New CDs: Thom Yorke, Weezer, Jesse Winchester

Thom Yorke

Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

(Self-Released **1/2)

nolead ends Unfailingly pleasant but hardly thrilling, Radiohead leader Thom Yorke's second solo album - it follows 2006's The Eraser, which now sounds bright and inviting in comparison - makes news mainly with its means of delivery. Tomorrow's Modern Boxes is for sale online for $6 via BitTorrent, the file-sharing service trying to rebrand itself as more than an online music-piracy site. And it's selling, with more than one million downloads as of Thursday.

Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich's surprise announcement of the eight-song, 38-minute album called it an "experiment that could be an effective way of handing some control of Internet commerce back to people who are creating the work." The seemingly novel approach to online commerce is really not that novel - scads of lesser-known acts put up their music for sale every day through sites like Bandcamp. But whatever: Six bucks seems about right for this very pretty, mildly hallucinogenic foray into melodic, meandering, broken-beat techno. It's by no means a substitute for a fully formed Radiohead album - the last was 2011's underrated The King of Limbs - but TMB's diffuse, haunting song-sketches, like the lighter-than-air "The Mother Lode" and woozy "Guess Again!" will have to do until the next one comes along. - Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Weezer
nolead ends nolead begins Everything Will Be Alright in the End nolead ends nolead begins

(Republic ***)

nolead ends The message Rivers Cuomo imparts with this wonderful, woe-is-me Weezer album is: "Rock is dead. Let's rock." The album uses sugar-coated hard-rock songs like "Ain't Got Nobody" and "Eulogy for a Rock Band" to ratify the idea that the band's style has become passé, that Weezer bandmates are musical dinosaurs. Everything Will Be Alright is a few hooks shy of a masterpiece. Only "I've Had It Up to Here" can slouch with the band's classics. But even the lesser tracks, like "Cleopatra" and "Foolish Father" are crunchy, tasty, and cleverly wrought. And how can you resist Cuomo's defiant fatalism? It screams, "Time has passed us by. Turn up the amps!" - David Hiltbrand

nolead begins Jesse Winchester nolead ends

nolead begins A Reasonable Amount of Trouble nolead ends

nolead begins (Appleseed ****)

nolead ends Jesse Winchester was never one to stir up much of a ruckus. The title of his final album comes from a Bogart line in one of his favorite movies, The Maltese Falcon. As for stirring the soul, that's another story, and the genteel, Southern-bred singer-songwriter, who died in April at 69, goes out doing that as well as he ever did.

Grace, warmth, and exquisite craft inform everything here, whether Winchester is gently urging an appreciation of the moment ("All That We Have Is Now"), confessing despair ("Every Day I Have the Blues"), or offering a playful prescription for survival ("Never Forget to Boogie"). He also manages to make the doo-wop oldies "Devil or Angel" and "Whispering Bells" fit right in with his understated folk- and blues-based originals.

As good as all this is, Winchester saves the best for last. "Just So Much" finds him confronting death, but even as he voices questions and fears, he exudes a stoic dignity that betrays no self-pity. As final words in song go, it's hard to think of anything so quietly memorable and moving. - Nick Cristiano

ON SALE TUESDAY

Johnny Marr, Playland; Bill Frisell, Guitar in the Space Age; Flying Lotus, You're Dead!; Allo Darlin', We Come From the Same Place