Spins

B.B. King

One Kind Favor

Label: Geffen

If you like: Deep blues

Song to download: "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"

Bluesman B.B. King's new album, One Kind Favor, is part throwback, part twist.

King is 82 and, not surprisingly, he is considering his past. The songs on One Kind Favor were current when King's career got under way in the 1940s and 1950s, among them "Sitting on Top of the World" and such lesser-known gems as "Get These Blues Off Me" by T-Bone Walker. King recorded these songs live in the studio, and the results are akin to a late set at a very attentive club.

The band stays in one position, with the pianist on the left, the drummer just off center and a suavely deployed horn section on the right. King is clearly spotlighted up front, never having to strain as he addresses the blues-eternals of love, hard times and death -- sometimes all three, as in Howlin' Wolf's "How Many More Years."

One Kind Favor was produced by T-Bone Burnett, who has been lately cultivating the death-haunted sides of rockers John Mellencamp and Robert Plant. King isn't gloomy about mortality. His voice reveals sorrow, and then fights it off with raspy shouts. As always, his guitar, Lucille, is his modest but indomitable ally, with its finely focused tone and its terse, targeted phrases.

The pianist is Dr. John, who, bolstered by Jim Keltner on drums, regularly rolls King's Mississippi-Memphis blues toward New Orleans, especially with the second-line beat of "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean." The album's pristinely remodeled ambience is no more a purely vintage style than is the stereo (rather than mono) recording. But the ache, the anger, the elegance and the edge of King's blues are undiminished and authentic.

The Verve

Forth

Label: On Your Own/MRI/Red

If you like: Britpop

Song to download: "Love Is Noise"

The Verve, a mainstay of England's psychedelically inclined 1990s Britpop scene, romanticized shouting down inner demons in a struggle to perfect the soul.

The band's commercially friendly rock -- expansive, but solid at the core -- produced comforting platitudes courtesy of singer Richard Ashcroft, that reduced emotional inflammation while Nick McCabe's forceful guitar playing cleared the head like an antihistamine.

Forth is the band's first album in eight years, and it balances McCabe's love of athletic jamming with Ashcroft's bardic aspirations. Slow-building jams pay off in transcendent choruses. Shorter, pop-wise songs such as "Love Is Noise" follow the precedent of the sample-happy "Bittersweet Symphony," the band's one huge international hit.

Ashcroft puts the sneer into soul; his fine-sandpaper voice tempers the music's heavenward thrust. It's satisfying, this blend of the angelic and the blokeish, but on Forth it never feels very urgent or original.

Wafer Thin

Moving Forward All Directions

Label: www.myspace.com/waferthin

If you like: X, evolved

Song to download: "Fair"

Wafer Thin, led by singer, songwriter and guitarist Brent Naylor, has proved to be one of Winston-Salem's most tenacious studies in pop evolution. Through the years, the band has evolved, over the course of increasingly probing and refined albums, from a well-intentioned band into one well-deserving of attention.

The new, six-song Moving Forward All Directions finds Naylor the sole original Wafer standing; he is joined by bassist/co-producer Ken Mohan (Kavish) and drummer Doug Hawkins (tommygun). The trio format suits Naylor's ever-evolving vision, which this time around maintains an anchor in power-pop tradition while exploring new ways to rock.

Moving Forward boasts a garage-band aesthetic that toys with the style of roots-punk explored by X. "Black Ribbon," with its psychobilly/surf trimmings, is unexpected, as is the evolved backroom boogie of "20 Years." But it is the anthemic "Fair" -- Naylor's finest moment -- and the evocative "Connoisseur," with its wah-wah cello and roots-pop flair, that validate the disc's title.

Solange

Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams

Label: Geffen

If You Like: Retro soul

Song to download: "I Decided Pt. 1"

Beyonce is pop. Her sister, Solange, is not.

That's all too clear on Solange's new CD, Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, a musical mining of 1960s soul, psychedelic rock and present-day angst. Solange's voice is her own, as she steps out of the shadow of Beyonce, her sister and a pop sensation who is hard to outshine.

Solange is a rebel: On the inside of the CD cover, she stands between two white boards that say "I will not get pregnant at 17" and "I will not have a famous family." Of course, she did get pregnant at 17, and everyone knows her sister.

Solange refuses to draw inside the lines, which is what makes her CD an unpredictable joy. She moves easily from girl-group groove to rock 'n' roll wild lady as she works with Cee-Lo Green (Gnarls Barkley), the Neptunes and Mark Ronson. The album serves as her diary as she records her one-night stands, her struggles with love and her stumbles toward adulthood.

Solange is Beyonce's sister, but she's certainly not her twin.

Jim Boggia

Misadventures In Stereo

Label: Bluhammock Music

If you like: Todd Rundgren, Jason Falkner, Joey Spampinato

Song to download: "Nothing's Changed"

Trends come, trends go, but to singer and songwriter Jim Boggia, pop music, from Burt Bacharach to The Beatles, remains a constant source of inspiration.

Misadventures In Stereo is Boggia's third album; his previous two brought him considerable critical acclaim, adoration from peers (Aimee Mann and Jill Sobule are fans) but little recognition beyond the pop cognoscenti. Maybe the third album's the charm for Boggia; Misadventures is crammed full of honest, beautifully crafted pop songs, sung by Boggia with open-hearted compassion. His uncommon melodic gift and ability to craft sharp, shiny pop hooks carry every track to someplace wondrous.

Boggia never overcomplicates, keeping arrangements intriguing but unfussy. He lets the emotion of his narratives -- which stretch from tales of love lost to "Three Weeks Shy," a devastatingly soulful tale of a soldier killed in Iraq (it fades against a roll-call of soldiers killed in action) -- compel the listener.

There's not a bad song to be found; feel-good pop is rarely this unaffected and entertaining.

Ra Ra Riot

The Rhumb Line

Label: Barsuk

If you like: Vampire Weekend, Wolf Parade

Song to download: "Ghost Under Rocks"

The sweet-sad quality of Ra Ra Riot's music can be attributed to the earnest ache of vocal melodies or the presence of cello and violin -- all of which take generous cues from the most melodic precincts of indie rock, where melancholy reigns.

But there's one specific cause for the elegiac tone on The Rhumb Line, the band's self-assured debut album. In June 2007, the body of John Pike, the band's original drummer, was found in a Massachusetts bay. It's striking, then, that the album adopts a nautical theme, and that it features a handful of faintly mordant songs with lyrics by Pike.

This might feel claustrophobic if not for the band's lightness of touch. Singer Wesley Miles' thin, appealing tenor brings airy clarity to a succession of catchy choruses, and buoyancy equally suits the rest of the band.

There are moments that feel precious or derivative, but the album holds together, not only as a memorial to past tragedy but also as a testament to whatever emotional terrain lies ahead.