New Recordings

Can't Be Tamed

(Hollywood **1/2)

nolead ends They grow up so fast nowadays. It seems like only yesterday Cyrus was a wholesome Disney Channel pixie. Oh, wait, that was yesterday.

Can you say "makeover"? Glowering on the cover of her new CD in a midriff-baring (and then some) all-black outfit, her hair dyed dark, the 17-year-old singer looks like the Bride of Dracula.

Fortunately, her sound hasn't turned sinister.

The collection lifts off energetically with "Liberty Walk," a popping dance number (Miley raps!); the Abba-esque "Who Owns My Heart"; and the electro-vamp of the title track, which she later reprises with Lil Jon.

You want contemporary? Wrap your ears around the Ke$ha-like android-pop of "Permanent December."

The good is bundled with the bad, including a superfluous cover of Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and some swampy ballads on which Cyrus seems to be channeling Stevie Nicks.

With Can't Be Tamed, Cyrus' image has undergone a radical change, but her music hasn't changed much. The record is slightly more daring but far from untamed.

- David Hiltbrand

nolead begins Peter Case
nolead ends nolead begins Wig!
nolead ends nolead begins (Yep Roc ***1/2)

nolead ends With a new lease on life, Peter Case is rocking out again. The well-respected rocker and troubadour - he was the subject of a three-CD tribute album in 2006 - underwent open-heart surgery last year, and his many musician friends and admirers rallied to raise money to defray his medical expenses.

Wig! will appeal to those who loved Case's work as leader of The Nerves and the Plimsouls. Recording in a trio format with guitarist Ron Franklin and X drummer D.J. Bonebrake, Case delivers a set of garage-raw rock with bluesy bite. He does so while still spinning arresting tales - "Banks of the River," "Somebody Told the Truth," "The Words in Red." Underscoring the roots bent of the music - besides Case's harmonica - is the inclusion of Lead Belly's "Thirty Days in the Workhouse," the only nonoriginal. To paraphrase one song title, we definitely dig what Case is putting down.

- Nick Cristiano

nolead begins Devo
nolead ends nolead begins Something for Everybody
nolead ends nolead begins (Warner Bros. ***1/2)

nolead ends From the start, Devo, who pretend to subvert evolution, have made music that subverts the culture from the inside out. They made themselves into a brand, wore homemade uniforms with funny hats, and terrorized the punk era with ugly analog synths, squawky vocals, and jerkily robotic rhythms. They recorded self-professed corporate anthems that poked glum fun at communication breakdowns.

And you could dance to it all - a fact that would influence the likes of LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip.

Twenty years after Devo's last studio album, Mark Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale, their brothers, and new friends like Santi White and Teddybears (a break from the band's usual hermetic seal) have updated the manic, panicked sound. While the "don't tase me, bro" bit of the riveting "Don't Shoot (I'm a Man)" rings a mite hollow, everything else here is unquestionably crisp. "Fresh" is a New Wave anthem of the highest order for 2010, with off-the-charts paranoia. "Later Is Now" is deliciously sarcastic, and the sinister "Human Rocket" reminds those foreign to Mothersbaugh's exploits that Devo were an avant-garde experiment started by Kent State students in the wake of the shootings.

- A.D. Amorosi

nolead begins We Are Scientists
nolead ends nolead begins Barbara
nolead ends nolead begins (PIAS ***)

nolead ends We Are Scientists get no respect. So what if they didn't shift with the business model in a dying record industry? They make relatively high-concept videos for their eager YouTubers and play songs with choruses they write as if that will get them played on the radio (as if there were still alt-rock stations) in 2010. They grow absurd facial hair. And they shamelessly pander to a quasi-hipster fan base with supposed redundancies that end up feeling more identifiable in the end than, say, The National's.

If that sounds too workmanlike, then let's be thankful; it's not a great moment for mainstream rock singles. On 2008's Brain Thrust Mastery, they wrote one for the ages, "After Hours," which should've been the "Closing Time" of the 2000s. Barbara's first single, "Rules Don't Stop," is almost as great, and certainly as infectious as "After Hours," if not Katy Perry's "California Gurls." But while Mastery sank under dull attempts to ditch being typecast earlier on as another dancepunk act, Barbara reclaims that jittery energy with a new surplus of choruses.

The fantastic "Break it Up" illustrates what's so underrated about this band: selling the sincerity of lines like "We'd never go home if you left it up to me" without looking ridiculous, and punching up an average band's chorus progression with a thoughtful one's harmonies. While nothing tops that or "Rules Don't Stop," the intervening cuts have their own surprises, such as the punchy downshift into falsetto of "I Don't Bite" and some unexpectedly clever lyrics when "Nice Guys" plays tug-of-war with feuding lines like "If you want this / Want it more" and "If you're the nice guy / Act like the nice guy." Their self-consciousness goes a long (clever) way without self-pitying.

- Dan Weiss

Red Dog Speaks

(Delta Groove ***)

nolead ends "Red Dog" is Elvin Bishop's guitar, a cherry-red 1959 Gibson electric. "We're kind of alike - beat up and broke down," the veteran bluesman declares while playing slide on the title song.

You wouldn't know it from Red Dog Speaks. Bishop, who made his name in the '60s with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, has some fun addressing past excesses and the consequences of aging ("Fat & Sassy," "Clean Livin' "), but he's as lively and sharp-witted as ever. No purist, he bends a variety of styles to his irrepressible personality, from an instrumental doo-wop medley to Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross" (one of three numbers sung by the terrific young soul-blues vocalist John Németh), and a touch of zydeco with the live "Blues Cruise," whose guests include Buckwheat Zydeco.

It's undeniably entertaining stuff. By closing with Leroy Carr's "Midnight Hour Blues," however, Bishop seems to be making a point: After all the fun, he can dig into a serious, down-and-out blues ballad as well as anyone.

