'Once' couple breaks ups, makes album

Boy loses girl, boy meets new girl, boy and girl make lovely, love and pain-filled music.

That's essentially the gist of "Once," the Grammy and Oscar-winning 2007 movie that snagged audiences with its soundtrack featuring the film's stars, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.

Irish singer-songwriter Hansard, front man of the Frames, and Czech singer-pianist Irglova not only fell in love in real life, but formed a band, the Swell Season.

Then the couple broke up. But that didn't end their musical relationship.

The group's new album, "Strict Joy" (Anti-, B+), while not as immediately ear-grabbing as the "Once" soundtrack, troves that sensitive, post breakup territory with beautiful, mostly subtle tunes in hushed acoustic tones.

Produced by Peter Katis (Interpol), the album showcases Hansard's impassioned voice and lyrics on numbers such as the soulful single "Low Rising," layered with harmonies from Irglova.

It's her gorgeous, understated vibrato, however, that really makes the Swell Season worthy of attention.

Few bands live up to their names as well as Air. The French electronic duo makes gravity-defying disco-pop that can be as foreboding as it is frothy. (See the 2000 soundtrack to "The Virgin Suicides.") Air's fifth studio album, "Love 2," (Astralwerks, A), hinges on Joey Waronker, a percussionist who toured with the band on its last outing. His delicate playing helps bring all of those potentially spacey piano arpeggios back down to earth, resulting in a sound that resembles the lo-fi pop for which Air first became known more than the cosmic symphony of recent efforts.

Five for Fighting mastermind John Ondrasik's '70s musical influences are palpable on the act's fifth release, "Slice" (Sony, B). The piano lines on "Hope" recall "Desperado," while "This Dance" sounds like Don McLean creating a mash-up of "Lean on Me" and "Killing Me Softly." But "Slice" isn't completely retro, and Ondrasik's themes are particularly strong. Although he references memories more than he shares them, fans of Five for Fighting will be satisfied by this set.

Though not as sprawlingly ambitious or experimental as the 2007 "The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams," Meshell Ndegeocello's eighth release, "Devil's Halo" (Downtown, B+), neatly straddles a line between challenging and accessible, with some of the tightest and catchiest compositions she's yet brought forth. Listeners might not get that from the opening song, "Slaughter," which moves from liquidlike verses to crash-bang choruses with a Radiohead-style prog vibe, but tracks like "Mass Transit" and "Blood on the Curb" channel melodic, if slightly subversive, new wave influences - and the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde would pay large for the leathery attitude of "Lola."

Ndegeocello also uses a big beat and subtle dissonance to turn Melvin Riley's "Love You Down" into a Joni Mitchell-flavored tone poem.

WHAT IS: Devendra Banhart's major-label debut, "What Will We Be" (Warner Bros., A-), was recorded with the same collaborators who graced his 2007 "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon." This time the quintet holed up for two months in a Northern California cabin, and the resulting collection from the idiosyncratic singer/songwriter is intimate, experimental and, ultimately, accessible.

The first single, "Baby," is a breezy yet bass-heavy love song, while "Chin Chin & Muck Muck" is something of a vanguard mini-review, changing acts between swinging jazz, cabaret torch and a twinkling chant. Banhart's Venezuelan childhood peeks through with Spanish lyrics on "Angelika" and "Brindo," and "Rats" is a full-fledged psychedelic-rock jam.

Throughout the set, Banhart's expressive vocals are the real pleasure point; the artist may be known for his self-supported aura of knowing peculiarity, but his voice carries a frankness that - save some well-applied reverb - is gratifyingly free of modern affectation.

On "Declaration Of Dependence" (Astralwerks, B), their first album in five years, the Norwegian duo Eirik Boe and Erlend Oye, who record under the name Kings of Convenience, have returned with more atmospheric folk-pop to soothe the soul. Percussion is nowhere to be found on the pair's latest release, and their Simon & Garfunkel-esque harmonies are less dynamic than they once were. But there are still plenty of bright spots.