New Recordings

July Flame

(Raven Marching Band ***1/2)

nolead ends Laura Veirs tends to organize her albums around elemental imagery, whether it be the ice of 2004's Carbon Glacier, the rocks and stars of 2005's Years of Meteors, or the seas on 2007's Saltbreakers. In her latest, July Flame, the Portland singer-songwriter shifts the pattern slightly: It's a summer album, in the lyrical details if not in musical temperament.

In her naive, girlish voice, Veirs sings charmingly cryptic songs seeded with dandelions, summer rains, and peaches. It's not a strict song cycle, however: The homage to legendary session player Carol Kaye is a highlight.

Most tracks begin with a gently fingerpicked guitar, add a viola figure or string section and build into an understated chorale conclusion. A handful feature the beautiful, reverberating vocals of My Morning Jacket's Jim James. July Flame's delicate and wistful songs will doubtless sound pretty year-round.

- Steve Klinge

nolead begins The Red Krayola with Art & Language
nolead ends nolead begins Five American Portraits
nolead ends nolead begins (Drag City ***1/2)

nolead ends The cheerful absurdity of the Red Krayola knows no bounds. Since 1966, the Texan experimental band - actually just singer-songwriter-guitarist Mayo Thompson and whomever he chooses - has made harsh psychedelic rock, improvisational space folk, pre-punk noise and gamelan pop. Occasionally he's done all of them at once and with that madness (to say nothing of his whimsical, lyrical abstractness) turned the Red Krayola into a must-listen, whether the music's eerily accessible or delectably avant-garde.

This teaming with Art & Language, multi-instrumentalist Jim O'Rourke and Raincoats vocalist Gina Birch, exists between those two poles. Lyrically, Thompson paints portraits of Jimmy Carter, Wile E. Coyote, George W. Bush, John Wayne and artist Ad Reinhardt with the tiniest of literal details. It's a silly exercise that figures nicely into Krayola and Co.'s shimmering mash of original composition and musical themes associated (in their minds) with each character. So Bo Diddley's "Roadrunner" speeds through the cartoonish "Coyote" cut, Carter gets a dollop of "Georgia on My Mind," and '60s painter Reinhardt (renowned for canvases shaded in black) gets Jagger/Richards' "Paint It Black" along with a Mozart piano sonata for his troubles. Forty-four years after its start, the Red Krayola is still as ridiculous as it is compelling.

- A.D. Amorosi

nolead begins Magnetic Fields
nolead ends nolead begins Realism
nolead ends nolead begins (Nonesuch **1/2)

nolead ends Magnetic Fields mastermind Stephin Merritt apparently can't get it together to record an album without some sort of defining concept, whether it's all songs that begin with the letter I - as with 2004's (non-autobiographical, naturally) I, or 1999's gloriously great 69 Love Songs, a three-disc set he understandably has never quite figured out how to follow up.

Realism is a companion to 2008's Distortion. Where that one was loud, and inspired by the Jesus & Mary Chain's Psychocandy, this collection of tight, droll, arch alt-pop songs is quiet, with mainly acoustic instrumentation. Also, it's meant to be a commentary on notions of authenticity. We might not get that from the music had Merritt not taken take pains to tell us so. Sure, the sepulchrally voiced singer is still a tart lyricist and canny craftsman who had me snickering at such couplets as "I want you crawling back to me, down on your knees yeah / Like an appendectomy, sans anesthesia."

But he's mostly being merely clever here, not inspired. And really, if you're going to put a holiday song on a disk released in January, as Merritt does with "Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree," put it last instead of smack in the middle of the album. That's not clever, it's just annoying.

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins The Watson Twins
nolead ends nolead begins Talking to You, Talking to Me
nolead ends nolead begins (Vanguard ***1/2)

nolead ends On their third album since backing Jenny Lewis, harmony-loving identical twins Chandra and Leigh Watson have mostly traded in the folk and country facets of their sound for earmarks of classic soul and R&B. The Watsons work through a dozen torch songs crisp with scaled-back instrumentation and often hovering around the three-minute mark. The unexpectedly sultry "Harpeth River" is worthy of a pre-meltdown Amy Winehouse, as is the cooing, keyboard-tickled "Forever Me." "Tell Me Why" is sweetly straightforward, "Calling Out" recalls Carole King's "It's Too Late," and "Midnight" peaks with an extended patch of sizzling guitar licks and lively organ. Unconcerned with hipness, these are songs from the heart, seemingly from an era when craftsmanship was the prevailing currency.

- Doug Wallen

Sean's Blues: A Memorial Retrospective

(Landslide ***1/2)

nolead ends Sean Costello died in April 2008, one day before his 29th birthday. Sean's Blues is not a complete retrospective - it ranges from 1996 to 2002 - but its mix of album selections and unreleased tracks, including some live cuts, does offer a broad sampling of Costello's exceptional talents as a guitarist, singer, writer and interpreter.

Costello could dig deep into the blues, but he also had a jazzman's nimble touch with jump-blues and swing. Even when he reached back for old material, he always brought a fresh touch to it, and for all his six-string prowess, the onetime blues-rock prodigy and Susan Tedeschi sideman was less interested in flashy soloing than in crafting a taut, dynamic ensemble sound. As he matured and his voice took on a rougher edge, he also at times recalled the great Southern-soul singer and guitarist Eddie Hinton. What a loss.

