Is it his fervent singing, top-rate falsetto, C-plus songwriting or superbabeness that earned neo-soul pinup Maxwell two platinum records and a lock on the dorm-room poster market? With Now, Maxwell proves that he's better than he has to be. This third full-length album continues to mine past gold, integrate rock and jazz elements, and work Maxwell's beautifully supple vocals around old-school styles. He has dispensed with the quavering whine he displayed in the late Nineties; "Temporary Nite," "Changed" and, especially, the earnest "For Lovers Only" are classic Seventies loveman pleas. The mild-mannered dance tunes take more than just a page from Prince's smart, thrusting funk -- particularly on "No One" and the first half of "Now/At the Party." But Maxwell knows when to speed up the fun with dirty-minded horn-driven funk Parliament would recognize (on the first single, "Get to Know Ya") and even tips an oversize cap to the Seventies by noting, on "Now/At the Party," that "Everything is dyno-mite." The most unusual cuts are bulked up at the record's end -- "Silently," with its textured arrangement, and a passionate, complicated cover of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" -- showing not just how adaptable Maxwell is to old-fashioned soul but how adaptable soul is to the modern heart. (ARION BERGER)

Robbie Fulks Couples In Trouble (Boondoggle)

Robbie Fulks is one of alternative country's most versatile performers. He's equally at home rocking as he is honky-tonking, his lyrics borrow from Appalachia one minute and modern irreverence the next and his voice is as comfortable belting a high tenor as it is sinking into quiet, creeping darkness. On his latest release, Couples in Trouble, Fulks spreads his wings farther than ever, incorporating string and brass arrangements and plaintive piano into his Americana. The opener, "In Bristol Town One Bright Day," is a Dock Boggs-style banjo ballad, but that mood soon gives way to the gentle electronic swirl of "Anything for Love." "Mad at a Girl," a winsome slice of pop with Memphis horns, morphs effortlessly into the Tom Waits-inspired "Brenda's New Stepfather," a sleazy, New Orleans-kissed, white-trash romp. Despite the vast amount of ground Fulks covers with this self-produced effort, it's far more cohesive and ultimately more satisfying than his major label rock dalliance, Let's Kill Saturday Night -- proving that Fulks works best when he has no one to answer to but himself. (MEREDITH OCHS)

Bill Janovitz Up Here (Spin Art)

On Up Here, his second solo album, former Buffalo Tom frontman Bill Janovitz hits his troubadour stride, delivering a gorgeous collection of folk tunes that resonate well after the final note has sounded. At times Janovitz sounds like Seventies-era Tom Waits sans the gravelly voice, particularly on the lovely "Half a Heart," a duet with Chris Toppin. Providing most of the instrumentation himself, Janovitz complements his vocals well, particularly on the sad tinge of "Your Stranger's Face," a track that boasts the melancholy sound of the lap steel sound. In Janovitz's impassioned world though, even the most mundane aspects of every day life have a sense of romance or drama to them. Who wouldn't want to visit a world like that? (STEVE BALTIN)

Graham Parker Deepcut to Nowhere (Razor & Tie)

Graham Parker has always been a spiky one. And now, after twenty-five years of service -- and with no gold watch or multi-platinum parachute in sight -- the old boy is plenty cranky. "I'll Never Play Jacksonville Again" could be a love letter to his booking agent, while the hapless incompetence Parker catalogs in "It Takes a Village Idiot" suggests he needs to find a better social crowd -- or stop watching CNN. Only "Tough on Clothes" breaks from the pattern, sounding suspiciously like he's auditioning for the detergent market. The electric guitars still cut with precision, though, and Parker's voice -- a cross between a switch-blade and barbed wire -- allows him to imbue even the most tender moments ("Depend On Me," "Last Stop is Nowhere") with the threat of apocalypse just beyond the sunset. (ROB O'CONNOR)

Zen Guerrilla Shadows on the Sun (Sub Pop)

Zen Guerrilla have picked up the gauntlet flung down by Detroit's mighty MC5, returning rock & roll to it's rude origins, when musicians brandished their guitars like assault weapons letting their instruments do all the talking. Fronted by six-foot-four Marcus Durant (and that's not even counting his combed out Don King afro) the band began life in the Delaware suburbs, a stoner's throw from Wilmington -- known to many as the Chemical Capital of The World. And it shows. What with amped-up blasts of fury -- like the incendiary "Barbed Wire" and "Inferno" -- this is as close as you can get to obtaining a amphetamine high without ingesting anything. Legend has it that two of the band members spent time in an Iron Maiden cover band, but Zen Guerrilla is a thoroughly stripped down affair, sans the gothic gewgaws. Instead they have distilled their sound to its gritty cacophonous essence, mixing liberal doses of R&B, electric blues, psychedelic in a suburban garage and then setting it afire. The result? Zen Guerrilla put the hard back into the rock, where it belongs. (JAAN UHELSZKI)

Catie Curtis My Shirt Looks Good on You (Rykodisc)

A plain-spoken songwriter obsessed with the usual Big Issues -- love, happiness, kissing, heaven, bicycles -- Boston's Catie Curtis boosts her observations with tight, tough folk-rock music and guitar-plucking production. "Who's the president? I don't care!" she proclaims, as if it's a revolutionary manifesto, on the title track of her fourth album. "Who's the monkey, who's the mayor? What's the difference? All I want is you." In a thick, vaguely twangy high pitch registering between Sheryl Crow and Aimee Mann, Curtis sings with complete commitment to the just-barely-deep sentiments in her songs. As a tribute, she covers the late Morphine frontman Mark Sandman's "Patience"; his "everything will be all right" chorus perfectly fits her approach. That's not to say she can't turn a phrase -- "I go low to high like June to July," she sings in "Hush" -- but let's just say My Shirt Looks Good on You sounds best in the background. (STEVE KNOPPER)

