Pop

Enlisting four producers for this fourth album, New York singer/songwriter/

pianist Regina Spektor remains a mighty iconoclast, her expressively flighty singing and offbeat lyrics in full effect from the jaunty start of "The Calculation." She goes on to wrangle vocal harmonies from Jeff Lynne on several tracks, approximate a dolphin on "The Folding Chair," sing an ode to "the most human color" on the organ-humming "Blue Lips," and sing through a vocoder alongside Reggie Watts' beat-boxing on "Dance Anthems of the '80s," which fittingly evolves into dreamy '80s-style pop. There's an apocalyptic vibe to the creepy "Machine," all insistent keys and splintered percussion, and on "The Wallet," Spektor excitedly presents more tiny snapshots of daily life that graduate from mundane to profound in her able, fearless hands.

- Doug Wallen

Wilco
Wilco (The Album)
(Nonesuch ***)

Wilco's seventh studio album is the Jeff Tweedy-led Chicago alt-rock band's second straight non-experimental outing. Following 2007's softly straightforward Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) kicks off with the jaunty fan thank-you "Wilco (The Song)" - "Wilco will love you, baby," the raspy-as-ever Tweedy sings - and settles into a dependable, careworn comfort zone. Occasionally, a ruckus is raised, as on the throbbing keyboard blast "Bull Black Nova," in which avant ax man Nels Cline comes closest to really cutting loose. Otherwise, the eponymous set concerns itself less with noisy envelope-pushing, a la 2004's A Ghost Is Born, than with delivering rock-solid tunesmithery about life's little ups and downs. "You and I," a duet with Feist, is a lovely love song that's mildly underwhelming considering its indie-star-power quotient. And "You Never Know," is a "My Sweet Lord"-referencing cool breeze whose "I don't care anymore" hook finds Tweedy insisting he's put the anxiety that riddled earlier Wilco efforts behind him.

That sense of calm makes Wilco (The Album) less thrilling, but still satisfying, and Wilco the Band ripe for reinvention, next time around.

- Dan DeLuca

Cam'ron
Crime Pays
(Asylum ***)

This is Cam'ron circa 2009: the Harlem-based MC at his raw-knuckled best shifting his concerns from the penthouse to the pavements without missing a step.

Lest you think he's headed into the recession-era poorhouse without a fight, think again. Cam'ron likes his coupon-cutting topicality touched by the same liquor-and-drugs Iggy Pop sang of on "Lust for Life."

As the big beat hits and its melody swells, "Get It in Ohio" lets Cam play in the fields of landlords, launderers, "blue pills and Grey Goose" with his flow at its loosest. The song stays the thing on the powerfully contagious "My Job," with its piano-driven pulse pushing Cam's Office Space-like dismay to the max. Every disgusted Everyman and Everywoman will be singing "My Job" this summer. And while there are delicious examples of Cam's usual street- swaggering gamesmanship (a foul "Where I Know You From"), cocksureness ("Who"), and misanthropic romanticism ("Cookies-N-Apple Juice"), his blue-collar approach to rap, rhythm, and melody finds him at his fighting best.

- A.D. Amorosi

Jonas Brothers
Lines, Vines and Trying Times
(Disney *1/2)

At least, the teen idols get points for being ambitious. They also get docked for being overly so.

Right from the start ("World War III", loaded with big-crunch guitars and a punchy horn section), the production dwarfs the Jersey boys' callow songwriting and singing.

"Paranoid" sounds like a kiddie Billy Squier, but that musical posturing is still preferable to the Shania Twain-like "What Did I Do to Your Heart?"

The brothers sound most at home (and most impressive) on the more unadorned ballads like "Black Keys" and "Turn Right."

But first you have to get past "Before the Storm," which features a quavery- voiced Miley Cyrus. (Is she imitating Dolly Parton?)

For the most part Lines, Vines and Trying Times is an amorphous mess. Kind of like the CD's pretentious title.

- David Hiltbrand

Country/Roots

Brad Paisley's new album seems perfectly timed for summer. With 15 songs cowritten by the country superstar himself, American Saturday Night is a sunny showcase for his clean-cut charm and crowd-pleasing songcraft, while the many twang-fired instrumental passages that pepper the songs allow the West Virginia native to display his considerable guitar prowess without seeming self-indulgent.

If Paisley relies a little too heavily on the clever and the cute, he shows again that he's capable of more, although you'd still like to see someone of his talents used to dig a little deeper. The first single, "Then," is a run-of-the-mill love ballad, but "Everybody's Here" and "Oh Yeah, She's Gone" effectively let some darkness in, and "No" offers a blunt life lesson. Then there's "Welcome to the Future." It's a series of observations about how times change that seems to be Paisley at his most trite and innocuous - until he gets to the last verse and starts singing about a burning cross on a lawn and Martin Luther King. Even with a black president in the White House, that's pretty gutsy for a country boy.

