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Pop Remember Gomez? Bluesy, Beck-y Brits, possibly the biggest underdogs to win the Mercury Music Prize? If my hype files aren't missing any RAM, I believe they were promoted as the "band that could do a set between Phish and Pavement." This was

Pop

Furr

(Sub Pop ****)

Remember Gomez? Bluesy, Beck-y Brits, possibly the biggest underdogs to win the Mercury Music Prize? If my hype files aren't missing any RAM, I believe they were promoted as the "band that could do a set between Phish and Pavement." This was - as is the nature of hype - a generalization. However, here's oddball Oregon sextet Blitzen Trapper to excavate the analogy once again, more accurately and simply. This band isn't a growing wad of adjectives to drop about their eclecticism; they're an established concept turning their craft up a volume.

Released to surprise Web acclaim last year, Trapper's druggy

Wild Mountain Nation

was praised for its uncanny dance to Pavement's

Wowee Zowee

in splintered lockstep. But

Wowee Zowee

was hardly Pavement's finest hour, and in turn

Nation

's great songs (its title tune, or "Devil A Go-Go") suffered from being too loose and amateurish to know what to do with them. It got by on offhand charm and cracked tunes.

On

Furr

, Blitzen Trapper, now signed to luminary Sub Pop, glues up what was lacking, no matter how intentional it was then. Production is more careful, goofs are omitted, musicianship is tighter, giving us 2008's third and best alternative to prime Neil Young. My Morning Jacket's good-faith effort to weirden up put off some chai-sippers, who in turn sought out Fleet Foxes' Starbucks-approved mildness.

But those of us who cram for jam will prefer the crackling electric guitars of "Gold for Bread" and "War on Machines." Those guitars still evoke Pavement, mind you, but with a new, Keith Richards-like efficiency that still knows how to fall off the rails when the time is right. Even the folkier stuff ("Furr," "Stolen Shoes & a Rifle") breathes only when necessary. In under 40 minutes,

Furr

's well-sequenced cycle never outpaces itself. And Eric Earley's surprising new vocal tricks are exactly the pleasures you want from a good band that gains complexity without pretensions.

- Dan Weiss

Funhouse

(La Face ***

Is Pink pop's Sarah Palin?

Doylestown's Alecia Moore has always portrayed herself as an outsider, someone on the periphery of pop's humdrum dumbness. Not only has Pink put down tween cultural types Lindsay and Paris (e.g., Pink's hit "Stupid Girl"). She still seems sarcastically inured to the human frailties behind top-pop-tart stardom on her peppy new "So What."

Yet from 2000's double-platinum debut

Can't Take Me Home

to 2001's anthemic "Get the Party Started" (Bally Fitness and the NBA used it in ads) to the majority of her hit catalog, few do glossy pop-rock better.

Fantastic.

Though Pink gives her love life with ex-husband/

drummer Carey Hart a tongue-in-cheek lashing on "So What" and "Please Don't Leave Me," she slaps her caustic self silly during the Kid-Rock-ish C&W of "Mean." There are more than a few emotional references to busting up, breaking down, and messy scenarios with drugs and parents, including the suicide-squeezing "It's All Your Fault." Yet Pink funnels blame, dread and truculence through zealously contagious hooks with sonic rocking panache and the husky vocals of a kid who finally found those raunchy old Ray Charles records in her basement.

For an outsider, Pink is so far in, it hurts. Hurts so good, that is.

- A.D. Amorosi

Trying Hartz (First Fruits '94-'04)

(Secretly Canadian ***)

The preeminent weirdo of the Christian indie-rock scene, South Jersey's Daniel Smith, has built a cottage industry around permutations of his longtime Danielson project, including collaborations with his family and a pre-breakout Sufjan Stevens. On the heels of several reissues on Secretly Canadian and his own Sounds Familyre imprint comes this decade-spanning, two-disc primer, rich with live and alternate versions. Most of Smith's squeakily sung creations sound like loopy children's songs, with traces of jug-band folk and religion wafting gently in their manic pop breeze. These 28 tunes are more affable than annoying, though, and it's easy to see how Smith has managed to influence so many musicians over the years, even inspiring the award-winning documentary

Danielson: A Family Movie

. That said, it's certainly not for everybody.

- Doug Wallen

Live: Hope at the Hideout

(Anti ***1/2)

On last year's

We'll Never Turn Back

, Mavis Staples revisited her roots in the civil-rights era in songs old and new. It was one of the year's gems.

Live: Hope at the Hideout

documents her performance, including five of those songs and several Staple Singers classics, this past June at the Hideout, a small club in her hometown of Chicago. It's also a gem.

Backed by a trio led by stinging, swampy guitarist Rick Holmstrom and by her sister Yvonne and two other vocalists, Staples burns with the gospel fire, bluesy fervor and soulful funkiness that have made her a treasure for half a century.

At the start, she tells the enthusiastic audience that she hopes "to bring you some joy, some happiness, inspiration and some positive vibrations . . . to last you for maybe the next six months." This album will make those feelings last longer than that.

- Steve Klinge

Country/Roots

The Unreleased Recordings

(Time Life ****)

To call this a major historical find is an understatement. Fifty-seven years after they were recorded, and nearly three after his estate was ruled the rightful owner, these astonishing Hank Williams recordings are hitting the market in their original form for the first time.

Williams and his Drifting Cowboys cut this music in 1951 for their morning radio show on Nashville's WSM. Usually they performed live, but they had to prerecord shows that could air while they were on the road.

