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Pop On his fourth album, Philadelphia singer/songwriter Lee hits his personal best. He's also earned his highest-ever chart numbers and best sales week by debuting Mission Bell at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums and Digital Albums lists, plus the iTunes and Amazon albums charts. His sultry pop tune "Windows Are Rolled Down" stands at No. 9 on AAA radio.

Pop

Mission Bell

(Blue Note ***)

nolead ends On his fourth album, Philadelphia singer/songwriter Lee hits his personal best. He's also earned his highest-ever chart numbers and best sales week by debuting Mission Bell at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums and Digital Albums lists, plus the iTunes and Amazon albums charts. His sultry pop tune "Windows Are Rolled Down" stands at No. 9 on AAA radio.

As produced by darkly atmospheric alt-country maverick Joey Burns, with his band Calexico backing Lee (along with guests including Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson, and Iron & Wine's Sam Beam), Mission Bell finds the proper balance of bleak twang and soul-pop saunter. Once settled in, Lee sounds more comfortable than ever, applying his Al Green-

meets-Bill-Withers vocals to self-penned tunes such as the laid-back psych-anthem "Flower," the gospel groove "Jesus," and the baleful bossa of "Hello Again."

Lee's lyrics sound less ruminatively personal than usual. Maybe not blabbing about yourself sells records - who's to say?

- A.D. Amorosi

nolead begins Destroyer
nolead ends nolead begins Kaputt
nolead ends nolead begins (Merge **1/2)

nolead ends Cutting-edge music can lose its edge and go slack and dull. Airy nostalgia acts like M83 have been around for years. Ariel Pink is credited as the "godfather of chillwave" - but that will (or should) end once the world realizes that he taught indie how to soft-rock. Kaputt is the ninth solo album by Dan Bejar, a member of the band New Pornographers who uses the moniker Destroyer for his solo work. And it's slack stuff. The two minutes of dentist's-office flute setting up "Suicide Demo for Kara Walker" are a new low, as is the soprano sax in "Kaputt." Kaputt's ugly referents are so self-aware ("Why's everybody sing along when we built this city?" sings Bejar at one point) that the guitar solo in "Savage Night at the Opera" resembles longtime German synth-popsters Alphaville - probably intentionally. Oddly, the eyesore funk here renders some of the friendliest music under the Destroyer banner thus far. But Bejar's best songs can be found on New Pornographers albums.

- Dan Weiss

nolead begins Cut Copy
nolead ends nolead begins Zonoscope
nolead ends nolead begins (Modular ***)

nolead ends Australia's Cut Copy came into its own on 2008's In Ghost Colours, which spawned dance-floor pleasers such as "Lights and Music" and "Hearts on Fire." Zonoscope follows suit: It flows seamlessly like a club DJ set.

Like Hot Chip and Phoenix (or New Order and OMD before them), Cut Copy knows how to construct tracks that work as both visceral club pleasures and hook-ridden songs. At their best, on the bubbling "Take Me Over" or the blustery "This Is All We've Got," they perfectly balance both impulses. When they indulge their artier side, for the LCD Soundsystem facsimile "Sun God," or go for a straightforward house anthem, as on "Pharaohs & Pyramids," they're less personable. Zonoscope has songs to fill the dance floor, but it has some filler, too.

- Steve Klinge

nolead begins Todd Snider
nolead ends nolead begins The Storyteller
nolead ends nolead begins (Aimless ***1/2)

nolead ends Todd Snider refers to himself in song as a "tree-hugging, peace-loving, pot-smoking, porn-watching, lazy-ass hippie." In reality, however, he's one sharp dude - a troubadour who couches his smarts and heart in a shaggy, smart-aleck persona. He's also most in his element on stage, and that's where you find him on this two-disc offering, which is at least his third live set, following a 2003 album and a 2007 EP.

