New Recordings

Sounds from Nowheresville

(Columbia **1/2)

nolead ends It's going to be harder and harder to view the Ting Tings' surprise 2008 hit "That's Not My Name" as a welcome (possibly feminist) rallying cry if the duo keeps making music that guarantees we'll forget their names. The melodically inoffensive Sounds from Nowheresville doesn't quite deserve the savaging it's getting from some critics. But it's shockingly barren and slippery even for a band that already claimed to have "started nothing" on its exuberantly scrapped-together debut. Employing even more scraps as varied as spoken garage rock ("Guggenheim"), CSS-style dance-pop ("One by One"), and Major Lazer-style dub-hop ("Soul Killing"), all of which is executed without an original wrinkle, they only get blander with close examination. At least Jessie J has distinctly annoying vocal mannerisms.

- Dan Weiss

nolead begins The Shins
nolead ends nolead begins Port of Morrow
nolead ends nolead begins (Aural Apothecary/Columbia ***)

nolead ends Port of Morrow proves that you can indeed teach an old dog (not so old, this 41-year-old pooch) several new tricks. James Mercer - the Shins' majority stockholder, singer, songwriter, and primary instrumentalist - left behind his original band members, recruited a new team, changed his lyrical tone from smug sarcasm to buggy romanticism, and let in a new spaciousness.

That last aspect must have something to do with Mercer having recorded a solo project, Broken Bells, with oddball producer Danger Mouse. Port of Morrow has the feeling of a breeze through an open window, an easy ambience that lends the insular "September" and the ruminative "Fall of '82" an air of hope. As a guitarist, Mercer is still a mean gunslinger, but he has learned when to holster his weapon and lay off the nerve-jangling noise. Mercer's lyrics still come across as wifty and cryptic, but there's no mistaking the loving emotionalism of "It's Only Life." As for pure joy, the impish "Simple Song" is downright upright in its bold-faced ebullience. It may take getting used to, but Mercer got happy, shouted hallelujah, and made everything good in the Shins' world.

- A.D. Amorosi

nolead begins Hodgy Beats
nolead ends nolead begins Untitled
nolead ends nolead begins (Odd Future Records ***)

nolead ends "I need no I.D. for you to recognize," brags Odd Future's second-in-command MC somewhat prematurely. In fact, Hodgy Beats' broken, raspy flow could easily be mistaken here for Shabazz Palaces' Ishmael Butler, a 40-year-old paragon of wisdom as far from Odd Future's take-no-prisoners punk-rap as one can get. The title Untitled is a more fitting statement of transition. For nine fragments in 22 minutes, Tyler's wayward sidekick abandons his Marilyn Manson-inspired horrorcore duo MellowHype for evenhanded soul samples from Alchemist and Three 6 Mafia's Juicy J, with a pinch of avant weirdness from Flying Lotus on the videogame-y standout "Samurai"? But the best track is Alchemist's beautifully sampled "In a Dream," and who would have thought a Hodgy track could be described as "beautiful"?

- Dan Weiss

Now What!

(Cedar Creek ***1/2)

nolead ends On his last album, 2007's ultimately uplifting There, I Said It!, Tommy Womack addressed his nervous breakdown, growing sense of mortality, and faded rock-and-roll dreams with unsparing honesty and plenty of wit. The Nashville-based singer and songwriter, who has since passed 50, brings those same qualities to Now What!

"A hundred bucks to play three sets/ This is as good as it's gonna get," the former leader of Government Cheese sings cheerfully over the jaunty rock of "Play That Cheap Trick, Cheap Trick Play." Womack also sings of the "Pothead Blues" (slow and acoustic) and the "Guilty Snake Blues" (fast and jazzy), serves up 100-proof honky-tonk with "On and Off the Wagon," and dives into slippery swamp-rock with the tongue-in-cheek come-on of "I Love You to Pieces." The folk-rocker "I'm Too Old to Feel That Way Right Now" and the Dixieland-flavored "Over the Hill" address the aging issue without any mopiness or self-pity.

On the tender ballad "Wishes Do Come True," Womack acknowledges his good fortune with unabashed directness. In the end, though, with "Let's Have Another Cigarette," he returns to the importance of the lifeline offered by music: "I've got about a half a tank of gas/ I'm a pimple on Dylan's ass/ But tonight, I'm gonna play some rock-and-roll."

- Nick Cristiano

Soul

(HighNote ***)

nolead ends If this mostly quintet session were performed live, you'd want it late and with dark lighting.

Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, 35, is a California native with a Berklee College of Music degree who mines lots of ballads here with his quintet of the last six years, including the Philly-born bassist Dwayne Burno.

The results, with tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen and pianist Danny Grissett, go off at a largely sensual pace. Pelt's "The Story" unrolls like a bedtime yarn with rich colors and soft dynamics, while another original, "What's Wrong Is Right," proves more neurotic and up-tempo.

Joanna Pascale, a Temple University voice professor, lends her smoky pipes to the Sammy Cahn standard "Moondrift."

The solos sometimes go on too long, but the set generally lives up to the high expectations of its title.

- Karl Stark

(Decca ****)

nolead ends Poised to make his New York recital debut Sunday, the 19-year-old British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor has been nothing but a sensation so far, and this recital disc of Chopin selections, Liszt transcriptions of Chopin, and Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit gives ample evidence why. As with many hot young pianists, his fingers can do anything; unlike his contemporaries, Grosvenor commands an expressive specificity that's rare among pianists in any age group, but with the kind of strong-minded interpretive insights of an audacious youth.

Time and again, one is struck by his conviction; everything he does seems to be indisputably right (even if, on further reflection, you could argue with him). The recital's peak is Ravel's Gaspard, to which Grosvenor brings a clarity that reveals a level of musical traffic not apparent in any performance I've previously heard.

Grosvenor admirers might want to know that there's a more casual, download-only album titled This and That, with Nikolai Kapustin, Scarlatti, Albeniz, and Chopin. Maybe not quite as revelatory, it's wonderful nonetheless.

- David Patrick Stearns