Pop

"Man, we make our own movies," Craig Finn sings in "Slapped Actress," the nod to filmmaker John Cassavetes that comes just before the house lights go on at the close of Stay Positive, the fourth album by the Brooklyn-based bar band par excellence. Cassavetes (and his wife, Gena Rowlands) aren't the only cultural touchstones in Finn's often ungainly, always impassioned stream of consciousness. He name-drops hard-core punk bands Youth of Today and 7 Seconds (who "taught me some of life's most valuable lessons"), employs Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis on banjo on "Both Crosses," and proves himself fearlessly unhip in referencing Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young."

The songs are boisterous, full-up with Tad Kubler's bashed-out power chords, pumping piano, and, this time out, some surprising touches like the harpsichord on "Joke About Jamaica." But more often than not, the characters are in trouble, whether it's the serious business going on in a police interrogation room in the rousing "Sequestered in Memphis" or the Midwestern townies acknowledging to themselves that the high point of "Constructive Summer" isn't going to amount to more than climbing to the top of the water tower to "get hammered." The early Springsteen comparisons still hold, but the '70s Catholic rock act the Hold Steady most resemble is Basketball Diaries poet-rocker Jim Carroll, who like Finn, couldn't really sing, but sure had a lot of stories to tell.

- Dan DeLuca

G-Unit
T.O.S.: Terminate On Sight
(Interscope ***)

Poor 50 Cent hasn't seemed tough for ages. He lost that race with Kanye West to see whose album sold the most, his ex-girlfriend sued him, and his mansion burned down. I don't even drink his Vitamin Water anymore.

But the worst thing is the disintegration of his rap outfit G-Unit due to a feud with Young Buck, its wryest ex-member. Buck left after this record was finished, so there are prime Buck rhymes and frisky flows in the slinky "I Like the Way She Do It" and the contagious "Rider, Pt. 2."

Buck's laments ("Even if 50 drop me/I still wouldn't sign") are dedicated to their boss in the face of inevitable downsizing. But by the time Buck gets to "No Days Off," he's no more than a rumor.

Rather than fold, G-Unit's 50, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo take to the streets with handsome reassurance before them and jittering hip-hop behind them. The Yayo-led "T.O.S." and the hard dance-hall of "Let it Go" are stunners. And 50? He can still send shivers with his cold flow and cocksure raps when he wants to. And though T.O.S. is no classic, it'll do till the real deal comes along.

- A.D. Amorosi

CSS
Donkey
(Sub Pop ***1/2)

More refined but no less sassy and party-starting than their giddy 2006 debut, Cansei de Ser Sexy, CSS' sophomore showing ought to earn the patchy Brazilian troupe a bit more respect. The '80s-inspired swoon of "Rat Is Dead (Rage)" is a first-spin winner, whereas buzzing numbers like "How I Became Paranoid" and "Believe Achieve" will make sure the dance floor doesn't feel neglected. These English-singing boys and girls have struck upon the reliable formula of spiking rubbery electro-pop with pointed indie-rock guitar hooks and playful sing-alongs. It's to their considerable credit that the end product plays like inspiration and not architecture, even if there's nothing here as naughty as the last album's "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex," which so memorably lit up an iPod commercial.

- Doug Wallen

Ace Young
Ace Young
(Pazzo Music *1/2)

You might recall Young as a finalist on Season Five of American Idol, won by dark horse Taylor Hicks in what may have been the show's best year talent-wise. Then again, you might not remember him at all.

Waiting two years to put out your debut album is not exactly striking while the iron is hot. After listening to this overheated, derivative collection, it's hard to figure out what took so long.

The CD is full of Michael Jackson-influenced jams like "Addicted," "The Letter," and "Where Will You Go" that shoot for funky but end up clunky. Apparently Young's ambition is to be the next JC Chasez.

The scattered ballads, like "You Redeem Me" and "The Girl That Got Away," are better-written, but they don't do much for Young's voice, which is sweet but bland and resorts too much to a thin falsetto.

The collection has the scorched feel of a soap-opera actor trying to launch a singing career. Maybe that's fitting.

- David Hiltbrand

Country/Roots

One of the leading lights of the New Traditionalism that flourished in the late '80s, Randy Travis has in recent years focused on Christian recordings (and fine ones at that). This is his first straight-up country album in eight years.

Around the Bend bears all the trademarks of classic Travis, even if the material is uneven. The old-soul baritone that lends heft to the sobering "You Didn't Have a Good Time," however, is equally at home with the easy swing of a countrified reworking of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." The timeless voice is again framed by classy, uncluttered arrangements, and numbers such as the gospel-inflected title track and the first single, "Faith in You," point up the short distance between Travis' country and Christian works.

- Nick Cristiano

Various Artists
Moneyland
(McCoury Music ***1/2)

Bluegrass great Del McCoury is the man behind this timely concept album about what he calls "Forgotten America" - the small towns and rural areas that are withering because of the greed and "corrupt neglect" of the powers that be.

