After seventeen years of heading up Phish, Trey Anastasio takes his Type A trance rock solo. For this outing, he has recruited a supertight eight-piece band -- half of it horns -- to back him on a dozen tunes that will not alienate his longtime neohippie fans. But Trey Anastasio may also entrance dabblers whose only contact with Phish is their incarnation as a Ben and Jerry's ice-cream flavor. Closely packed with urgent horn breaks and friendly guitar solos, Anastasio's new songs are less diffuse than his old roomy improv workouts. The players have the subdued joy of a Latin dance band on fire, especially on the opener, "Alive Again," the busy "Push On Til the Day" and the soul rave-up of "Money, Love and Change." Anastasio is an affable, uncomplicated singer; his intimate voice brings moody, autobiographical numbers such as "Flock of Words" and "Drifting" right up to the listener's ear. It's like hearing an old friend's secrets. (ARION BERGER)

Various Artists Music From and Inspired by Spider-Man (Columbia/Roadrunner/Island Def Jam/Sony Music Soundtrax)

One doesn't need spidey sense to guess that 2002's main adolescent-male movie event is going to have a pretty adolescent soundtrack with some generic adolescent hard-rock acts. Bands such as Default and Greenwheel seem to be caught in a web somewhere between Pearl Jam's Ten and Vitalogy. The remaining selections range from obvious film tie-ins (Alien Ant Farm's "Bug Bytes" sounds like Fugazi from concentrate) to the simply bizarre (Macy Gray remixed by Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello?). In this context, the less-polished tracks come off as superheroic: Sum 41's snot-ragged headbanger "What We're All About" is a Licensed to Ill-meets-Kiss hybrid with a kick-ass guest-guitar solo by Slayer's Kerry King. And Aerosmith's pumping, snake-eyed revision of the Sixties cartoon's "Theme From Spider-Man" is kinda cool. By the time you reach the Strokes' gloriously shambling "When It Started" and the Hives' psycho-punk "Hate to Say I Told You So," nearly all is forgiven. Just nearly, though. (MATT DIEHL)

Vanessa Carlton Be Not Nobody (Universal)

Music was twenty-two-year-old Vanessa Carlton's Plan B. Carlton, who studied at New York's esteemed School of American Ballet from ages fourteen to seventeen, turned to songwriting for comfort when her dreams of becoming a professional ballerina began to unravel in her senior year. The resulting songs became the hub of her debut album, Be Not Nobody. At times relying on cliches and at others demonstrating sentiment beyond her years, Carlton's first album leaves room for growth and yet hints that she's up to the task. On songs such as the theatrical "Wanted" and the dreamy "Twilight," she displays Tori Amos' flair for musical melodrama and Sarah McLachlan's knack for heartstring-pulling lyrics. While Carlton doesn't quite achieve the inventiveness of Amos' piano-playing or the elegance of McLachlan's vocals, she excels at creating memorable melodies and delivering each note with believable conviction. Standouts are the lovelorn "A Thousand Miles" and the jazzy "Prince." A promising start to a bountiful career as a singer-songwriter, Be Not Nobody will make many listeners glad that the dancing thing didn't work out. As the saying goes: Sometimes our best choices are our second choices. (K.G. ROTH)

Bryan Ferry Frantic (Virgin)

Bryan Ferry wasn't the first guy to believe that nothing should exceed the grasp of rock recording. But nobody ever made that conviction sing like he did on his albums with the legendary Seventies London band Roxy Music. On Frantic, Ferry coaxes the work of Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, Leadbelly, Richard the Lionheart, Orson Welles, Alain Resnais and others into one great, silvery song. The music, with players including Brian Eno and Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, concerns itself more with songfulness than texture. Frantic jumps with energy, from the pure pop sensation of "One Way Love" to "Goddess of Love," which opens with the line "Marilyn says/'I got nothing to wear tonight/Only a pair of diamond earrings to catch the light.'" The string section on Ferry's cover of Dylan's "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" is tough enough to break windshields. Other pieces lounge ("San Simeon"), minuet ("I Thought") and dart ("Cruel"). And Ferry's voice, even for Earth's maestro of remote-control Sinatra-esque soul, is plainly spectacular. (JAMES HUNTER)

The Hellacopters High Visibility (Gearhead)

