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Pop Like punk-blues trio Gossip, punk-folk-country quartet the Avett Brothers have been signed to Columbia by Rick Rubin, the Run-D.M.C., Johnny Cash, and Dixie Chicks producer who knows a thing or two about streamlining a band's sound in pursuit of a lar

Pop

I and Love and You

(Columbia ***)

nolead ends Like punk-blues trio Gossip, punk-folk-country quartet the Avett Brothers have been signed to Columbia by Rick Rubin, the Run-D.M.C., Johnny Cash, and Dixie Chicks producer who knows a thing or two about streamlining a band's sound in pursuit of a larger audience. That's what he does with the ever-earnest Avetts - fronted by brothers Seth and Scott, and backed by drummer Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon - though not to their detriment. True, some of the frantic punk edge of this, a terrific live band that's been barnstorming pretty much nonstop for the last decade, has been smoothed over. And the Avetts do have a tendency toward the unabashedly corny, as when they fret over the difficulty in saying out loud the three words in the title track. But the baker's dozen of mostly piano-based ballads - with a few notable exceptions, such as the giddily jaunty "Kick Drum Heart" - convey a genuine (and genuinely tuneful) sad-eyed dignity, as the North Carolina band-on-the-rise evokes The Band in its attempt to carve out a safe haven from the "darkness all around us," as Scott Avett put it in the tender, mandolin-flecked "January Wedding."

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins The xx
nolead ends nolead begins xx
nolead ends nolead begins (Young Turks ***)

nolead ends This U.K. quartet, just of drinking age, has debuted to swells of hype with music so spare it's barely possible to tell what four people do on their tracks. Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim spar too cleanly for their own good, evoking the Kills, Tricky and Martina Topley-Bird, Young Marble Giants, and PJ Harvey's Uh Huh Her on their overly palm-muted duets, yet they are far less engaged or synced with each other than any of those mentioned. They don't sound like they're singing to, or even at, each other at all. This unrelenting detachment throughout xx is covered up with pools of tasteful reverb and a penchant for hooks more reliable than catchy. It feels like there should be a service charge.

Nevertheless, the oddness and improbability of this group have imbued them with such mystique I keep listening anyway, for secret new chord changes among the plentiful spaces and resting spots; for sexy clues in the lyrics, ominous guitar tones wafting over the landscape, subtle hooks that find their way despite their somewhat incomplete construction. Certain key cuts help keep up the pretense that there's more there: the unexpected gallop trick of "Basic Space" (neutered somewhat by its undynamic remix), the Sleater-Kinney-style riff on "Crystalised," wherein no light escapes. Without doubt, xx leaves you wanting more. It just takes a while to figure out if that's in the bad way or not. I've played it often to make up my mind, which should be a testament to its time-worn-and-worn-again captivation technique: Less and less is more and more.

- Dan Weiss

nolead begins Forro in the Dark
nolead ends nolead begins Light a Candle
nolead ends nolead begins (Nat Geo **1/2)

nolead ends NYC's Forro in the Dark update and recontextualize the northeastern Brazilian music that accompanies the dance the forro. In the hands of these four Brazilian transplants, it's a frantic, zippy collision of percussion, flute, and electric guitar with an occasional sax solo and lyrics in Portuguese and English. It's polyrhythmic street-party music with a downtown edge, akin to Marc Ribot's Los Cubanos Postizos.

Light a Candle, the sequel to Forro's 2006 strong debut, Bonfires of São João, contains its share of treats, especially the honking R&B of "Perro Loco" and the racing flute-guitar duels in two forro classics, "Forro de Dois Amigos" and "Saudades de Manezinho Araujo." But it's marred by too much intrusive jokiness: The ska-flavored "Nonsensical," the self-aggrandizing "Better Than You," and the talky narrative "Silence Is Golden" (with the Brazilian Girls' Sabina Sciubba) diminish the fun with sophomoric humor. Forro is best live, though, which they'll be on Wednesday at World Cafe Live.

- Steve Klinge

nolead begins Nick Cave
nolead ends nolead begins The Death of Bunny Munro
nolead ends nolead begins Audiobook with soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

(Macmillan Audio ***1/2)

nolead ends nolead begins Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
nolead ends nolead begins White Lunar
nolead ends nolead begins (Mute ***)

nolead ends Away from his Bad Seeds, Nick Cave's been moonlighting in remarkable ways. His sexed-up Grinderman and screenplay for The Proposition were tart and totemic - as is his new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro. But soundtrack music with Seeds violinist Warren Ellis has proved to be Cave's most fascinating sideline, what with the duo's subtle, emotional tones.