- Nick Cristiano

nolead begins Kevin Welch
nolead ends nolead begins A Patch of Blue Sky
nolead ends nolead begins (Music Road ***)

nolead ends It's been eight years since the Nashville progressive Kevin Welch moved to Austin, Texas, and that long since he has released a solo album. Not that he wasn't busy: He did typically top-notch work with Kieran Kane and Fats Kaplin, who plays pedal steel on the new album amid a crew of Austin session aces and Welch's son, Dustin.

A Patch of Blue Sky unfolds at a deliberate pace. That highlights the contemplative, soul-searching nature of Welch's tersely eloquent song poetry, from the hymnlike stirrings of "The Great Emancipation" to the vividly drawn and touchingly empathetic "New Widow's Dream." "These days are filled . . . with beauty and sadness. . . . I'm glad to know that I don't know nothing," Welch sings on "That's How It Feels," injecting a soul-music vibe into his folk-and-country-leaning Americana and expressing the quietly liberating feeling at the heart of the album.

-N.C.

Reverse Thread

(E1 Music ***1/2)

nolead ends Violinist Regina Carter has celebrated the songwriters from her hometown, Detroit; recorded with one of Mr. Paganini's violins; and paid tribute to jazz standards.

Here, she focuses on old folk tunes from Africa in a small group that includes an accordion and a kora, a West African harp often played in one key. But the Mali-born Yacouba Sissoko adapts it rather magically to Western music.

Among the many treasures are a couple of traditional melodies from the Abayudaya, the Jews of Uganda. The opening "Hiwumbe Awumba" is a happy, kvetch-free ditty that features a scintillating call and response between Carter and accordionist Will Holshouser.

The group, with drummer Alverster Garnett (Carter's husband) and guitarist Adam Rogers, is so light that it seems as if Carter has assembled a unique chamber music ensemble. No doubt Philly's ace jazz violinist, John Blake Jr., who produced the CD, helped with that.

The Mali influence courses through this session. Guitarist Habib Koite's blissful tune "N'Teri" seems to rise on tragic wings, while Boubacar Traoré's "Kanou" could furnish the elements of a country hoedown.

Philly native Papo Vázquez wrote and arranged the slinky, Cuban-sounding "Un Aguinaldo Pa Regina," while Carter's one tune, "Day Dreaming on the Niger," is a total delight. Her "world" recording is as marvelous as it is geographically diverse.

- Karl Stark

nolead begins Curtis Fuller
nolead ends nolead begins I Will Tell Her
nolead ends nolead begins (Capri Records **1/2)

nolead ends The eminent bebop trombonist Curtis Fuller is in his 75th year and can still spin out the mellow gold.

He's not as fast as he used to be, or as precise. But there's no mistaking the big tone, which lights up originals like the title track and some boppish standards throughout this rambunctious, two-disc recording, one live and the other in the studio.

Fuller rides with a sextet, led by tenor saxophonist Keith Oxman, who teaches jazz at Denver's East High School and sounds in the groove on Fuller's "Maze." The mile-high posse here includes pianist Chip Stephens, trumpeter Al Hood, bassist Ken Walker, and drummer Todd Reid.

Fuller conjures up an era with the Oliver Nelson-sounding "Alamode." On the uneven live set, the band kicks off with some heat on "Tenor Madness," then winds through some scorchers and ballads before finishing high again with Kenny Dorham's "Minor's Holiday."

Fuller dedicates the sets to his wife, Cathy, who died in January.

- K.S.

Orchestre de la Francophonie, Jean-Philippe Tremblay conducting

(Analekta, five discs ***1/2)

nolead ends The French Canadian invasion of classical music is no joke. Besides Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Philadelphia, Jacques Lacombe is being installed at the New Jersey Symphony while two other young conductors - Jean-Marie Zeitouni and Jean-Philippe Tremblay - are crossing the border with increasing frequency. The latter conductor just issued a complete Beethoven symphony cycle that might initially inspire cynicism: How good could the Orchestre de la Francophonie be, anyway? It's excellent.

With Tremblay's lean textures, little vibrato, and zippy tempos, the period-instrument movement is a basic point of reference, which partly accounts for the consistency of quality here. But he brings to that his own brand of crisp rhythms, endlessly lilting melodic phrasing, and aggressive momentum (particularly in Symphony No. 4) that never lapses into bullying.

Recorded live, the performances are rarely without a strong electrical current. You wouldn't want to be without your contemplative Wilhelm Furtwangler recordings, but it's also nice to an intelligent conductor who likes to get on with it. Though recording quality is mostly dry and the singing in the Symphony No. 9 final movement becomes a bit of a screamfest, this set is a fine secondary addition to any Beethoven symphony collection.

- David Patrick Stearns

nolead begins Scott Johnson
nolead ends nolead begins Americans
nolead ends nolead begins (Tzadik ***1/2)

nolead ends After decades of building his guitar-based chamber works around prerecorded voices, composer Johnson reaches a level of artistic consolidation here that perhaps even his greatest admirers couldn't have anticipated. Thanks partly to breakthroughs in electronic technology, his use of prerecorded voices in his three-movement Americans emerges with an intricacy, sophistication, and fluidity that leave little questions as to what it all means.

The title piece is based on fragmented voices of Afghan immigrants in the United States, talking about how Americans tend to look alike and dreaming of what their homeland was like in more orderly times. The other pieces on the disc - "The Illusion of Guidance," "Bowery Haunt," and "Anthem Hunt" - don't consistently maintain that level of brilliance, but always take rock-music reference points out of their usual formula and put them at the service of Johnson's tough, uncompromising imagination and taste for musical density.

- D.P.S.