sometimes,” a string-drenched highlight that sticks to the seasoned topics – “The older grow wiser/And fall in love sometimes,” while Jason Mraz sings “Miracle,” another song with precedents in the Alan Parsons Project discography.

Some songs sag a bit, like “Years of Glory,” and on “Soiree Fantastique,” an otherwise charming duet between Parsons and Todd Cooper, the French pronunciation feels like a parody.

Parsons didn’t tour until the mid-1990s, but he is currently on an extended series of international concerts. Though he has a long list of classic tracks to choose from, adding some from “The Secret” to the set lists would be a valid path.

–Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press