R.E.M. Around the Sun (Warner Bros.)
The first few seconds of R.E.M.'s Around the Sun nearly retrace the opening to rock's archetypal power ballad, Aerosmith's "Dream On." As the song, "Leaving New York," continues, R.E.M. sound remarkably like multiplatinum-era early-Nineties R.E.M. -- the band that knew how to combine diffuse lyrics and sonics with hooks and primal rock grooves better than anyone else.
On Around the Sun, that intrinsically R.E.M.-y vibe makes a tentative, muted comeback. Unlike 1998's Up, on which the band crafted beautiful but belabored studio experimentation, and unlike 2001's Reveal, where they relaxed but didn't deliver many memorable melodies, R.E.M. here resemble their classic selves. On its way back home, the band takes the road less traveled. "The Outsiders" coolly floats on a syncopated drum beat that comes to a premature stop, then starts again for Q-Tip to resolutely rap a noble third verse. "Make It All Okay" puts piano to the fore of a strikingly direct post-breakup song. "Jesus loves me fine/And your words fall flat this time," Michael Stipe argues, rejecting a lover's offer to revive a relationship. On the title-track closer, the threesome builds to a humble climax, then fades away on a dreamy coda.
Around the Sun is full of what are ultimately anti-power ballads, the kind that question rather than bluster, favoring maybe over might. It's another slow, meandering CD from a trio that refuses to fake a full recovery in the wake of drummer Bill Berry's departure in 1997. It would be too easy for R.E.M. to ride Coldplay's coattails on a rock-anthem remedy. They'd rather struggle on their own terms. (BARRY WALTERS)
Cake Pressure Chief (Columbia)
Considering that Cake's best-known songs include a deadpan cover of "I Will Survive" and the cartoonishly inspirational hit "The Distance," it's easy to see why so many of us underestimated this Northern California band. But now that their alt-rock moment is past, Cake's sound is more palatable and kind of small. Their fifth album is full of well-placed synth blips and light funk grooves, and with John McCrea's baritone toned way down, it sometimes sounds like Cake are shooting for the Cars' cold, shiny hooks. But no matter how much Cake are content to be just a quirky little pop band, only a handful of tracks -- including "No Phone" and the surprisingly sweet "She'll Hang the Baskets" -- push pleasure buttons like they ought to. Worse still, a cover of Bread's "The Guitar Man" shows that Cake still have the capacity to annoy. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)
Raphael Saadiq Raphael Saadiq as Ray Ray (Pookie Entertainment/Navarre)
After his first solo CD, 2002's Instant Vintage, and many collaborations, bassist-songwriter-producer and ex Tony! Toni! Tone! member Raphael Saadiq returns as lover extraordinaire on the funky R&B-laden Ray Ray. This alter-ego's road has a few bumps -- the sound collage "Blaxploitation" wastes time, and "I Know Shuggie Otis," an ode to the Seventies songwriter, lacks depth. But so does Ray Ray -- which may be the point. The man's regaling stories for his Saturday-night kickin'-it crew, and he means to entertain. On "Chic Like You" (featuring rapper Allie Baba), Lover Boy uses braggadocio as seduction to snag prey. A rifle-shot sample serves as metaphor for lust on the Tony! Toni! Tone!-like "Rifle Love." He does contemplate heavier stuff -- Curtis Mayfield would approve of the surprisingly fine "Grown Folks" and the unfussy "Save Us" -- but Saadiq saves it for the end of his night, when he resolutely shuts his front door and whispers, "Home." (MARIE ELSIE ST. LEGER)
Suzzy and Maggie Roche Why the Long Face? (Red House)
Maggie and Suzzy Roche have been singing together for more than two decades, a fact that is readily apparent in the gorgeous harmonies that define their latest release, Why the Long Face? Few singers -- not to mention siblings -- have voices that are so perfectly complementary. On Why the Long Face, the Roche sisters sing about the hope and despair present in everyday life -- if broken hearts and loneliness are to be found in abundance (look no further than the opening track, Mark Johnson's "I Don't Have You," for a superlative example), so are poignant prayers ("For Those Whose Work Is Invisible") and loopy diversions ("A Day in the Life of a Tree," taken from the Beach Boys' Surf's Up). Altogether, the album makes for a pleasing, heartfelt meditation on what it takes to live day to day, expressed in tones that are anything but mundane. (REBECCA FLINT MARX)
Robyn Hitchcock Spooked (Yep Roc)
