New Recordings

The Spirit of Apollo

(Anti- ***)

nolead ends nolead begins The BPA
nolead ends nolead begins I Think We're Going to Need a Bigger Boat
nolead ends nolead begins (Southern Fried **1/2)

nolead ends The best David Byrne song to be found on these two albums is "Toe Jam," the terrifically catchy collaboration with British rapper Dizzee Rascal on I Think We're Going to Need a Bigger Boat, the multiguest song-based DJ album put together by Norman Cook, the English record spinner better known to the world as Fatboy Slim. Two not-so-great Byrne songs appear on The Spirit of Apollo, the rap-rock platter put together by N.A.S.A., the nom de mash-up of Los Angeles producers Squeak E. Clean and DJ Zegon.

But if The BPA - which stands for Brighton Port Authority, and pretends to be the name of a long-lost band - got the best Byrne, N.A.S.A.'s, packed with hip-hop heavyweights, is the more fulfilling project.

That's not only because it features Richard Nixon priming the dance floor by saying (via sample) "the spirit of Apollo transcends geographical and political differences," as well as a match-made-in-heaven duet between demented rapper Kool Keith and Tom Waits - it's because on The Spirit of Apollo, which includes guest spots by Philadelphians Spank Rock and Amanda Blank, the talent base is deeper, and stranger.

Kanye West, Santogold and Lykke Li all turn up on one track. Pharcyde rapper Fatlip, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O. and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard coexist on another. Not everything works, but the batting average is high. In contrast, aside from some beat-savvy highlights on The BPA, like Iggy Pop covering the Monochrome Set's "He's Frank," too many Bigger Boat concepts, such as Olly Hite's too-cutesy take on Nick Lowe's "So It Goes," fail to stay afloat.

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Morrissey
nolead ends nolead begins Years of Refusal
nolead ends nolead begins (Attack/Lost Highway ***1/2)

nolead ends The phrase "you're not getting older - you're getting better," first seen in hair-dye ads, must forever become the property of Morrissey.

The ex-Smith has, since going solo in 1988, become grander and romantic but with a more bitter edge. Powered by growlingly melodramatic vocals and swelling melodies from songwriting guitarists Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte, Morrissey no longer sounds woebegone or precious. The writer and singer manages to be emotional yet muscular.

The bedrock of each Refusal track is a burly tune onto which Moz pastes his flamboyant brand of self-undermining assertiveness. No one but he could get away with floridly singing about how well he's doing - before snarling through a litany of drugs for depression on "Something Is Squeezing My Skull." Or killing off devotees with no regret ("The Last Time I Saw Carol"). Or poking fun at aging heroism ("You Were Good in Your Time").

The crooner bites his tongue as he spews his most venomous love songs - the angriest being "It's Not Your Birthday" with its sexuality, now tender, now treacherous. Bigmouth strikes again, harder than ever.

- A.D. Amorosi

nolead begins Robyn Hitchcock
and the Venus 3
nolead ends nolead begins Goodnight Oslo
nolead ends nolead begins (Yep Roc ***)

nolead ends Robyn Hitchcock has managed to maintain his quirky surrealism over a career that began with the Soft Boys three decades ago. That he spikes his Freudian tales with comic wordplay and backs them with Byrdsy guitars and Beatlesque harmonies makes them seductive - and often timeless.

Goodnight Oslo isn't a radical departure for the eccentric Englishman, but it is a strong addition to his canon. Backed by members of R.E.M. plus guests such as the Decemberists' Colin Meloy (one of his young disciples), Hitchcock sounds relaxed and youthful on the horn-fueled "Saturday Groovers" and the Bo Diddley-bopping "Up to Our Nex," but he's delectably sinister and bitter on "16 Years" (one of numerous tracks featuring Peter Buck at his jangly best).

"It doesn't matter what you was, it's what you is and what you is is what you are," Hitchcock posits. What he is is not far from what he was but is still something entertaining and odd.

- Steve Klinge

Sold Out . . .

(King Mojo ***1/2)

nolead ends Big Shanty opens his new album with a bit of tongue-in-cheek self-mythologizing, "Big Shanty, Lower Alabama to Hollywood." The guitar-slinger does, however, seem to have taken the advice he dispenses: "The moral of the story is it's never too late/ Picking up a guitar, or pounding 88s . . . Tomorrow never comes for the people that wait." That's how Dick Wooley, former record promo man and now a condo builder in Georgia, became Big Shanty, blues-rocking dynamo.

Sold Out . . . features some synth beats, but make no mistake: This is more retro than techno, to paraphrase a Shanty marketing line. The blues and blues-rock are heavy on attitude and riffage - Shanty's vocals are often sung through a mike filter to add to the rough-and-tumble effect. "Tybee Town," on the other hand, is a lilting interlude graced by electric sitar. It comes just before Shanty closes out with "Uncle Sam Go to Rehab," in which he veers from the usual blues themes to deliver a blistering broadside against government corruption.

