New Recordings

Glasvegas

(Columbia **½)

A new year, a new band of Brits who arrive from their hype-happy homeland burdened with impossible expectations. Already declared "a poet, a genius," by the New Musical Express, Glasvegas singer James Allan sings in a thick Scottish burr, fighting through a sonic maelstrom that conjures Phil Spector by way of the Jesus and Mary Chain to put forth tales of working-class struggle.

When it works, it really works. "Daddy's Gone" is a cataclysmically earnest cry of pain directed at an absent father. And despite its gimmicky ending - the loving voice telling the singer "when you're standing on the window ledge, I'll talk you back from the edge" - turns out to belong to a social worker - "Geraldine" makes the most of its heart-tugging pathos. But Allan is wont to wallow in his woes, and on songs like "S.A.D. Light" and "Ice Cream Van" catchy choruses don't arrive with enough of a kick to nudge the music out of its slough of despond.

- Dan DeLuca

Already Free

(Sony Legacy ***)

Whether in grueling riffs or effortless glides with his trusty slide guitar, Derek Trucks - at age 29 - is a six-string Jackson Pollock who won't eschew emotion in his quest for artistic dignity.

Already Free

is his best album yet. The blues get bluer. Jazz finds a spiritualism last heard on latter-day Coltrane albums. And Southern rock takes on the epic grace that the late great Duane Allman lent it when he and Derek's uncle, drummer Butch Trucks, started with the Allman Brothers. A sweeping, swampy take on Dylan and the Band's "Down in the Flood" is a centerpiece. Yet Trucks and company (including his crooning wife, Susan Tedeschi, and singer/guitarist Doyle Bramhall II) also show they understand the complexities of soul. The Eastern Indian-inspired "Maybe This Time" and the riff-heavy "Our Love" are the album's most poignant tracks - crunchy, subtle, filled with Bramhall's richly appointed vocals and Trucks' dense licks. Exquisite.

- A.D. Amorosi

Tchamantché

(Nonesuch ****)

Ali Farka Touré's shadow looms large in Malian music, and Rokia Traoré has obviously absorbed the master's patient and droning blues, even though as a daughter of a diplomat she spent time in Europe and the Middle East in her youth. She's no purist or traditionalist: The stripped-down arrangements behind her intimate, pure voice balance African and Western instrumentation (the n'goni, a West African lute; a Gretsch guitar).

Tchamantché

, her fourth solo album, is entrancing and beautiful. "Kounandi" is a delicate web of acoustic guitar and classical harp through which Traoré weaves her softly insistent vocals. She adds a bit of grit and growl to the electric "Tounka," but

Tchamantché

is primarily gorgeous and hypnotic, including "The Man I Love" (the only non-original and only English-language song), her nod to another master, Billie Holiday. Traoré honors her elders, but she is not confined by them.

- Steve Klinge

The Creation of the Universe

(Sister Ray Recordings ***1/2)

Clueless consumer beware: this new Lou comprises two successive October '08 nights of improv performance in Los Angeles, with Reed on "guitars and electrics," Ulrich Krieger on tenor sax and "live-electronics," and Sarth Calhoun contributing "live processing and continuum fingerboard."

Live albums have long been a habit with Lou Reed. Many got their first taste of the former Velvet Undergrounder's tuneful tales of bohemian debauchery with the widespread FM airplay of his 1974 arena-rock disc

Rock N Roll Animal

. Two months ago, Reed released

Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse

, along with a Julian Schnabel-directed DVD. On

Creation

, Reed indulges his ax-love, sometimes subtly, sometimes riffing with saxist Krieger.

Creation of the Universe

is immaculately recorded, almost entirely instrumental, mostly rock-toned atmospherics and free-jazz rage - and pretty freakin' awesome.

- David R. Stampone

Grandpa Walked a Picket Line

(Wanamaker ***)

The title of Otis Gibbs' new album comes from the song "Everyday People," which tells you right away that this is a troubadour with a populist bent. Throughout the set, however, Gibbs wraps his empathy for the common man and the marginalized in sharp storytelling full of flesh-and-blood characters.

Gibbs, now based in Nashville, writes of abused wives, lonely truckers, hobo jungles - he's been there - and people just trying to grapple with faith of any kind ("It's hard to believe what you don't know," he laments on "Damn Me"). Helping to bring these songs to life are producer Chris Stamey and ace players such as Don Dixon, Will Rigby and Al Perkins, who support Gibbs' assertive delivery with crisp folk and country accompaniment.