Spooked is textbook Robyn Hitchcock: off the wall and very pretty. Yet it veers from his previous work because collaborators Gillian Welch and producer David Rawlings are back-to-the-roots Americana types who know how to strip songs to their essences, and when to add dobros and other touches one doesn't normally hear on Hitchcock discs. Sometimes Hitchcock's verbal visions seem inspired by A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- alternately convoluted and nonsensical, and right on target. He drapes politics in a veil of dreamy melody on "If You Know Time," but there's no mistaking the clarity of this line: "And the war that's coming, setting good guys against good, it's always a good cause, you fight because you should. You can cut them down like weeds, but you'll never make them love you." Hitchcock occasionally lapses into self-indulgence, but the gorgeous simplicity on the Dylan cover "Tryin' to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door" redeems any transgressions. (LYNNE MARGOLIS)
Amy Correia Lakeville (Nettwerk)
Like a trail of blue smoke from a long, skinny cigarette, Amy Correia's voice is wispy as she opens her second album. She reveals her unrequited love for a friend on New York's "59th Street," then seeks shelter in "California" ("California will you take me in/To your soft brown hills and tiger lily thrills"). Somehow Correia manages to muster more emotion for others than for herself. She sounds almost detached when Lakeville's misery is befalling her, like on the early jazz-inspired "Dollar Lake;" her boyfriend rips her off and then abandons her, and all she wants is to have him back. But on "Hold On," a tale of a junkie jailbird mom dreaming of her small child, you can hear the longing well in her throat. The one piano chord Correia seems to know gets monotonous, but other instrumentation, like the pedal steel on "Coney Island" and the rhythmic shuffle and bluesy slide guitar on "The Devil and I" (allegedly inspired by a real-life ghost experience) give her tenuous singing a suitably ethereal backdrop. (MEREDITH OCHS)
Kimya Dawson Hidden Vagenda (K)
As a member of the Moldy Peaches and as a solo artist, Kimya Dawson straddles the line between precious and profound. Her sing-songy melodies, waltz-time acoustic strums, lyrics that vacillate between childlike wonder, adult existentialism and crudeness create incredible dissonance. Should you laugh or cry at the reaper knocking at the door of "I Will Never Forget"? Unlike her previous three solo albums done at home on a four-track, Hidden Vagenda was partially recorded in professional recording studios in San Francisco, England and France with an odd collection of musicians, including Joe Gore (PJ Harvey, Tom Waits), Stephan Jenkins (Third Eye Blind) and Vanessa Carlton. Yet no matter how many guests play guitar, toy piano or sing back-ups, the sound remains rough, and the songs are still the real story. "Having been fucked is no excuse for being fucked up," she announces in "My Heroes." Truth-teller or bullshit artist, Dawson keeps you guessing. (ROB O'CONNOR)
Hem Eveningland (Rounder)
To the eight players in Brooklyn-based Hem, wonder is found in a hush. For on Eveningland, the band's second album, singer Sally Ellyson and songwriters Dan Messe and Gary Maurer stroll through sixteen elegant, old-fashioned Americana tunes that barely exceed a whisper. But in this quiet, the band finds an aching humanity, exploring insecurities, heartbreak and that strange emotional uneasiness made more uneasy at nighttime. Acoustic guitars, pianos, pedal steel and a host of other stringed instruments weave nimbly throughout, matching the complicated moods of their characters. Still it's Ellyson's lazy soprano that carries the tunes, transforming what might otherwise be ordinary country-pop into something dreamy. On songs like the upbeat (for Hem) "Dance With Me, Now Darling" and the Johnny and June Carter Cash cover "Jackson," Ellyson, with just the slightest inflection, is able to capture a whole world of feeling. Hem's softness may indeed be readymade for sleepy time, but it's a softness containing endless pleasures. (BENJAMIN FRIEDLAND)
Liz Janes Poison & Snakes (Asthmatic Kitty)
When Kim Deal and Tanya Donnelly formed the aptly named Breeders in 1988, little did they know that their collaboration would spawn a generation of Fender-toting femmes. At the front of this line is Liz Janes. Her second album, Poison & Snakes, is a collection of blaring, guitar-driven, countrified rock that would make her predecessors proud. She croons and screeches her way from the quietly combustible "Vine" to the contemplative and serene "Desert" to the brash "Streetlight." Janes' voice, like her music, is earthy and raw -- and what she may lack in originality, she makes up for in delivery. (LESLIE HERMELIN)