Pop

I'm happy for Lucinda Williams, the perennially bummed country-soul siren who is engaged to her manager, record executive Tom Overby. But I'm happier for her music and her fans. That's because Williams, as divine as she can be when turning sorrow into song, had lately grown depressingly one-note in her discontent.

Not so here. Little Honey, her ninth studio album, has its share of longing. "If wishes were horses," she sings, "I'd have a ranch." But it's her most rocked-out set to date, and also her happiest. (Happier even than 1980's Happy Woman Blues.) And while contentedness is quite often the bane of a tortured creator's existence, it does Williams a world of good. It spurs her to vary the album's mood and tempo, and loosen up in heretofore unheard ways, on the likes of "Jailhouse Tears," a delicious country love-hate duet with Elvis Costello, as well as the raunchy title cut, and a cranked-up cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)."

- Dan DeLuca

Lenka
Lenka
(Epic **1/2)

The solo debut for this Australian pop chanteuse opens auspiciously with an impressive one-two punch: the coquettish "The Show," which sounds like Colbie Caillat with a horn section, followed by the jaunty, Beatlesque "Bring Me Down."

Lenka proves to be a nifty songwriter, her talents nicely enhanced by producer Mike Elizondo's deft and inventive arrangements.

She sounds charming on the tracks with a burlier burlesque tone. Unfortunately, most of the album is made up of dreamy ballads. And Lenka's breathy voice wears thin on these slower, less-adorned songs. Stick with the singles.

- David Hiltbrand

Juana Molina
Un Día
(Downtown * **1/2)

Juana Molina enthusiasts know there's no one like her. The Argentine songwriter - and formerly wildly popular (in South America) TV comedian - specializes in diaphanous music of hypnotic beauty that blends organic and electronic elements into a seamless whole. "Un Día," sung entirely in Spanish, is one of those it's-not-for- everybody-but-then-you- don't-know-what-you're- missing propositions. If anything, it's more winning, and weird, than 2006's exemplary Son, stretching songs out (three of them extend over seven minutes) and moving forward with a driving, rhythmic pulse that never threatens to dissolve, even among loops of delicately twittering sounds that might seem merely New Age-y in the hands of a less imaginative artist.

- Dan DeLuca

Mercury Rev
Snowflake Midnight
(Yep Roc ***)

Snowflake Midnight opens with Jonathan Donahue cooing, "Snowflake in a hot world, don't let them get to you; don't let them tell you you're all the same." It's the first of many images of transient fragility, and the first of many unabashedly psychedelic (and more than slightly ridiculous) proclamations. But like the Flaming Lips (which briefly included Donahue), Mercury Rev is talented enough to make songs concerning butterfly wings and runaway raindrops compelling.

Snowflake relies more heavily on ethereal keyboards and bubbling electronics than prior albums in the band's two-decade tenure, although the lineup still includes several guitar- and kettledrum-driven crescendos, the thumping "Senses on Fire," and the grandly trippy "Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower" among them. Mostly, however, Snowflake floats and drifts softly and coolly, as it invokes beatific visions, sonically and lyrically.

- Steve Klinge

Country/Roots

It's the voice, still magnificent as he nears 70, that got Dion DiMucci into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lately, however, the Wanderer has also been showcasing his underrated guitar chops, first with two sets of acoustic blues and now this collection saluting some of the six-string aces of his generation.

The material is almost too familiar, but Dion, with the help of fellow guitarist Bob "Crow" Richardson, puts enough of his own stamp on these warhorses to make them rock anew. Besides celebrating guitarists who were also stars, such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, he also pays tribute to the less well-known accompanists, like Cliff Gallup on Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-a-Lula" and Philly's Danny Cedrone on Bill Haley's "Shake Rattle and Roll."

The set comes with a DVD in which Dion, Bronx accent and attitude still thick, recalls his encounters with many of the fellow greats he honors here, including ill-fated tour mates Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.