The wailing, blue hard rock of Sweden's Hellacopters hearkens passionately back to the days when vinyl albums ran barely more than a half-hour, had gatefold sleeves and were stuffed silly with smokin' solos. High Visibility's thickly electrocuted riffs are redolent of Seventies arena-rock heroes from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Kiss; singer Nick Royale yelps, "Hey there, girl!" more convincingly than anyone (under thirty) in the biz. The chord changes of "Hurtin' Time" slice and dice like runaway lawn-mower blades, and the band even brings back the lead-guitar duel on "Envious," which climaxes, natch, with both Royale and guitarist Robert "Strings" Dahlqvist coming together to spew the same blistering, triumphant notes. Is it retro? Absolutely. The Hellacopters want to take us back to the future, to a time when men are once again guitar heroes and DJs are scared. And for almost exactly forty minutes, they succeed gloriously. (PAT BLASHILL)

Ali Heavy Starch (Universal)

Budweiser, Mark McGwire, an arch. Such were St. Louis' bragging rights before a platinum-toothed dynamo named Nelly introduced his satin-smooth singsong flow, hydraulic beats and worrisomely catchy hooks. As if nine million copies of Country Grammar didn't redirect our national compass Midwest, along came Nelly's crew, St. Lunatics, with their platinum bow, Free City. Now? St. Louis is "The Lou"; "The Lou's" signaturrrre swing is the hip-hope of a new millennium. Enter Ali, the Lunatics' unofficial coach and now a solo rookie with the unenviable task of emerging from his protege's big-ass shadow. Alas, he simply doesn't have Nelly's God-given gift of gab. But he's a damn fine coach, surrounding himself with talented players, who bring much bounce to Heavy Starch's party-addled ounce. Fellow Lunatic Murphy Lee jumps in on the first single, "Boughetto," a neck-snapping knock at folks-claiming-bourgeois-but-you-just-know-they're-ghetto. Fact is, the disc's strongest tracks are Lunatic collaborations: the irresistible jiggle "Wiggle Wiggle," the dozen-woofers-required "Collection Plate," the street-corner-goof "Cool As Hell," all of which owe a trough of gratitude to producer "Jay-E" Epperson's electro-funk finesse. As does Ali, whose rugged baritone can't carry the nineteen tracks before him, but whose pass-the-mike mentality and big-picture vision turn those tracks into the jam of the summer. (STEVEN CHEAN)

The Detachment Kit They Raging Quiet Army (Self Starter Foundation)

Confidence is vastly overrated in the realm of rock & roll. In fact, most of the best music of the past several decades -- from the Ramones to the Pixies to Nirvana -- has been created by folks with barely enough self-esteem to make it to the bus stop in the morning. While these Chicagoans play loud and atonal enough to create a smokescreen -- think early Sonic Youth meets Factory records at its skronkiest -- songs like "Sitting Still Talking About Jets" and "Dead Angels Make Slow Sound" ooze with a contagious sense of doubt and wonder. The guitars are confident enough, the drums skittery enough to put the listener on the defensive, but there's still quite a bit of self-consciousness around the edges of the Kit's sound -- kinda like a teenage drag queen afraid of being read as a lacrosse team expatriate. But rather than work against them, this sense of nervousness adds to their charm, with the skittishness of the vocals and the stuttering guitar lines worming their way into the heart more so than the efforts of a more polished bunch. Yeah, Ian Menard's poetry-slam delivery can impart a little more portent than the songs demand, but in the end, your inner wallflower is guaranteed to respond with some subtle jam-kicking.

(DAVID SPRAGUE)

The Mooney Suzuki Electric Sweat (Gammon Records)

Dripping with raw energy and brimming with grungy guitar hooks, the second album from those four lanky, hirsute young men from New York City, the Moozey Suzuki, roars like an electrified live stage show -- complete with echoing amp feedback and balls-out garage-rock anthems. Satisfying sweaty, leather-clad teenage cravings for rebellious theme music, Electric Sweat continues where the Suzuki left off with their first album -- paying homage to their sonic ancestors the Stooges with tracks like the speedy, foot-stomping, "I Woke Up This Mornin'" -- and going even further, testifying to the evolution of their sound with tracks like the improvisational, keyboard-soaked, "It's a Showtime Part II" and the melodic ode, "Oh Sweet Susanna." Electric Sweat is overflowing with enough nervous energy to fill grimy rock halls across America. The Suzuki expound simple truths throughout the album, summing it all up on "A Young Man's Mind," where Sammy James, Jr. croons, "In a young man's mind, it's a simple world/There's a little room for music and the rest is girls." With Electric Sweat, these hyper-active, dramatic rockers bring garage rock home to roost again in the cement jungle they call home, fulfilling what seems to be modern day's concurrent youthful sentiment -- the "need to be satisfied." (KERRY L. SMITH)

