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“Meet the Curlews!”

Curlew

(Cuneiform)

You say you’re feeling sleepy very sleepy? Well, you must have been listening to “Meet the Curlews!”, the newest from Mississippi-born avant-garde saxophonist George Cartwright’s dynamic outfit Curlew.

And that’s not meant to be derogatory (the fact that the album, at times, could possibly induce you to kick back and nearly nap), it’s just that this is a new Curlew. And Curlew, though its lineup and sound have constantly changed since it was founded in 1979, isn’t known for making music exactly like this: alternately ragged, saloon-sublime, melancholy, star-gazing, and quietly tricky. But, really, Curlew is Cartwright and vice versa. He’s the only one on every album, he’s the leader, and he’s the founder. The evolution evident in every new release is simply a reflection of Cartwright’s own growth and ambition, and the musicians with which he surrounds himself seem to also be the influences he’s digging at the time, the inspiration for the ideas germinating beneath his bald pate.

Sometime Memphis scenester Cartwright and guitarist Davey Williams, the closest thing to a group constant (he’s on six of eight albums), are all that remain of the configuration that gave us 1998’s Fabulous Drop, a sort of electric-funk exploding telegram in which you can almost hear the laughter. Curlew’s new, less fusion-focused lineup includes Memphis’ own Chris Parker (formerly of Big Ass Truck) on piano and Wurlitzer, Bruce Golden on drums, and Fred Chalenor (who has worked with Seattle’s the Walkabouts) on bass. Listening to this latest, only occasionally frenzied Curlew offering may cause periodic drowsiness for the uninitiated dabbler or the tired old fan, but, given a close, patient listen or two, an ominous scrambling of free-form, funk, and chamber-jazz styles reveals itself — imagine the protean John Coltrane, circa 1965’s The Major Works of …, with a couple of Quaaludes dissolving under his tongue.

A product of the Knitting Factory-based punk-jazz scene of ’70s and ’80s Manhattan, Cartwright is uncharacteristically less the mad, modal Coltrane disciple on this album, owing more to Coleman Hawkins’ powerful, slow-burn method. Strangely, the voodoo’d piano of Parker, whose “Cold Ride” is the wildest composition of the bunch, seems to be the gravity pulling the rest of the band down to earth and more formal jazz territory.

This is an album full of passages reminiscent of progressive rock, and its slowly expository tunes literally break under their own weight — in a good, postmodern way. On Chalenor’s “Space Flight Cat,” Golden’s almost military drums accelerate beside Williams’ eerie electric guitar, allowing Cartwright a little up-tempo blowing before switching to the breathy, autumnal approach of his own “Late December,” a seven-minute browse through the halls of the dead. “Meet the Curlews” strikes a vein of bass to begin with, romps about a bit, then fractures its own melody, for good measure, with Williams’ and Parker’s respective solo forays. Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme” seems to have influenced the initial section of “Lemon Bitter,” one of the out-and-out coolest tunes on the album with its equal, rollicking participation from all the band.

The daring complexity of the 11 tunes on “Meet the Curlews!” assures us that, though Cartwright’s sax is less dominant on this recording, he’s still the man behind the curtain, and the show he puts on demands our attention. — Jeremy Spencer

Grade: B+

C’Mon, C’Mon

Sheryl Crow

(Interscope/A&M)

At her worst, Sheryl Crow reminds me of my all-time least-favorite band, the Eagles, except she’s a she, and in that case it makes all the difference in the world. An El Lay soft-rock chick at the bottom of her Kennett, Missouri, heart, when Crow regurgitates all those familiar romanticized road images and peaceful, easy feelings and wallows in the same kind of backstage, in-crowd vibe (guest appearances here from the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Stevie Nicks, and Gwyneth Paltrow!), at least she strips it all of the male chauvinism and casual misogyny that infect the Eagles’ music. She lays the “Desperado” shtick on thick on the opening “Steve McQueen” (and, no, this is not the Drive-by Truckers’ “Steve McQueen,” for all five of you who are wondering), describing herself as an “all-American rebel” and a “freebird” and complaining, “All my heroes hit the highway,” but the lyrics thankfully become more generic and less obtrusive after that.

When I’m able to ignore that her main pop function is to provide comfort food for classic-rock clingers who refuse to come to grips with the pop eruptions of the late ’70s and who prefer the good old days before punk and disco and hip hop made everything so messy, I like Sheryl Crow. She’s the kind of modest, down-to-earth gal who could sing a quintessential bit of Eagles post-hippie hedonism, Me-decade crap like “Lighten up while you still can/Don’t even try to understand/Find a place to make your stand/And take it easy” and make me sing along rather than gag. And that’s basically what she does on C’Mon, C’Mon‘s lead single, “Soak Up the Sun.”