Mark Wills Loving Every Minute (Mercury Nashville)

Mark Wills has scored his biggest hits singing about perfect love ("I Do [Cherish You]"), tolerance ("Don't Laugh At Me") and love that lasts beyond the grave ("Wish You Were Here"). It's no surprise, then, that on his fourth album, Loving Every Minute, he serves up more of the same -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Wills has a light enough touch to keep ballads like "Universe" from bogging down in sentimentality, and his easy delivery, not to mention a steady groove, keeps songs like "In My Heaven" ("In my heaven we hurt no one/no lying, crying or dying young") from becoming too preachy. The album's best moments, though, come when Wills tries something new. He injects some real soul into his vocals on the melodic title track, gets playfully sexual on "Love Can't," and rocks out on the hilarious "I Hate Chicago" -- an updated take on "All My Ex's Live In Texas." If the album is Wills' attempt to show that he can sing more than just ballads -- and it obviously is -- he succeeds, but only just. The full-scale artistic makeover he seems to be hoping for is going to take more than a Minute. (ANDREA DRESDALE)

Roy Davis, Jr. Traxx From the Nile (Bombay)

They don't make soul-felt house music like this anymore . . . and that's a shame. Luckily, DJ/producer/vocalist Roy Davis, Jr. has preserved the essence of what his upbringing on Chicago's South Side -- the birthplace of house -- taught him. The high-energy of the club scene runs through his veins and flows within the ten lengthy tracks he's written and produced for dancing pleasure here. From the opening notes of "Join his Kingdom," Davis does his best to replicate one of his DJ sets, with skeletal wah-wah guitars urging you to brace for the full impact of the upcoming bass line, thumping beat and his syrup-sweet vocals. That technique not only gets the feet frolicking, but does some serious work on the soul on jams such as "There's a Place" and "Watch Them Come," the latter of which features African chants by Peven Everett. These traxx may be danceable, but Davis is obviously on a quest for a deeper meaning. (MARLON REGIS)

Quasi The Sword of God (Touch and Go)

Despite occasional stints as Elliott Smith's backing band and drummer Janet Weiss' involvement with Sleater-Kinney, Quasi's worldview remains reassuringly insular on its fifth album. Circling around the tenuous relationship between songwriters (and former lovers Weiss and singer-guitarist Sam Coomes), The Sword of God is filled with mournful melodies and tantalizing barbs on woozy songs like, "The Curse of Having It All" ("Hostile and sad, he made her turn bad") and "From A Hole In The Ground" ("Between yourself and me, the biggest walls you've ever seen"). It's heavy stuff, but Quasi's not called the indie Fleetwood Mac for nothing. (AIDIN VAZIRI)

Heather Duby Elemental (Sub Pop)

This collaboration between Duby and the electronic collective Elemental resembles a single arc roller coaster. Beginning at the bottom with an outtake from last year's Post to Wire, Duby supplies an accelerating new solo song then peaks with the ethereal "Love You More." The remaining two selections are repetitive-but-hypnotic instrumentals, credited solely to Elemental. Duby's strength is her ability to match her angelic voice with abrasive instrumentation, and the Elemental boys aren't always on the same page as Duby. Which is a good thing: Unlike artists who wear their eclecticism like a loud suit, Duby's oddball combinations fit together nicely. You'll eagerly climb on this ride again as soon as it pulls to a stop. (CHARLES BERMANT)

Various Artists That's All Folks! Cartoon Songs from Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes (Rhino)

Decades before rappers began borrowing disparate samples to decorate their stories, Warner Bros. musical director Carl Stalling was incorporating snippets of jazz, popular song and classical music in the soundtracks to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig cartoons. An innovator in every sense, Stalling even invented the click track that is standard in modern studios for keeping overdub performances in synch. But he was no slave to rhythm, and the compositions on this lavishly annotated two-disc set are most notable for the way they offhandedly drive the story line while accenting the quirky and wonderful voices of Mel Blanc. For many fans today, these recordings were a childhood introduction to the musical genres Stalling drew from, making an afternoon with That's All Folks! the perfect form of regression therapy. (SUE CUMMINGS)

Joe Flood Cripplin' Crutch (Diesel Only)

Joe Flood speaks so many stylistic dialects fluently it's no small wonder that Cripplin' Crutch sounds so cohesive. Nevertheless, this New York roots enthusiast and practitioner assembles eleven gems that clothe his rich, warm voice in a variety of settings that offer varied usage of things with strings. From the first, crisp acoustic lick of the rollicking title track through the roadhouse blues of "Niagra" to the more tender "Deep Sleep Blue," Flood tears through a spectrum of what has conveniently been labeled Americana. Instead, he shows it for what it is: a musical roadcut with a diverse series of musical strata. Comparisons to the Band have been and continue to be thrown about lazily in the wake of the insurgent country movement that almost happened. What gets missed is that the essence of the Band wasn't just an embrace of acoustic-based instruments and a rural vibe, but rather how they were able to speak something new through said components. Flood's layering of guitars, with assistance from producer extraordinaire Eric "Roscoe" Ambel, achieves a textural effect. And his use of mandolin is spare and beautiful, rather than a look-at-me pickin' workout. Country, blues, bluegrass, and rock & roll: it's all here, why bother trying to catalog it? (ANDREW DANSBY)

(August 20, 2001)