Meshell Ndegeocello has never been one to make things easy, either for herself or her listeners, and that dynamic applies to her seventh album. The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams opens on a puzzling note with “Haditha”, 90 seconds of end-times speechifying by Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf (a not-very-interesting spiel few [...]

Four years after releasing their best album, the Weakerthans enjoy the liberty of having nothing to prove and then going ahead and proving it anyway. The band goes for melodically sympathetic rock arrangements, with some guitar crunch and moog whirr. A fine comic miniaturist, frontman John K. Samson continues to write brainy but beautiful homages [...]

Young Lafayette Cajun bands are in the midst of the Great March Backward, looking to their roots for inspiration. When the Red Stick Ramblers were on Memphis International Records, they seemed to suppress those roots, focusing more on western swing, hot jazz and other fiddle-based dance music — all of which they’re very good at. [...]

Although the out-of-towners acquit themselves well enough on Goin’ Home: A Tribute To Fats Domino, the collection really gets cooking when Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste begins “I’m Gonna Be A Wheel Someday” with a drum pattern that threatens to run off the road like a New Orleans taxi driver high on bennies and beignets. Of [...]

As their three studio discs have demonstrated, the combination of Chip Taylor’s earthy vocals and from-the-heart compositions plus Carrie Rodriguez’s folksy Texas twang and fiery violin can produce magic. Because they project strong, appealing personalities and interact so well, you’d expect a concert album to be a particular treat. You’ll indeed find treats on this [...]

Ian Moore has not let up on the pop complexity of his arrangements; deft touches by skilled players highlight every track of To Be Loved, his sixth studio album. The depth of his songs’ rock foundation is as strong as ever, and he hasn’t taken it any easier on the melodic drama. But Moore seems, [...]

Arkansas is one of the last imaginary places in our monoculture, for few of us — save the unlucky supplicant visiting Bentonville — have much reason actually to visit there. Jim Mize, a fiftysomething Farm Bureau claims agent, lives in Little Rock. Hillstomp, who are somewhat younger and come from the fecund woods of Portland, [...]

This trio’s Lost John Dean was one of 2006′s finest releases, a spare, wonderfully constructed collection of original numbers and one traditional tune. A friend of mine who heard the album referred to their jagged, rough-hewn primitivism as “snake music,” which strikes me as an apt term. The pattern here is much as before: Kieran [...]

However well intended, benefit CDs usually suffer from spotty material and a general lack of cohesiveness. This multi-artist release, made in conjunction with the Boston-based nonprofit organization that shares its name, is a glowing exception. Featuring musicians of many stripes — Keb’ Mo’, Bruce Springsteen, Buffalo Tom, and Madeleine Peyroux, to name a few — [...]

Because he writes mostly character-driven songs, it’s difficult to know just how much Mark Knopfler imbues a painter who lusts after more vivid colors in “Let It All Go” with his own attitudes and attributes. Yet it’s easy to read into the song’s bitter lyrics a distaste for his own profession, or rather what it [...]