- Nick Cristiano

nolead begins Darrell Nulisch
nolead ends nolead begins Just for You
nolead ends nolead begins (Severn ***1/2)

nolead ends A former singer for Anson Funderberg and the Rockets and Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters, Darrell Nulisch began his career steeped in the blues. He still knows his way around the music: His previous album, Goin' Back to Dallas, was a straight-up blues set. But over his three decades-plus in the business, the Massachusetts-based Dallas native has also matured into an impressive soul man.

Just for You brims with vintage-sounding soul music. The rich, horn-accented arrangements, more smooth than gritty, never push too hard, and neither does Nulisch. He doesn't over-emote, but neither does he stint on feeling. You'll hear echoes of Bobby Bland and even, in one case, the Sound of Philadelphia. But give Nulisch, who cowrote half the material, extra points for explicitly referencing "Dyke" - i.e., Arlester Christian, front man for the vastly underappreciated Dyke and the Blazers - on "Let a Woman Be a Woman."

- N.C.

Orchestrion

(Nonesuch ***1/2)

nolead ends On his new CD, guitarist Pat Metheny plays with one person: himself.

Standing on the work of inventors, Metheny fills out the session via an orchestrion, a machine meant to mimic percussion, a player piano and much of an orchestra. The orchestrions had their heyday in the era before music recording, and Metheny uses a novel one here - developed by Mark Singer and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots - to generate the sounds of keyboards, percussion, vibraphone, basses, and other instruments, all triggered by his guitar.

The result sounds like typical Metheny, only more so. A clean sound predominates with hints of an airy Brazilian vibe. The charts are driving but tuneful. A discreet sense of urgency prevails.

Much here sounds good and technically impressive, though not exactly memorable. It doesn't seem as if Metheny surprises himself much. Still, its intriguing moments include "Soul Search," a handsome ballad with some soulful parts, and "Spirit of the Search," which generates sufficient fire.

- Karl Stark

nolead begins Gail Pettis
nolead ends nolead begins Here in the Moment
nolead ends nolead begins (Origin/OA2 Records ***)

nolead ends Seattle-based jazz singer Gail Pettis came up through an unusual career path: She worked as an orthodontist for nearly two decades. She had her first gig in 2002 and was named Northwest Vocalist of the Year in 2007 by Seattle's monthly Earshot Jazz magazine.

Pettis sounds pretty assured on her second CD.

The 11 tunes here, with her trio backing, represent predictable material, and there needs to be more of a dramatic arc to future efforts. But the singer, raised in Gary, Ind., projects a bright and pleasant style. Pettis doesn't seem tied to regurgitating the songbook. She always finds a way into a tune that serves her well. Often-performed songs, such as "I Thought About You" and "I Could Have Danced All Night" generate some surprising juice, while "At Last" gets an earthy embrace.

After a late start, Pettis shows some talent.

- K.S.

Mozart, Handel, Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, Debussy and Obradors

(Bridge, ****)

nolead ends If there's such a thing as a Marlboro soprano, it's the now-retired, Philadelphia-based Benita Valente, who was a product of the Marlboro Festival during the Rudolf Serkin 1960s and carried that integrity throughout her long professional life. As star careers go, hers was relatively low key until her 1984 Metropolitan Opera breakthrough in Handel's Rinaldo. This collection culls from many labels and sources from 1969 to 1989.

Her famous Marlboro recording of Schubert's "The Shepherd on the Rock" shows her incredibly subtle projection of the words, her great lieder recital with Richard Goode taps her dramatic range and her later, little-circulated disks made at the Eastman School of Music with conductor/pianist David Effron show a richer tone, slower vibrato and easier projection. Among them is an amazingly ornamented "Lascia ch'io pianga" by Handel. Though her later recordings most readily accommodate the poetic weight of the material, there was greatness at every stage. Translations are included.

- David Patrick Stearns

nolead begins Terry Riley
In C Remixed
nolead ends nolead begins Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble
nolead ends nolead begins (Innova, two disks, ***1/2)

nolead ends Long a staple of pop music, the remix phenomenon has been intermittently invading the classical world. And though such creative piggybacking usually yields little more than novelty, this set of 18 riffs on Riley is an engaging creative statement in its own right.

Riley's In C is one of the first and most influential minimalist manifestos, and given the nature of that aesthetic at its most basic, has a tofulike tendency to take the flavor of its surroundings. So when different composers have their way with the music, Riley naturally frames and amplifies their efforts, so much that the In C element of any given variation may well be subsumed, even if it's the essential starting point of the creative process.

The stylistic range runs from the bright dance mix of Mason Bates to some semi-tortured drones from David Lang. In between, there's Steve Reich-style counterpart from D.J. Spooky, the light, jingly musical snow of Phil Kline, witty mini-melodies from Todd Reynolds, lots of industrial noise and backward tape loops from Glenn Kotche. This is not only a good cross-section of downtown composers, but a consistent pleasure to hear.

- D.P.S.