With The Storyteller, Snider is backed by a full band, Great American Taxi, which fleshes out his folk, rock, and blues. He focuses on his more recent material, showing that he's at the top of his game as both a writer and a performer. From the somberly reflective "Greencastle Blues" to the furiously rocking "The Devil You Know" and the rambling, righteously indignant "The Ballad of the Kingsmen," Snider remains a master at melding the personal and the political - making you laugh while he's making you think.

- Nick Cristiano

Blues

Even Things Up

(VizzTone/Little Dog ***)

nolead ends Pete Anderson is best known as the guitar-slinger and producer who brought the twang for Dwight Yoakam on the Hollywood Hillbilly's sleek, smart country albums from 1986 to 2003. But the Detroit-bred musician's first love was the blues, and that's where he returns for his latest solo album.

With Even Things Up, Anderson takes an approach similar to that of Jimmie Vaughan. In other words, with the exception of an acoustic country-blues number, he leans toward uptown R&B with a full band that prominently features organ and horns to play off his tastily succinct six-string work. Anderson's fluid and focused thrust is matched by his songwriting, whether he's spinning yarns such as "That's How Trouble Starts" or turning out atmospheric instrumentals such as "Wes' Side Blues."

Like Vaughan, Anderson is just a serviceable singer. He drives that point home himself by including two versions of "Still in Love." It's a killer ballad, but the version sung by the composer himself can't but pale in comparison to the bonus-track take delivered by all-world singer Bekka Bramlett.

- N.C.

Jazz

Bird Songs

(Blue Note ***)

nolead ends Tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano chases the Bird on these 11 cuts. This is Charlie Parker cut and pasted for the digital age, via the leader's unusual use of two drummers, Francisco Mela and Otis Brown III.

Sometimes a phrase gets repeated for emphasis, as on "Passport." A staple like "Moose the Mooche" gets a drunkenly slow treatment, while "Ko Ko," a trio with Lovano and his two drummers, seems to come out of a smoke-filled room, with the tune and tempo fragmented.

The session with bassist Esperanza Spalding and pianist James Weidman is a brainy one. "Blues Collage," a collection of three of Parker's blues-based tunes, is oddly contrapuntal, like a Bach fugue. Tunes tend to recede into private spaces, although "Yardbird Suite" at least shows some tragic dimension.

- Karl Stark

Classical

Jeremy Denk, piano

(Azica ***1/2)

nolead ends nolead begins Keyboard Concertos Nos. 1 and 5; English Suite No. 3 and others
nolead ends nolead begins Kammerorchester Staatskapelle Berlin, Simone Dinnerstein, piano
nolead ends nolead begins (Sony ****)

nolead ends nolead begins French Suites Nos. 1-6 plus Italian Concerto
nolead ends nolead begins Andras Schiff, piano
nolead ends nolead begins Euroarts, DVD, ***1/2)

nolead ends J.S. Bach has been winning popularity contests anew - partly because some of the best pianists, young and not-so-young, have ongoing devotion to the music. Andras Schiff is now a Bach elder statesman, and the newfound Beethovenian edge in his performances is indeed present here - even if, amid all his artistry, you could wish for a greater sense of discovery in his performances.

Jeremy Denk's Bach has lost some of the metallic edge of his Philadelphia performances in years past, but in its place is an unsentimental, intelligent ebullience that works much better. His interest in the music's structure sometimes means that the drama of certain passages - the opening of Partita No. 6, for example - is almost startlingly downplayed. Then you realize that drama is only the music's most superficial element.

Simone Dinnerstein's Sony Classical debut follows familiar patterns: A catchy title (A Strange Beauty) and high-fashion photos of the stylish pianist. Behind that, as ever, are high-integrity performances of Bach that have more authority than ever. As engaging as the concertos are, the best moments are in the English Suite No. 3, in which she digs deep into the musical substance and knows with etched-in-granite certainty exactly how each phrase should go.

- David Patrick Stearns