“Soak Up the Sun” is the most El Lay anthem in years, so laid back it makes Train sound as agitated as the Dead Kennedys. It’s also the loveliest thing on the album, helped along by Special Guest Star Liz Phair, who only sings backup but whose sharp, understated style still dominates the song, inspiring dry vocals and crisp guitar lines the way the devil incarnate, Don Henley, encourages Crow to oversing shamelessly on the duet “It’s So Easy” (Crow made the over-the-top vocals work on “If It Makes You Happy,” but Henley pulls her toward Diane Warren/Celine Dion schmaltz here).

Elsewhere, Crow’s best moments come when she forgoes the celeb backup, like on the title song, in which the novel 12-string acoustic lead makes it sound like an outtake from Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story (post-hippie roots rock of the gods), or the future radio hit “Hole in My Pocket,” which updates Crow’s sound all the way to, say, 1987. —Chris Herrington

Grade: B

Under Cold Blue Stars

Josh Rouse

(Rykodisc)

Josh Rouse’s musical leanings have always centered around geography: His ’98 debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, provided a vibrant flip side to Bruce Springsteen’s depressing ode to the prairie state; 2000’s Home centered on Rouse’s adopted hometown of Nashville. Rouse’s newest release is called Under Cold Blue Stars, and it’s his most expansive album to date. With the title track, he unwinds his life story, replete with tales of wanderlust and guitars — typical fodder for an alt-country album. Yet, despite the subject matter, Rouse is hardly constrained by the genre. Sure, he plays guitar-fueled power pop. But the music’s deeper than that — tape loops, horn sections, strings, and funky beats all contribute to the mix. Think sunnier Lambchop or countrified Yo La Tengo — Rouse has links to both bands, and he effectively combines the off-the-wall beatific vibes of both groups with effortlessly soaring pop hooks. Don’t miss the bright fuzz of “Feeling No Pain” — in a perfect world, this radio-friendly number would take Rouse straight to the top of the charts. n — Andria Lisle

Grade: B+

Read Music/Speak Spanish

Desaparecidos

(Saddle Creek)

I’ve always had my doubts about Conor Oberst. The Nebraska-based singer-songwriter has been an indie-rock cult hero since fronting the band Commander Venus back in the mid-’90s as a 14-year-old, later building an audience under the moniker Bright Eyes with folk-rock so intensely personal it would make Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow blush.

Oberst comes off as a wavery-voiced basket case, equal parts wounded, sensitive soul and crackpot with a microphone. On record, he sounds like revenge-and-guilt-era Elvis Costello reinvented as an introverted, Midwestern mope, and his earnest, obsessive romanticism carries a troubling, narcissistic aftertaste.

Oberst is back with a new band, Desaparecidos, and this time he turns the volume and tempos up and focuses his messy emotions, sharp temper, and palpable concern (for everything) on the outer world, a welcome change that results in the kind of honest rage and unavoidable analysis that Republicans insist on calling class warfare.

Like Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna before him, Oberst’s voice (and by voice I mean the literal sound of his vocals) is probably too unhinged for mainstream consumption; the only times he doesn’t sound like he’s about to lose control are the frequent moments when he does, when the words come out in torrents and his vocal chords shred like a toddler having a tantrum, as on the anti-sprawl “Greater Omaha,” in which Oberst gazes out at the growing string of chain restaurants lining the outskirts of his hometown and vomits into the microphone, “And it’s ALL U CAN EAT/And they will never get enough/They’ll be feeding us/They’ll be feeding on us!” All of which explains why, though the barely legal Oberst may be an object of obsession for a few heroically demented adolescents, you’ll never be seeing him on TRL, no matter how popular the Strokes get. But by transitioning from the personal to the political, Oberst makes the most of his perpetually outraged yowl, and his new band helps out plenty. Frequent, and inordinately wishful, comparisons to Hüsker Dü and Gang of Four are a little off: This band can’t match the land-speed-record locomotion of the former or the jagged precision funk of the latter. But real tunes do eventually emerge from the infernal noise –some of which you may actually find yourself humming afterward.

But what makes Read Music/Speak Spanish so great (four months into the year, it’s the most interesting record I’ve heard) is that Oberst’s songwriting is often as delicate and thoughtful as the vocals and music are entirely impolite. At first, “Man and Wife, the Former (Financial Planning)” might appear to be the clinical analysis its unwieldy title suggests, but in reality it’s almost unbearably moving, a bitter battle between romantic love and financial reality that evokes similarly themed country-music classics such as Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December” and Charlie Rich’s “Life’s Little Ups and Downs.” Oberst croons to his new bride, with nary a hint of irony or detachment, “I can’t concentrate when I’m at work/I just think and think until my head hurts of the payment plans I’m making/I just wanted to provide for you/But if you want to make a run for it, my love/I’d cover you.” The ultimate expression of love thus becomes the willingness to end the relationship and take on all the financial burdens accrued.

