New Recordings

Saving Grace

(00:02:59 ***1/2)

A founding member of '70s New York proto-punks the Dictators and later the leader of the great roots-rocking Del-Lords, Scott Kempner has had a career far shorter on luck than talent. His first solo album in 16 years shows that adversity (personal as well as professional) has only sharpened his muse.

Saving Grace

has a couple of raw rockers, but Kempner steers clear of the wisenheimer attitude of the Dictators and the Springsteen-style populism of the Del-Lords. The dominant mood is downbeat and inward-looking, with the singer "a little lost and lonely in the night," as the title cut puts it. His unsparing reflections are framed by richly crafted music with '60s echoes, from ringing Beatlesque guitars to an air of urban pop romanticism. It's fitting that Motown session vets play on two cuts - although not, ironically, on the highlight of highlights. "Standing in the Shadows" not only takes its title from a Four Tops song, it also references Levi Stubbs as it brings the album to a majestic close.

- Nick Cristiano

To Survive

(Cheap Lullaby ****)

After having played with Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) and Rufus Wainwright - pop's most delicious executors of the operatic - it's no surprise that Joan Wasser would continue with a similar brand of sad, mad cabaret.

You can hear but a bit of influence in the way Wasser's baritone voice and her piano loom through the needy lyricism of "Honor Wishes." There's the inference of nightmare lullaby (Antony's trademark) in every crevice of Wasser's somber drama, including the solitary "To Survive" which sends a child to sleep with a fearful tale.

But Wasser's is a subtle, unique song that, though densely forlorn, is quickly open to sunshiny pep and brushy folk. Under wraps, of course. Her shimmering timbres aren't shouting joy to the rafters on the sprightly "To Be Loved."

And Joan's got her own influencing to do. Wasser's duet with Wainwright - the king of quaver - brings his slippery voice down a notch with the conversationally political "To America." Nice touch.

For all of

Survive

's sparse surroundings, by the time she hits the quaint, open, loving lyrics of "Magpies,", Wasser has found a sound that's so full of '60s AM radio-pop bliss - tinny brass, kicking piano - it's downright Laura Nyro.

Every direction Wasser turns is the right one.

- A.D. Amorosi

One of the Boys

(Capitol **)

Katy Perry's decidedly politically incorrect first single, "Ur So Gay" not only got Madonna to declare it her favorite song. It also raised high hopes that the former contemporary Christian singer turned snark queen might, indeed, be the American answer to Lily Allen - which she's being marketed as. "I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf," she purrs at an ex-boyfriend, of whom she declares "Ur so gay/And you don't even like boys." Unfortunately, the fun stops there.

Boys

' witless second single, "I Kissed a Girl," does an excellent job of pandering to horny Maxim readers, while not nearly measuring up to Jill Sobule's cute and coy 1995 hit of the same name. (Don't worry guys, she's not crossing over to the other side for good: "I hope my boyfriend don't mind it," she sings in the it-was-all-just-a-dream video.) And it goes downhill from there, with a steady flow of collaborations with corporate producer-

songwriters, starting with Alanis Morissette enabler Glen Ballard and including Desmond Child, Dr. Luke, Butch Walker, Max Martin and Dave Stewart. From the mean "If You Can Afford Me" to the unimaginative "Mannequin," Perry, who was first touted as a "Next Big Thing" in Blender in 2004, takes every possible precaution, and in so doing sucks the joy out of this impersonal package that's pretty much a lock to make her a big star.

- Dan DeLuca

All I Intended to Be

(Nonesuch ***)

Emmylou Harris reinvented herself with 1995's

Wrecking Ball

, moving to something more atmospheric and haunting than the traditional country genres she had explored for the previous 25 years.

All I Intended to Be

reunites Harris with Brian Ahern, the producer of many of her early albums, and features appearances from some of her old friends: Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Buddy Miller, members of bluegrass' Seldom Scene. It's not exactly a return to her roots - it's too somber and stately - but it nods in that direction with an emphasis on acoustic guitar, mandolin and steel.

Harris' voice is, of course, impeccable on these 13 songs, five of which she wrote or cowrote (the two with Kate and Anna McGarrigle are highlights). From Tracy Chapman's "All That You Have Is Your Soul" to Merle Haggard's "Kern River," these are uniformly elegant ballads.

- Steve Klinge

Perfectly Clear

(Valory *)

Country music is the last refuge of singing scoundrels. Folk career hit a dead end, Jewel? Drift on down to Nashville, where the pickings are easy. But even the most indiscriminate country fan isn't going to go for this piffle. Jewel still has that annoying quavery voice. Pouring on her thickest hickory-smoked accent on "Love is a Garden" only makes it sound more artificial. She does a fair Emmylou Harris imitation on "Loved By You," but the closest she comes to country is the Charlie Rich feel of "Anyone But You." And you can thank the song's cowriter Wynn Varble for that.

Producer John Rich heaps on all the requisite instrumental ingredients: banjo, mandolin, steel guitar, fiddle, dulcimer and honky-tonk piano. But that still don't make it country.

- David Hiltbrand

City That Care Forgot

(429 Records ****)

As one of New Orleans' leading musical ambassadors, Dr. John has always embodied both the mystical and the merry aspects of the Big Easy spirit. Now the aging Night Tripper is revealing another side - he is incensed about the state of his beloved city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and he pours it all out in the impassioned, politically charged music that makes up one of his best albums.