White Lunar's compilation of evocative elegies for flicks such as The Assassination of Jesse James and the forthcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road shifts effortlessly from pensive to thrilling. You can see the lonely prairies of the big-screen dramas and sense the pains that drove each character's vicious actions - even when the pair stick to ominously sparse piano, bass, and violin.

The Bunny audiobook is a treat - seven CDs of Cave speaking with a stately brimstone accent. Yet for all the scratching violins, and quiet industrial whirs in the background, Ellis and Cave manage moments of pastoral orchestration so lovely and lonesome you could cry.

- A.D. Amorosi

Country/Blues

Geoff Muldaur and
the Texas Sheiks

(Tradition & Moderne ***1/2)

nolead ends nolead begins Maria Muldaur
nolead ends nolead begins Maria Muldaur and Her Garden of Joy
nolead ends nolead begins (Stony Plain ***1/2)

nolead ends What a coincidence: These ex-spouses, who married while playing in the Jim Kweskin Jug Band in the '60s, have separately but simultaneously returned to that jug-band past. And you can't go wrong with either of these delightful discs.

There are some connections: Fiddler Suzy Thompson is prominent on both sets. Geoff Muldaur brings in Kweskin to sing on three cuts, while Maria Muldaur delivers a Kweskin composition. Both albums are long on traditional material, although Maria also includes two top-flight new originals by Dan Hicks, another old-time-music aficionado, who also duets with her on one track.

Maria Muldaur subtitles her album "Good Time Music for Hard Times," and you can say the same for the Texas Sheiks' offering. The Sheiks, including steel whiz Cindy Cashdollar and guitarist/mandolinist Stephen Bruton (who has since died), and Maria Muldaur's ensemble, which features John Sebastian, Taj Mahal, and David Grisman, nimbly navigate the music's amalgam of folk, blues, swing, and jazz.

But you also get reminders of the hard times. With the Sheiks' version of "The World Is Going Wrong" and Skip James' harrowing "Hard Time Killin' Floor," and Maria's take on such pointed fare as "Bank Failure Blues" and "The Panic Is On," the Muldaurs show just how much this resilient old music speaks to the here and now.

- Nick Cristiano

nolead begins Guy Clark
nolead ends nolead begins Somedays the Song Writes You
nolead ends nolead begins (Dualtone ***)

nolead ends "You know it's tough out there/ A good muse is hard to find/ Livin' one word to the next/ One line at a time," Guy Clark observes in "Hemingway's Whiskey." That's no doubt true, but this craggy Nashville-by-way-of-Texas troubadour has been making it look pretty effortless for decades. Somedays the Song Writes You - the title track also addresses the creative process - is another showcase for Clark's unassuming craftsmanship and down-home profundity. Like that aforementioned whiskey, he goes down easy, but invariably packs a kick.

- N.C.

Jazz

Songs From the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey

(Concord Records ***)

nolead ends Pianist Ramsey Lewis, the host of PBS's Legends of Jazz, has been getting out a lot lately. The Chicago-based cat, who had hits in the 1960s with such tunes as "The 'In' Crowd," here presents the work he composed for the Joffrey Ballet and the improvising strings known as the Turtle Island Quartet.

Ramsey, 74, works through eight tunes with his trio - which also includes drummer Leon Joyce and bassist Larry Gray - and plays four other solo pieces.

The results are often pretty. "Clouds in Reverie," which animated the Joffrey troupe, is one gorgeous solo effort. "Touching, Feeling, Knowing" is based on a South African folk song, while "The Way She Smiles" gets energized by a high-stepping New Orleans lilt. "Conversation," for the Turtle Island folks, is handsome and streaked with melancholy, while "Rendezvous" enables Lewis to create a wide-ranging solo. It's good to hear Lewis working beyond his pop inclinations. The tunes sprawl at times and could have used some editing. Joyce relies on a cymbal-heavy sound that can irritate. Yet overall the set shows unexpected growth from a seasoned fellow.