The Del McCoury Band contributes three new recordings, including the stinging title song and, on a lighter note, the Beatles' "When I'm 64." They are surrounded by on-topic contributions from, among others, Patty Loveless, Merle Haggard and Marty Stuart, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, and Bruce Hornsby and the Fairfield Four. Bookended by two of FDR's Depression-era "Fireside Chats," it's a sharply focused set that mixes anger and pathos, and the fact that it's decidedly nonpartisan makes it all the more powerful.

- N.C.

Jazz

Cuban and Jewish cultures seem to fit in almost anywhere, and for decades they coexisted on that most musical of islands. Yet the "musical mash-up" of Jewish and Cuban music that emerges on this session is unexpected and exhilarating.

Toronto-based trumpeter David Buchbinder, who was born and raised in the Midwest (Kansas City and St. Louis), joins with Cuban emigre pianist Hilario Duran to make up one rum-soaked matzo of a recording.

Slinky Cuban rhythms undergird tragic klezmer keenings. The players strut and schvitz as if this melding were an established genre that might have formed in Spain, where both cultures have roots. And every tune seems to demand some dancing, though the exact steps may vary by locale and inclination.

Buchbinder's "Cadiz" is one magisterial ditty that turns into a serious Sephardic boogie, while Duran's "Rhumba Judia" recalls the mighty Havana orchestras of old.

This is no easy-listening package of I Love Lucy meets Fiddler on the Roof. It's cacophonous and lusty. And the soloing from reedman/flutist Quinsin Nachoff and violinist Aleksander Gajic is high-realm jazz. So, it's got some difficulty - but that's nothing to kvetch about in your mojito.

- Karl Stark

Laszlo Gardony
Dig Deep
(Sunnyside ***)

As professor of piano at the Berklee College of Music, Laszlo Gardony has long favored unusual chords and dense structures that impress other musicians, though perhaps not lesser-trained civilians.

Here, the classically trained pianist takes what for him is a populist turn. The unusual meters are still with us, but the Hungarian-born Gardony and his trio play the people's music, including gospel, funk and rock.

The results of this makeover are intriguing, even though it sounds at times like the sonic equivalent of a suit that doesn't quite fit.

Working with drummer Yoron Israel and bassist John Lockwood, Gardony is keen to draw on the hard-bop vibe, as on the opener, "In Transit." Then "Wide Wake" is a pop-inflected gusher that works over the melody with a Hallmark card's earnestness, and the more soulful "Rhymes" gets similar treatment.

"Wide Awake" and "Out on Top" at least sound like decent Eddie Harris tunes with a bit of South African lilt thrown in, while "Heavy" is a pounder of a performance.

Gardony never says in a few notes what he can say in many. But at least here he's walked out of the ivory tower and ventured into the street.

- K.S.

Classical

Though best known for his opera Flight, British composer Jonathan Dove emerges even more impressively in this first recording of his 1994 Siren Song. The story concerns a young British navy man whose pen-pal relationship with a woman turns romantic - though the woman turns out to be a male scam artist. Though his operas share a similar musical language with Philip Glass, Dove is less than profound but more dramatically flexible with volatile, lyrical, emotionally involving vocal lines.

Unlike many modern composers who micromanage every flicker of feeling, Dove sets up an expansive sonic environment suggesting the watery distance between the sailor and his false girlfriend, the latter represented by an ethereal but entrancing siren song sung by soprano. It may not be deep, but it's extremely effective and has such dramatic immediacy that this recording is very likely to spur productions at legit theaters as well as opera companies.

- David Patrick Stearns

Simon Rattle
Berlin Philharmonic
Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Symphony in C, Symphony in Three Movements.
(EMI, ***1/2)

Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Borodin's Symphony No. 2, and Polovetsian Dances
(EMI, ***)

In his Mussorgsky/Borodin disc, Simon Rattle seems to be doing his laudable duty for EMI by recording popular repertoire, and maybe doing it too well: Under Rattle, Mussorgsky's grand finale tries to be the grandest performance of all, and the treatment is almost more than the music can take.

Elsewhere, performances are typically bright-eyed Rattle, probably in the top 25 percent of the huge Mussorgsky/Pictures discography, one hopes selling enough to support less mainstream activities that are closer to Rattle's heart. This Stravinsky disc shows signs of being one of them.

Rattle goes against the composer's own performance approach with a red-blooded, frankly dramatic reading of Symphony of Psalms. He also gives such rhythmic vitality to Symphony in Three Movements - in one of the best-ever performances - that it takes on a hindsight kinship with later Leonard Bernstein works, even West Side Story.

If Symphony in C is the only major Stravinsky work you've never warmed up to, I'm with you. But in this era of selective downloading, that need not be a barrier to acquiring the other two symphonies (of sorts).

- D.P.S.