The song’s companion piece, “Man and Wife, the Latter (Damaged Goods),” offers a denouement no less balanced between pointed social critique and emotional nuance. And “The Happiest Place On Earth” (with Oberst opening, “I want to pledge allegiance to the country where I live/I don’t want to be ashamed to be American”) may be the most serious and responsible expression of dissent to come from pop music since 9/11.

And, at very least, there’s no better music for blasting on Germantown Parkway than “Greater Omaha,” where you can scream along with Oberst, “All those golden fields/Lovely empty space/They’re building drug stores now until none remains/I have been driving now for 100 blocks/Saw 50 Kum & Gos, 60 parking lots.” — Chris Herrington

Grade: A

Sometimes a Circle

Louise Goffin

(DreamWorks)

Hell, yes, it’s a pop record. Were you expecting anything less from Carole King’s daughter? Sometimes a Circle is kind of like King’s Tapestry as rerecorded by trip-hop pioneers Portishead. And, at times, Goffin’s phrasing is similar to Aimee Mann’s but without the twitchy borderline-personality-disorder angst. There’s even an echo of Laura Nyro or two along with the Brill Building pop-tune catchiness that her mother and father — tunesmith Gerry Goffin — were known for in the early ’60s.

Every tune here sounds like a “relationship song” with heavy dashes of blinkered self-involvement and psychobabble aplenty. But this is a pop record and what counts are the hooks, the beats, the melodies, and the smooth vocals, and this record sounds great in the same way that a Chris Isaak record does. It doesn’t matter that the person singing is about as deep as a mirror and as smart as a rabbit. This is narcissist rock that doesn’t offend.

The real star here is producer Greg Wells, who also happens to be Goffin’s husband. He constructs sparse chamber-pop settings around his wife’s sometimes sappy lyrics in such a way that you find yourself singing along to the most inane choruses and enjoying it. Now that’s the essence of a pop record, it would seem. Sometimes surface sheen is enough. — Ross Johnson

Grade: B+

Louise Goffin will be at the New Daisy Theatre on Friday, April 12th, with Sister Hazel and Ingram Hill.

Listening Log

Songs of Sahm — The Bottle Rockets (Bloodshot): Festus’ favorite sons are so sneaky-smart and naturally funny on their own (see “Welfare Music” and “Indianapolis” for proof) that it’s a bit of a letdown to hear them doing an entire album of someone else’s songs, but at least the late West Texas cult hero Doug Sahm is as fruitful a match as you could hope for. (“Mendocino,” “Lawd, I’m Just a Country Boy In This Great Big Freaky City”)

Grade: B

Eban & Charley –Stephin Merritt (Merge): The genius songwriter behind the Magnetic Fields with the soundtrack to a movie you’ll probably never see. Novel ambient tinklings surround six new songs — though some of these are more like fragments. For Merritt completists only. (“Maria Maria Maria,” “This Little Ukulele”)

Grade: B

Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz –Nappy Roots (Atlantic): The fruits of a future that Outkast fostered a few years ago — six jus’ plain Kentucky folks with a brand of rural rap far beyond anything hinted at by Arrested Development. Where Outkast’s ATLien futurism is decidedly New South urban, the backwoods beats here are clearly the province of a bunch of self-described “Country Boyz.” It’s overlong at 70-minutes-plus, but no other hip-hop record has managed to make the Dirty South into an agrarian ideal –or vice versa. Inspirational Song Title of the Year: “Ballin’ On a Budget.” (“Awnaw,” “Sholiz,” “Po’ Folks”)

Grade: A-

The Guest — Phantom Planet (Epic): Yep, for you Rushmore fanatics, this is indeed Jason Schwartzman’s (aka Max Fisher’s) band, but he’s just the drummer. They’re sort of a California Strokes –hip, pretty young things with a sound more sunny and naturally commercial than gritty and punkish. This is a sharp if lightweight amalgam of ’70s rock where ELP + Elvis Costello = Weezer lite, and über-producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake surprisingly and thankfully don’t clutter up the sound too much. Smarter than Train and more tuneful than System of a Down (but not vice versa), this band won’t be saving rock-and-roll anytime soon, but they sure do brighten up rock radio. (“Lonely Day,” “Nobody’s Fault,” “Always On My Mind”) — CH

Grade: B+

In Search Of

N*E*R*D

(Virgin)

N*E*R*D consists of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (better known as the current “It” boys of production, the Neptunes) along with fellow gaming vidiot Shay. And the name is appropriate.The group’s style is less ghetto-fab “Lord of the Blings” than indie-rock geek chic.