- Karl Stark

nolead begins Zap Mama
nolead ends nolead begins ReCreation
nolead ends nolead begins (Heads Up **1/2)

nolead ends Zap Mama, the onetime all-woman a cappella group founded by Zaire native Marie Daulne, looks both forward and backward on their eighth major release. Daulne, who emerged in the early 1990s, pays tribute to her old sound by recalling two members of her original a cappella troup, Sylvie Nawasadio and Sabine Kabongo, for a funky and sizzling ditty called "Singing Sisters."

Mostly, though, the session goes off in a hushed, heavily produced Afro-pop direction with a splash of world influences. "Hello to Mama" takes off in a salsalike way, while "The Way You Are," featuring the mercurial Philly singer Bilal Sayeed Oliver, goes deep into a sensual vein.

Much of the set has a shimmering, groovelike quality. "African Diamond," with singer Me'Shell NdegeOcello, plays on the continent's mystery with a tune that steadily builds to a climax. French weaves in and out, with the old pop song "Paroles Paroles (Words Words)" being a highlight.

- K.S.

Classical

Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle conducting

(EMI, three discs, ***)

nolead ends nolead begins Symphony No. 1 plus Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht
nolead ends nolead begins Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conducting
nolead ends nolead begins (Testament, ****)

nolead ends nolead begins Symphony No. 3 plus choral works
nolead ends nolead begins Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, Monteverdi Choir, John Eliot Gardiner conducting
nolead ends nolead begins (Soli Deo Gloria ***1/2)

nolead ends nolead begins Symphony No. 4 plus Haydn Variations
nolead ends nolead begins Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, Christoph Eschenbach conducting
nolead ends nolead begins (Hanssler Classics ***1/2)

nolead ends Much as in his Beethoven symphony recordings, Simon Rattle sounds somewhat inhibited and under-the-gun on this new, eagerly awaited Brahms set. Always solid, these performances only intermittently stand in the company of the better Brahms recordings out there, recent ones included. The first and fourth are particularly reticent, as if he were trying to make most of his interpretive points with instrumental color, a limiting way to go. The second and third symphonies are the best, full of details and counterpoint missed by other conductors, sometimes because they aren't that important. Most strange are the ensemble lapses and routine incidental solos. This is the Berlin Philharmonic, right? It seems Rattle does better work away from home (Philadelphia in particular) these days.

Gardiner's latest Brahms volume on historically informed instruments gives an unlacquered cast to the music: Stripped bare of extraneous sound, portamento-style phrasing arises naturally from the vibratoless textures. It's a worthy experiment - and not damning Gardiner with faint praise to say that the six choral works included on the disc justify the price. Both music and performances are that good.

The Karajan and Eschenbach recordings are live one-off postcards of special occasions. Though slow to start, Eschenbach's Symphony No. 4 is full of original, emotionally gripping touches fused with go-for-broke intensity and all the authority Rattle oddly lacks. The must-hear disc of the bunch, however, is Karajan's 1988 live London performance. Though the conductor's health was in shambles, he somehow produced perhaps his best heart-in-mouth Brahms performance - with a Verklarte Nacht that's pretty great, too. One has to listen past the somewhat inadequate recording quality, though not much.

- David Patrick Stearns

nolead begins Quincy Porter
Complete Viola Works
nolead ends nolead begins Eliesha Nelson, viola; Douglas Rioth, harp; John McLaughlin Williams, piano, harpsichord, violin and conductor of the Northwest Symphonia
nolead ends nolead begins (Dorian ***1/2)

nolead ends Every so often, the world seems on the verge of rediscovering American composer Quincy Porter (1897-1966) thanks to some fine new recording of his music. And then, nothing. Now, Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson has his collected works for her instrument (written between 1930 and 1957) on a single disc headed by the 1948 Concerto for Viola and Orchestra and filled out with chamber works that are sometimes modest but never minor.

The academe-based composer was among the more retiring figures of his generation, and musically speaking, the most introspective. While Aaron Copland evoked emotional states through musical landscape painting, Porter had a deeper, more ambiguous sense of fantasy. Outside influences such as folk music and jazz never feel borrowed or appropriated, but integrated into a personal, slightly aloof sound world that's perfectly congenial but never frankly ingratiating.

Performances are mostly first rate: Nelson has a flexibility and specificity of expression that elude all but the best practitioners of her instrument. Her sympathy for the music is complete. But recordings of repertoire like this must be made with great economy if they're going to be made at all, and this one is aided by the multitasking pianist/ harpsichordist/violinist/ conductor John McLaughlin Williams, who sounds stretched thin only in the Duo for Violin and Viola.

- D.P.S.