Dr. John (a.k.a. Mac Rebennack) looks all around the still-hurting city and sees greed and neglect, conspiracy and even murder. "You know me, I can't let that slide," he declares on "Dream Warrior." With his crack three-man band augmented by horns and strings and such guests as Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson and Terence Blanchard, the good Doctor wisely couches his anger and contempt, as well as his empathy and sorrow, in the kind of irresistibly funky R&B that has made his city such an indelible cultural landmark.

- Nick Cristiano

On the Real Side

(Four Quarters **1/2)

It has been seven years since trumpeter Freddie Hubbard last recorded a CD. The former Jazz Messenger, Coltrane sideman, and king of "Red Clay" - with apologies to Rafael Nadal - has battled heart failure, an infected lip and other problems to emerge here on flugelhorn as a venerated old head mixing it up with the young cats.

The session, the second with the New Jazz Composer's Octet since 2001, is an oddity. The tunes and arrangements by producer-trumpeter David Weiss, Philly-born bassist Dwayne Burno, and trombonist Steve Davis sound like an old Hubbard band, one with no hint of his fusion period.

Also missing is the old Hubbard. With the fallout from the split lip limiting his playing time, the 70-year-old brass man is picking his spots and playing in shorter bursts. One of the great high flyers in jazz history now sounds limited, his technical fusillade diminished, yet his attempts now exude a different kind of drama.

The session, though, is too safely orthodox. It's locked in hard bop amber. They could have had more fun.

- Karl Stark

The Flail

(KNT ***)

The Flail is a quintet composed of post-music-school cats in their early 30s who rip up the joint. Recorded live at the happening Smalls Jazz Club in New York City, the Flail mostly present original compositions with dashes of Monk and Ellington.

A touch experimental, a bit cacophonous, the Flail artfully lives up to its name. Trumpeter Dan Blankinship likes to smear tones and get colloquial on Monk's "Trinkle Tinkle" and elsewhere.

Pianist Brian Marsella, who grew up in Churchville, Bucks County, before alighting at the Juilliard School and the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, proves to be percussive and inventive on the keys, while also writing the inexplicably sultry "No Sex in Spain."

Saxophonist Stephan Moutot, a French native, can be full of keening fury, while bassist Reid Taylor and drummer Matt Zebroski, a Pittsburgh cat who played early on with the eminent Steel City saxophonist Eric Kloss, motor it all forward.

- K.S.

Andrea Melath, mezzo-soprano; Gustav Belacek, bass; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop conducting.

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop conducting.

(Naxos ***)

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

(Naxos ***)

Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano; Martin Robertson, soprano saxophone; Gerald Finley, baritone; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Marin Alsop conducting

(LPO ****)

Marin Alsop recordings are arriving in clumps these days, partly because they converge from different orchestras, continents and recording companies. From a news standpoint, all ears are likely to go first for the Dvorak; it's her first recording with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since she became music director in 2007. It's very good, full of excellent judgment and sensitive treatment of details, but so are a lot of recordings of this oft-heard symphony. It's good for the budget price, even if the engineers didn't get the best possible sound out of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

Engineering is the main drawback of the two Bartok recordings from Bournemouth. Both are large-orchestra works from the composer's early maturity, and as if to capture the total sound picture, the microphones feel distantly placed in ways that make the music seem slightly out of reach. That's less the case with the opera

Bluebeard's Castle

, which is as compellingly sung as anything else out there.

The most important of these is the London Philharmonic disc devoted to Turnage, one of England's best, most confrontational composers.

The Torn Fields

is an antiwar song cycle, the words from World War I poets, with music that's willing to run in any direction to create the most powerful musicalization possible.

Twice Through the Heart

is built around poems by a woman who stabbed the husband who beat her; the composer goes to even more visceral lengths. In between,

Hidden Love Song

is a welcome buffer zone: It is what it says - an amorphously lovely tone poem for soprano sax and orchestra. In all works, the Turnage orchestrates with great originality, often with effects that not only are startling in and of themselves but that have a remarkable aftertaste.

- David Patrick Stearns

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Jon Vickers, tenor; Gundula Janowitz, soprano; Walter Berry, bass and others; Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

(Deutsche Grammophon, two discs, ***1/2)

The Herbert von Karajan vaults are opening - even ones he probably would have preferred to keep closed. His studio recordings of opera are known to have cuts, but his live recordings from his Vienna State Opera tenure have even more. In fact, this 1962 never-previously-released

Fidelio

arrives without the "Gold" aria that establishes the mercantile ethic of the opera's world - and that was a strong point of reference in the Nikolaus Harnoncourt recording. But you have to admit that the opera is a more sound theatrical entity without it - and is in keeping with the swift, Olympian character of Karajan's overall conception that also carries some of the singers, even Jon Vickers and Christa Ludwig, through less-exalted moments. In fact, this disc is far more engaging than Karajan's studio recording, and is so convincing on its own terms that most

Fidelio

fans will want to hear it.

However, these live Karajan discs should be regarded with skepticism and care. His 1964 live

Die Frau ohne Schatten

by Richard Strauss is back a decade after its initial release and has what appears to be a dream cast, but is even more seriously cut and reveals chronic intonation problems in the orchestra that make you wonder why Karajan's only appearance in this opera - made after he had resigned and vowed never to return to Vienna - was so well received by many critics.

- D.P.S.