- Nick Cristiano

nolead begins John Németh
nolead ends nolead begins Love Me Tonight
nolead ends nolead begins (Blind Pig ***1/2)

nolead ends Classic soul and R&B styles have been revitalized in recent years by a cadre of young and relatively young artists such as James Hunter, Eli "Paperboy" Reed, and Sharon Jones. You can include John Németh on any list of the best of them.

Love Me Tonight, the second national release of the 31-year-old Bay Area-based singer and harmonica player, grabs you right from the start with the relentlessly propulsive title song, one of 10 originals here. The album then goes on to showcase the rich tone and versatility of his vocals, from the supple, sweet soul of "Fuel for Your Fire," which edges up into falsetto, down to the grit and growl of the accusatory "Where You Been." Veteran blues guitar great Elvin Bishop, who recruited Németh to sing on four cuts on his latest CD, guests on two tracks, including the Idaho-raised singer's autobiographical "Country Boy."

- N.C.

Yesterdays

(ECM ***1/2)

nolead ends The trio of pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette passed the quarter-century mark last year. And the accumulated wisdom continues to pay dividends.

This live recording boasts a wealth of great standards from Tin Pan Alley to bebop, and represents a good mix between celebrating the melodies and freeing them. (Recorded live in Tokyo in April 2001, it was actually made before the two past trio releases: 2006's The Carnegie Hall Concert and 2004's The Out-of-Towners.)

Jarrett still sings to himself weirdly often on the up-tempo tunes. But he's quiet when he needs to be, and his spirit surmounts all objections.

He can change eras in an instant, finishing up Richard Rodgers' "You Took Advantage of Me" with a sudden spasm of stride piano. Or taking on Dizzy Gillespie's "Shaw 'Nuff" like a player piano set to explode. The energy rocks the audience.

Jarrett's an ardent ballad player, too, beginning the Jerome Kern title track in a deeply plaintive mode, while Carl Fischer's "You've Changed" just melts in the ear.

Peacock provides warm backing throughout, while DeJohnette proves a surprisingly economical drummer who affords these tunes another layer of elegance.

- Karl Stark

nolead begins Dean Martin
nolead ends nolead begins Amore
nolead ends nolead begins (Capitol/ECM ***)

nolead ends While it's easy to remember Dean Martin as the suave Rat Pack member, he had some smooth pipes. And his liquid voice gets a thorough airing on this collection of love tunes, with surging strings and background voices.

Born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, Martin was a fixture in Ohio ballrooms before departing to New York and Los Angeles and all the rest.

The tunes here range from 1953 to 1960, before cigarettes and liquor took their toll. They show him to be a good craftsman and a Barry Manilow predecessor, crooning a love song with suave abandon.

The backings here range from big-band to solid Muzak, and it gets all syrupy at times. But spun sugar is fine in moderation.

- K.S.

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Spalding conducting. Gabriela Imreh, piano

(Naxos, ***)

nolead ends Though Philadelphia Virtuosi founder Daniel Spalding has championed some little-known music, this disc represents a composer who has been truly buried by time, and not all that much time. Giannini was apparently quite visible in midcentury America with concertos and operas in all sorts of prestigious performances and venues, on into the late 1950s when his Symphony No. 4 was written for the Juilliard Orchestra. The music isn't widely available - Spalding talks about having to hunt down scores in out-of-the-way places.

But for all its grandness (and it can be very grand), the music lacks a distinctive profile, mainly because it's built on remarkably pedestrian thematic material. You could say the music is all dressed up with no place to go were that not so dismissive. Doing so much with so little is an art unto itself, even if it doesn't prompt repeated hearings. If nothing else, the concerto gives a significant recording opportunity to Gabriela Imreh, who is so compelling (and so under-recorded) I'd seek her out playing most anything.

- David Patrick Stearns

nolead begins Bach
Piano Concerto No. 1, Well-Tempered Clavier excerpts, Chaconne in D minor and Prelude and Fugue in A minor
nolead ends nolead begins Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Helene Grimaud piano and conducting
nolead ends nolead begins (Deutsche Grammophon, ***1/2)

nolead ends Did somebody forget to tell Helene Grimaud she's not playing Rachmaninoff? That's how it sounds in the opening of her new all-Bach recording, but not, as it turns out, inappropriately. No composer accommodates such a range of interpretation as Bach, and since Grimaud has always sounded more Russian than French (her nationality) or American (her adopted home), you would expect extra interpretive leeway. What you also get is the kind of digital clarity that's the legacy of Glenn Gould. However, some of the selections are transcriptions by Liszt and (guess who?) Rachmaninoff. By any objective standard, the recital is a rather freewheeling endeavor: In the Piano Concerto No. 1, for example, she uses all the power and resources of the modern concert grand piano but has the strings playing in a low-vibrato, authentic performance manner. Then again, Grimaud isn't best enjoyed with objectivity. You can listen to this disc and have aesthetic disagreements at every turn, but still be completely taken in by it, and want to hear it again.

- D.P.S.