- Nick Cristiano

Rambling Boy

(Decca ***1/2)

This is one from 2008 that we didn't get to, but it deserves a mention before the year recedes too far into the past.

Charlie Haden made his name as a jazz bassist, but his musical career began in country music in the 1930s, when he started performing at age 2 with his parents and siblings. In an effort to re-create that Haden Family experience, Haden revisits folk and country chestnuts with his wife, Ruth Cameron, and his four children and son-in-law.

Nepotism is not an issue - all the family members are first-rate (his wife was a recording star in her own right). But it's the "friends" he recruits that makes this especially noteworthy: They include Pat Metheny, Bruce Hornsby, Elvis Costello, Vince Gill, Rosanne Cash, and even actor Jack Black (married to Haden's daughter Tanya), who does a spirited turn on "Old Joe Clark."

- N.C.

Hemispheres

(artistShare ***1/2)

Guitarists Bill Frisell and Jim Hall seem like polar opposites. Hall, 78, slices through the chord changes like a slalom skier, while Frisell, 57, seems more into pure tones and snatches of odd American genres. Frisell, who studied with Hall, seems to borrow little beyond the master's questing nature. Yet the triumph of this session is that each makes the other sound different.

This two-disk set allows listeners to finance the creative process in exchange for access. The first CD is just duets, ranging from Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" - a definite Frisell choice - to a mysterious next-generation improvisation called "Migration." Many of these tunes are soundscapes that enable the two to explore handsome timbres. The second CD features the two in a quartet with drummer Joey Baron and bassist Scott Colley, anchoring their collaboration in a more traditional setting; it's powerful to hear such standards as "My Funny Valentine" sound novel again.

- Karl Stark

Ground-Breaker

(Ericmintelquartet.com ***)

Pianist Eric Mintel serves up a pleasant mix. The Feasterville, Pa.-based leader, whose gigs have ranged from Bill Clinton's White House to Marian McPartland's

Piano Jazz

radio show, approaches listeners in an amicable way, and plays hard. His quartet recording with Maynard Ferguson alum Nelson Hill on saxophones and flute features slivers of funk, Latin and gospel. But it's mostly a straight-ahead set of positive-sounding original tunes. Hill is a hard-charger, befitting his role as Ferguson's lead altoist in the early 1980s. Electric bassist Dave Antonow and drummer Dave Mohn comprise the backbone for this quartet, which aims to please and often succeeds.

- K.S.

Dmitri Maslennikov, cello; NDR Symphony Orchestra, Christoph Eschenbach conducting

(Phoenix Edition ***)

Daniel Muller-Schott, cello; Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Yakov Kreizberg conducting

(Orfeo ****)

Zuill Bailey, cello; San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Martin West conducting

(Telarc ****)

Pieter Wispelwey, cello; Sinfonietta Cracovia, Jurgen Hempel conducting

(Channel Classics ***1/2)

After living on the fringe of the cello concerto repertoire for decades, the two Shostakovich concertos, written in 1959 and '66, are suddenly everywhere in the recording market, together and singly. These are rich, formidable works full of enigmatic references, long ruminative soliloquies and the composer's own brand of ironic flippance. No one takes them on lightly. Oddly, the best recordings are by cellists too young to have had much connection with Shostakovich or the Soviet repression that informed so much of his work.

Zwill Bailey, for one, radiates charisma, often in the form of searing intensity with every note of the

Cello Concerto No. 1

.

Daniel Muller-Schott, for another, uses peerless technique in both concertos to probe every phase for meaning, more resourcefully than anyone I've heard. His introspection never lapses into obscurity.

The most mature performance is Pieter Wispelwey's reading of

Cello Concerto No. 1

, which avoids histrionics and primary colors in a performance of great concentration and mastery, but doesn't illuminate the music's enigmas so much as present their full implications. In both concertos, Dmitri Maslennikov suffers only by comparison to the other three discs, though he probably should have waited a few more years to record these works. But at least he has the most alert collaborator in conductor Christoph Eschenbach, who reveals an intricacy in the cello/orchestral interplay that few others have.

- David Patrick Stearns