Remarkably clear and with no overdubs, these tracks offer a complete picture of Williams as he ranges from stark, despairing ballads to uplifting gospel rave-ups, using his own hits, numbers by others, and - most interesting - songs he never formally recorded. He offers spoken introductions in several places, and vigorous harmonies by his band members add to the energy level and live, spontaneous feel. In at least one instance Williams adds different lyrics to one of his older hits, 1949's "Mind Your Own Business," providing another hint of his turbulent home life: "If I get my head beat black and blue / That's my wife and my stove wood, too."

- Nick Cristiano

At Folsom Prison:
Legacy Edition

(Columbia/Legacy ****)

How many times can you expand a classic? In the case of this 1968 Johnny Cash landmark, at least twice. This three-disc set builds on the 1999 reissue by adding the complete second show from that January day and a DVD documentary.

The music remains a thrilling distillation of the Man in Black's timeless appeal. Backed by his Tennessee Three as well as Carl Perkins and June Carter (not yet his wife), Cash establishes an immediate rapport with the inmates: His empathy for them, and by extension all the downtrodden, is immediately apparent, but he also exudes a whiff of danger and rebellion himself. The result is an atmosphere crackling with energy.

The DVD includes interviews with children Rosanne Cash and John Carter Cash, Marty Stuart and Merle Haggard, and frames Cash's performance in the context of his career. Most touchingly, it also tells the sad story of Glen Sherley, the inmate whose song Cash sang that day at Folsom.

- N.C.

Jazz

The Standard

(Heads Up ***)

The vocalese group Take 6 taps so much star power here that the CD could be called

Take 14

.

George Benson sits in with voice and guitar on a natty take of the Nat King Cole classic "Straighten Up and Fly Right." Scatters Al Jarreau and Jon Hendricks join the sextet and trumpeter Till Bronner for a levitating approach to Miles Davis' "Seven Steps to Heaven."

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove appears with singer Shelea Frazier to spread some R&B fervor over the Gershwins' "Someone to Watch Over Me." Aaron Neville contributes his quivering pipes to "Do You Know What It Means to Miss Orleans?"

And even Ella Fitzgerald is brought back to life as the sextet sings around her virtual voice on her old breakout tune, "A Tisket A Tasket."

Take 6 by itself remains formidable, given its slinky and unexpected remake here of "Windmills of Your Mind." The closing "Grace," arranged by Quincy Jones, is a smooching slow dance.

- Karl Stark

Notes from the Village

(Anzic ***)

Reed player Anat Cohen continues to impress. Following up on last year's CDs,

Poetica

and

Noir

, the Israeli-born clarinetist and saxophonist, who trained at Boston's Berklee School of Music, is stellar at channeling emotion.

She's soloing harder with this quartet while keeping her compositions accessible.

Her tune "Until You're in Love Again" projects a poignant vibe that sticks in the memory, while "Washington Square Park" captures some of her wide musical interests.

"Lullaby for the Naive Ones" starts out almost gushy, but Cohen rescues it with a burning solo.

John Coltrane's "After the Rain" receives reverent treatment, while Ernesto Lecuona's classic "Siboney" enables Cohen to indulge her Cuban side.

Pianist Jason Lindner comes on too strong at times, though he's an able collaborator. Guitarist Gilad Hekselman makes three cameos while bassist Omer Avital and drummer Daniel Freedman round out this transcontinental band.

- K.S.

Classical

Evgeny Kissin, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis conducting

(EMI Classics, three discs, ***1/2)

Anton Kuerti, piano; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis conducting

(CBC, three discs, ***1/2)

Krystian Zimerman, Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting

(Deutsche Grammophon, two DVDs ***)

Friedrich Gulda, piano; Vienna Philharmonic, Horst Stein conducting

(Brilliant, three discs ***)

Arthur Schoonderwoerd, piano and conducting; Ensemble Cristofori

(Alpha ***1/2)

Though Evgeny Kissin seldom performs complete cycles, he does so here, and is one of the few who can now ask for and receive studio circumstances. While his previous Beethoven concerto outing under James Levine had so many ingredients that the recordings sometimes sounded incongruously spliced together, these performances have a similar plethora of diverse phrase readings but are more evenly integrated by his elegant passagework and commandingly clear tone. Colin Davis and Kissin might not seem to be like-minded collaborators, but the conductor finds duet opportunities between pianist and individual instruments that others miss.

The Anton Kuerti set has a new package but apparently dates from the 1980s, and, typical for this Vienna-born pianist, is full of deep, cultivated ideas, even if his "Emperor" reading is technically laborious. However, his

No. 4

is penetrating and profound, and the earlier concertos have a fiercenesss both appropriate and shocking in the best ways.

There's also a lot of that in the 1989 Krystian Zimerman/Leonard Bernstein performances of the last three concertos - maybe too much, as these great artists go to maniacal lengths to get everything from them, with rather relentless results. Zimerman's self-conducted outings with the first two actually wear better.

The late Friedrich Gulda has a cultlike following similar to Kuerti's, but these reissues from the '70s are perfectly solid if curiously unprovocative. Pianophiles, however, should know that he plays a magnificently distinctive instrument with a "ping" similar to a harpsichord but with a radiant, full-bodied sound behind it. I've never heard anything like it.

Same thing with the Alpha-label disc (which contains just

No. 3

and the piano transcription of the

Violin Concerto

), but that's the point of this radical Beethoven recording. The orchestra has a mere 19 players, and the pianos used here, all contemporaries of the pieces, represent missing links between harpsichord and fortepiano. Most shocking is

No. 3

, whose instrument has more harpsichord genes than fortepiano. To say it changes the way you hear the piece is an understatement. Imagine Beethoven's notes played without any modern notion of tonal weight - then triple it.

- David Patrick Stearns