After scoring a string of hits as knob-twiddlers for the likes of Jay-Z, Ludacris, the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, the Neptunes were given the studio green light to produce themselves.Of course, in Major-label Land, things are never that simple.The original version of In Search Of was drenched in swooshy synths, cornball Bizarro World skits, and muffled samples.Released to much acclaim in England, its genre-hopping appeal even made waves back here.But the studio or N*E*R*D itself decided to completely redo the whole damn thing.

The new version’s sound reminds me of the overlooked early ’90s lo-fi rap impresario Basehead. But whereas Basehead was comfortable playing air guitar in his bedroom, N*E*R*D seems poised to take the stage of an actual coliseum.In Search Of kicks things off with “Lapdance,” a near-perfect synthesis of cock-rock attitude and metro-funk lechery.The most appealing element of the album is the band’s hook-laden, straightforward approach to soul.Despite its hip-hop pedigree and audiosyncrasies, N*E*R*D is particularly adept at creating gritty urban ballads that sidestep earth-mama nu-soul (“Run to the Sun,” “Stay Together,” and the highlight, “Bobby James”).”Provider,” a coke mule’s hymn to the lure of the white line, is a great example of countrified gangsta — Johnny Cash Money, if you will.

— David L. Dunlap Jr.

Grade: A

The Executioner’s Last Songs, Vol. 1

The Pine Valley Cosmonauts

(Bloodshot)

Murder ballads and mob-law songs, like those collected on the Pine Valley Cosmonauts’ third full-length album, The Executioner’s Last Songs, Vol. 1, are, at their core, cautionary tales warning listeners away from the temptations of violence, drinking, and loose women, among other evils. Punishment is always as fundamental as the crimes themselves: Kill someone, and you will be killed, whether by the state or by God Himself.

So it’s curious that the Pine Valley Cosmonauts — ex-Mekon Jon Langford and company backing a revolving roster of guest vocalists — have recorded so many retribution-minded songs on this album, which benefits the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project. To say the least, the death penalty is an endlessly complicated issue, and it would seem as if the Cosmonauts have found a way to speak to those complexities.

The results, unfortunately, are mixed. Johnny Dowd infuses “Judgment Day” with his usual histrionics, and Chris Ligon’s flippant “Great State of Texas” is too light and breezy to convey the gravity of the situation it describes. Steve Earle turns in a languid, lackluster version of “Tom Dooley” that, pardon the expression, grinds to a dead halt.

Balancing out these missteps are some very sensitive readings of death-related songs. Edith Frost’s take on Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” is lovely, and Rosie Flores puts some sass and stomp into Hank Williams’ “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” The showstopper is Diane Izzo’s haunting plea to the Grim Reaper on Ralph Stanley’s “Oh Death.” Singing with a wobbly voice and creaky phrasing, she accomplishes a nearly impossible task: She boldly conveys the horror of death in such a way that we would never wish it upon anyone, not a murder victim or a murderer.How unfortunate then that Tony Fitzpatrick sounds off near the end of the album on his spoken-word “Idiot Whistle,” decrying slimy politicians and reducing this vital issue to a black-and-white, us-versus-them cliché. Fitzpatrick’s is an insultingly simplistic argument that does little for death-row inmates and even less for this flawed benefit album. — Stephen Deusner

Grade: B-

Under Cold Blue Stars

Josh Rouse

(Rykodisc)

Josh Rouse’s musical leanings have always centered around the geographical: His ’98 debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, provided a vibrant flip-side to Bruce Springsteen’s depressing ode to the prairie state; 2000’s Home centered on Rouse’s adopted hometown of Nashville. Rouse’s newest release is called Under Cold Blue Stars, so it should come as no surprise that it’s his most expansive album to date. With the title track, he unwinds his life story, replete with tales of wanderlust and guitars — typical fodder for an alt-country album. Yet, despite the subject matter, Rouse is hardly constrained by the genre. Sure, he plays guitar-fueled power pop, but the music’s deeper than that — tape loops, horn sections, strings, and funky drumbeats all contribute to the mix. Think sunnier Lambchop or countrified Yo La Tengo. Rouse has links to both bands, and he effectively combines the off-the-wall vibes of both groups with effortlessly soaring pop hooks. Don’t miss the bright fuzz of “Feeling No Pain” — if the world were a perfect place, this radio-friendly number would take Rouse straight to the top of the charts. Other standouts: the album’s opener, “Twilight,” and the minimalist “Summer Kitchen Ballad.” “It’s a grey world,” Rouse sings on the latter. Listening to his spare yet lush composition, we can hardly agree. — Andria Lisle

Rating: B+