- Nick Cristiano

Daryle Singletary
Rockin' in the Country
(E1 Music ***)

The title of Daryle Singletary's new album is a bit misleading. The title song, which leads off the album, and the finale (before the bonus cut) do, indeed, rock the country. The tracks in between do not.

That's perfectly fine. Singletary is a steadfast neotraditionalist with a classic country baritone, and he excels as a balladeer. Here he's got the right accompaniment and a lot of solid material to work with - "Going Through Hell (With You Again)," "If I Ever Get Her Back," "She's a Woman." And when he gets hold of a real killer - "How Can I Believe You (When You'll Be Leaving Me"), the dead-man-talking "She Sure Looks Good in Black" - well, country doesn't get much better.

- N.C.

Jazz

It was the 1979 hit "Street Life" that brought singer Randy Crawford together with the Crusaders and their pianist, Joe Sample.

Crawford and Sample reunited first in 2006 with the jazz crossover CD Feeling Good. On this CD, she sounds more like a jazz singer, though there's still a healthy bit of crossover - from blues to gospel to pop - as one might expect from Sample and producer Tommy LiPuma.

Crawford is a bit of a mystery. She's got solid chops and the ability to convey emotion, but hasn't broken through.

This set doesn't solve that problem, but it shows Crawford and Sample in accessible form.

Working here with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Steve Gadd - as on the 2006 set - she maneuvers through "Every Day I Have the Blues" like a jazz chanteuse. She shows some gospel earnestness on "Respect Yourself," which gets maddeningly repetitive by the end, and squeezes some folky soul from Sarah McLachlan's "Angel."

Sample is, as always, a versatile collaborator. The title track, a soulful remake of an Edith Piaf-associated tune, makes for a gentle encounter.

- Karl Stark

Phil Woods
The Children's Suite
(Jazz Media ***)

Saxophonist and composer Phil Woods has tried since the early 1960s to get the rights to put A.A. Milne's verses in a jazz setting. He finally succeeds here, and the results, with a narrator, two singers, and an 18-piece orchestra, are fun and even uplifting.

Woods, who cofounded the Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts in northeastern Pennsylvania, taps players who have played there over the years or gone to one of his camps. Singer Bob Dorough delivers some slinkiness on "Pinkle Purr," while Vickie Doney sings Christopher Robin's words in a fresh fashion.

The charts are done in a boppish way, and Woods' alto still sears after all these years. The cutesy singing gets overdone, but Milne fans ought to appreciate this unusual tribute.

- K.S.

Classical

Symphony No. 5
Philharmonia Orchestra, Benjamin Zander conducting
(Telarc ***1/2)

Symphony No. 5
Orchestre de Champs-Elysees, Philippe Herreweghe conducting
(Harmonia Mundi ***1/2)

Symphony No. 7
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, Roger Norrington conducting
(Hanssler ****)

This notable spate of Bruckner recordings comes from unlikely sources, conductorwise. None shares anything close to the composer's Austrian or even Germanic identity, but with Kent Nagano and Roger Norrington, they set unconventional new standards for their respective works.

Nagano has made distinguished Bruckner recordings, but this one uses the very first 1874 version of the Symphony No. 4. The entire scherzo was subsequently rewritten; reportedly, not a single bar went unchanged. But never does this version feel like a mere warm-up for something more definitive; it's simply a different point on a long symphonic journey. Unlike many outings with early versions of Bruckner symphonies, this one is played as if it's the final version, and by one of Europe's great orchestras.

Not all of Norrington's adventures in original performance practice go beyond the interesting-

experiment stage. But this Bruckner 7th radically and convincingly recasts the symphony in a smaller, swifter sound envelope that's anything but portentous, has some exhilarating accelerandos, and in moments of undeniable spiritual revelation, blazes with the best of them. His Stuttgart orchestra isn't great but more than does the job (a considerable achievement when a standard work is so completely rethought).

Next to these recordings, even revisionist conductors such as Benjamin Zander and Philippe Herreweghe seem a bit tame. Herreweghe's must be heard if only because it takes a harder line than Norrington on the use of period instruments, resulting in many welcome surprises in terms of chord voicing and orchestral texture. Zander's set includes a bonus CD with the conductor's explication of the symphony and its parallels with classic cathedral structure (even including diagrams in the booklet). That, too, must be heard, and the performance is a good, solid basic-library reading of the sprawling score.

- David Patrick Stearns