Spins

Randy Newman

Harps And Angels

Label: Nonesuch

If you like: Wry social observation

Song to download: "A Piece of the Pie"

Randy Newman can do saccharine and he can do sour. At his best, though, his songs deliver complex flavors, with a pungent, searching ambivalence. Harps and Angels, his first album of new songs since Bad Love in 1999, presents a mess of conflicting feelings and motives.

It is intermittently brilliant, occasionally belligerent, and presents a vision of American identity as sprawling and ultimately as confused as the country itself.

Politics looms large, as has been the case for Newman since the Vietnam era. "Laugh and Be Happy" is a gaudy high-stepper for illegal immigrants, while "A Piece of the Pie" is a bitter lament for the increasingly fantastical American Dream. The symphonic bigness of the arrangements -- fanfares, oompahs, stentorian background vocals -- underscores the earnestness and the wryness.

Elsewhere Harps and Angels, which was produced by Mitchell Froom and Lenny Waronker, provides Newman's unreliable narrators with less obviously bombastic musical settings. The songs dip into Dixieland, country and, in the case of a satirically bigoted tune called "Korean Parents," a flash of Orientalism. At times Newman seems stifled by all the fuss, eager to clear the room of everything but his piano, so it's no coincidence that the orchestra lies low on the album's most earnest songs -- "Losing You" and "Feels Like Home." These aren't the album's funniest or most clever songs, nor are the truest to his basic temperament, but they are the ones we'll still be hearing years from now.

Noel Gourdin

After My Time

Label: Epic

If You Like: Musiq

Song to download: "The River"

At 26, Noel Gourdin is already sounding old, his singing more like that of Sam Cooke than R. Kelly. His debut CD, After My Time, is chockfull of that influence.

His hit single, "The River," merges old-time spiritual and old-school soul as Gourdin sings of a painful past and the need to escape, only to find the woman left behind calling him back.

The album, though spiced with hip-hop, has an old-fashioned feel. His lyrics are free of the over-the-top sex talk common to modern R&B. Gourdin instead sings about the spiritual and physical dimensions of love, the hurt that comes from mistakes, the vulnerability of opening one's heart.

Love is the theme, for his girl, his family and his community. It all sounds almost new, but it isn't, and that's the problem. Too many times he falls into cliche and ends up sounding like every other neo-soul singer. Gourdin hasn't found his voice to distinguish him from other similar singers.

Here's hoping this is a taste of what's to come.

The Avett Brothers

The Second Gleam

Label: Ramseur Records

If you like: The Avett Brothers, class songwriter

Song to download: "Murder in the City"

The Avett Brothers from Concord built a national fan base through energetic live shows filled with songs rooted in bluegrass that integrated elements of punk and pop.

The buzz grew so loud that it was easy to overlook the superior songwriting of brothers Scott and Seth Avett. That's what makes The Second Gleam, a six-song companion EP to The Gleam (2006), so important. The disc, recorded in Winston-Salem by Doug Williams, is the Avett Brothers stripped to their front-porch essence -- just the brothers, minimal acoustic instrumentation and narrative songs that examine the price of maturity, the good and the sad of love, human endurance, sibling rivalry, and the value of family. The performances are intimate and inviting, with the vocals pushed to the fore to mesh narratives and emotion.

The results are quaint and beautiful; a human portrait of true Americana that lingers in heart and marrow long after the music fades.

Greg Howe

Sound Proof

Label: Tone Center

If you like: Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Jeff Beck

Song to download: "Emergency Exit"

Guitarist Greg Howe's touring resume -- Michael Jackson, NSYNC, Justin Timberlake, Enrique Iglesias -- does more to show his professionalism than it does to illustrate his role as one of the great contemporary fusion guitarists.

Howe has somehow not managed to make it past the realm of guitar geek and into the more public realm inhabited by such fellow guitarists as Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, immediate sources of comparison.

Howe's new album, Sound Proof, does offer genuine, varied songwriting that will appeal beyond fans of gymnastic guitar playing. His fine and funky instrumental version of Rufus' "Tell Me Something Good" is worthy of mainstream consumption -- if you like Jeff Beck, you would like this track.

Howe's chops are jaw-dropping, but they also have point and purpose beyond speed and flash. And the fact that his band -- all relatively unknown players -- are equally amazing and tasteful makes Sound Proof a must-own for fans of fusion.

Mike Gordon

The Green Sparrow

Label: Rounder

If you like: Phish filleted

Song to download: "Andelman's Yard"

Mike Gordon's rocking new album, The Green Sparrow, establishes bassist Gordon's post-Phish career as arguably the best and most diverse of those of his bandmates.

The disc has plenty of Gordon's trademark quirky songs, outfitted with lyrics that describe strange voices in his head, among other left-of-center topics.

Former Phishmates guitarist Trey Anastasio and keyboardist Page McConnel appear on two tracks, and Phish fans have plenty to decipher. On "Dig Further Down," an Anastasio-assisted track that really rocks, could Gordon be talking about Anastasio when he sings, "I'm finding the life you live to be unsound"?

Anastasio did recently complete a drug counseling and treatment program after pleading guilty to a felony charge for possessing painkillers without a prescription. But enough about that. It's Gordon's time to shine. Now let's hope that enough people can see through the Phish fanaticism to appreciate his work.

Randy Travis

Around the Bend

Label: Warner Bros.

If you like: The young Randy Travis

Song to download: "You Didn't Have a Good Time"

Singer Randy Travis was one of country music's biggest stars in the 1980s, but since 2002, when he launched his comeback, he has found favor singing country gospel.

It's for this reason that his solid new album, Around the Bend, is being billed as his first country-music album in eight years.

In truth, Travis doesn't completely abandon spiritual themes -- "Faith in You" and "From Your Knees" offer spiritual messages. Even the playful "Every Head Bowed" spends time in church, albeit from the point of view of a young boy whose grumbling stomach has him praying for the preacher to adjourn. The good news for country-music fans is that Travis, one of modern country's best translators of hurting songs, again tackles themes of heartache. The album's best tune, "You Didn't Have a Good Time," dresses down a man who has lost everything except the empty bottles piled around his home. One hopes that country-music radio will embrace this secular triumph just as it did his spiritual ones.