New Recordings: Drake; Steve Earle; Jeff Bridges

Drake

If You're Reading This It's Too Late

(Cash Money ***1/2)

nolead ends Drake wins the expectation game with If You're Reading This It's Too Late. The late-night-on-a-Thursday surprise release on Feb. 12 was supposed to be a mixtape, a casually offhand sampling of new material given away for free as a stopgap before unleashing an official album, expected to be called Views From the 6, later this year. Instead, If You're Reading This feels like a fully thought-out, cohesive piece of work, a 17-song display of the 28-year-old Toronto emcee's dexterity on the mic that benefits from the creative space allowed by not being under pressure to produce hit singles.

And while it may have been conceived as a mixtape, Drake is charging real money for it on iTunes - perhaps as a way to fulfill his contractual obligations to Cash Money, the label his mentor Lil Wayne is also at odds with - so let's call it a real album. It certainly works as one in the artistic sense, although it gets off to a rough start with "Legend," a de rigueur boast that's the least interesting song on the record. From there, though, the rapper born Aubrey Drake Graham moves confidently and casually through one slinky, minimalist mood piece after another.

Many of those contain the numeral 6 in their titles. That's a reflection of Drake's obsession with Toronto's 416 area code. "6 Man" is of Philly note because it begins with a reference to former Sixer and current Toronto Raptor Lou Williams and ends with Drake singing the Erykah Badu chorus to the Roots' 1999 hit "You Got Me." And "You & the 6" is a mother-loving song that finds the emo rapper proclaiming, "I can't be out here being vulnerable, mama!" - laughably, since Drake is always out there being vulnerable - and tenderly thanking her for working in tandem with those mean Canadian streets in giving him a quality upbringing: "You & the 6 raised me right."

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Steve Earle & the Dukes
nolead ends nolead begins Terraplane
nolead ends nolead begins (New West ***1/2)

nolead ends Steve Earle came up as a country rebel, but the Texas songwriter has always cited Lone Star State songsters such as Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin' Hopkins as formative influences. And as a man who battled drug addiction and has seven failed marriages under his belt (including his latest, to dulcet-voiced singer Allison Moorer), he surely knows a thing or two about the blues.

But besides having his authenticity bona fides in order, Earle also has all the requisite musical moves. His suitably raspy, world-weathered voice is deftly employed on everything from swaggering Chicago blues to finger-picked Mississippi Delta stylings. The 11 original songs on Terraplane, whose title nods to Robert Johnson, are loaded with familiar tropes. "The day I was born the moon crossed the sun," he sings in "King of the Blues" - "Mama cried, 'Sweet Jesus, what have I done?' " But the well-worn idioms make light of personal woes as well as wallow in them, and Earle sings his blues with a refreshingly light touch and a lack of self-seriousness, while also delivering laments like "Better Off Alone" and "Ain't Nobody's Daddy Now" that deliver considerable emotional punch. All that, plus a terrific band which includes guitarist Will Rigby and fiddle player Eleanor Whitmore, with whom he duets on the gently playful "Baby's Just as Mean as Me," revs Terraplane up into a genre exercise of the highest order.

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Jeff Bridges
nolead ends nolead begins Sleeping Tapes
nolead ends nolead begins (www.dreamingwithjeff.com ***)

nolead ends Among the dippier Super Bowl XLIX ads was the one for Squarespace, in which Oscar-winning thespian and all-around Dude Jeff Bridges dozily hummed, mumbled abstract poetry, and played a recorder while an eerie ambient breeze blew cold behind his rumbling voice. That breeze was a snippet from Sleeping Tapes - an album designed for listeners to get good night's rest - conceived by Bridges, bugged-out soundtrack composer Keefus Ciancia (True Detective), and graphic artist/fiction writer Lou Beach.

It is restful, but in reality, Sleeping Tapes also has a restless aspect, something like an unblinking Alan Watts with a snifter of cognac and a handful of Xanax. Tapes inventively and surrealistically tackles the New Age. Through a swirling ambient din of dissonant clucks, distant pianos, and tinging bells (it's calming, trust me), Bridge's low, gravely Duderino voice growls, chants mantras, tells nonsensical stories about an Ikea experience or a canyon walk, and reminds the listener that "if you want, we could pretend to be crows."

Who could sleep to this?

- A.D. Amorosi

Dan Deacon, Gliss Riffer; Big Sean, Dark Sky Paradise; Kid Rock, First Kiss; Emile Haynie, We FallEndText