Johnny Paycheck The Soul and the Edge: The Best of Johnny Paycheck (Epic/Legacy)

While rock & roll never forgets, country music has a long history of doing so. And Johnny Paycheck hasn't so much been forgotten, as remembered all wrong. Forever pegged for recording David Allan Coe's "Take This Job and Shove It" and turning it into a blue-collar anthem, Paycheck's career is deserving of far more notice than a single track. While The Real Mr. Heartache, released four years ago, captured the best of his early material, The Soul and the Edge features the breadth of Paycheck's Seventies output, a range that has been shamefully undersold. Some of the material feels close to the bone ("I'm the Only Hell [My Mama Ever Raised]"), other songs feel like they've dug their way straight into the marrow ("[Stay Away From] The Cocaine Train," "Me and the I.R.S."). But what truly gets lost in the bars across America, where suds turn your average Joe into a Paycheck, is that his voice was one hell of an instrument, and it came across best on the more vulnerable songs: "She's All I Got," "Slide Off of Your Satin Sheets," "Someone to Give My Love To." Country music has always been drawn to the novelty song; but it's the slower material where the cream of the genre joins the best of popular American music, and as this collection amply shows, Paycheck was right up there with his former boss, George Jones, as one of country's finest singers. (ANDREW DANSBY)

C-Murder Tru Dawgs (Tru Records/D3 Entertainment)

C-Murder's Tru Dawgs is more of a compilation showcasing the gumbo pot bubbling with big-name rappers, Snoop Dogg, Master P and Da Brat, to name a few. C-Murder's presence gets lost in the mix up against Snoop Dogg's "Dogged Her Out" and Keith Murray's "Just Like That," together with the many, other collaborations. On the first track, "I'm a Baller," featuring C-Murder, Mac, T-Bo & XL, that New Orleans funk starts to bounce this album along the I-95 South nicely. But C-Murder is fighting for recognition on his own album. "Betya" is the only track he handles by himself, where he clearly disses ex-No Limit rapper Mystikal. On "How A Thug N**** Likes it," he limits his vocal contributions by sparring alongside Da Brat & J.D. and in the intro of "Respect My Mind" featuring T-Bo & Malachi, he does try to prove his innocence from being accused of murder via a spoken-word poetic onslaught. But for the most part, this album is all about him hanging out with the dawgs with just a little taste of his Creole recipe. (MARLON REGIS)

Denali Denali (Jade Tree)

As the story goes, Denali frontwoman Maura Davis chucked her ambition to be an opera singer because singing in a rock band seemed like more fun. If this is Davis' idea of fun, opera must really suck. Amidst an arresting collision of angular melodies, fractured rhythms and Davis' overpowering voice, Denali's self-titled debut is awash in the tortured melancholy of a woman whose relationship demons have driven her to the edge. She tiptoes along that edge on "You File" and "Everybody Knows," her voice swooping in and out while guitars lurch and lunge behind her. The band, which includes Davis' brother Keeley of the post-hardcore outfit Engine Down, seems occasionally overwhelmed by Davis' singular presence, but at the record's best moments, they match her pathos step for harrowing step. Synths shake unsteadily across the moody, art-damaged, trip-hop dirge "Relief," as she intones lines like "move or I may implode," more warning of her imminent collapse than threatening it. The fun, it seems, never stops. (DAVID PEISNER)

Ginny Owens Something More (Rocketown Records) Coming soon to a WB/UPN/Fox teen drama in your living room. Twenty-six-year-old singer-songwriter Ginny Owens won Best New Artist at the 2000 Dove Awards (Christian music's Grammies), and many of the themes advanced on her second album, "Something More," respond to the emotional and spiritual challenges she experienced after her initial success. As a hand-wringer, Owens is not all that persuasive. This is a congenial album, comprised mainly of mid-tempo, mainstream pop songs. The best among them are "I Know Someone" and the title track -- on both of these, Owens' urgent piano chords augment her appealing, slightly raspy voice, conjuring comparisons with secular folk-popster Jonatha Brooke and her former band, the Story. Lyrically, Owens exemplifies the difficulty of expressing spirituality in music without being obscure, allegorical or simplistic. She sings vaguely about life's complications ("I thought the good guys always won the fight/But I learned life simply doesn't work that way" is typical), the lyrics floating by tracelessly. But while you probably won't sing these songs when you turn off your stereo, you may just walk away humming. (JEREMY SIMON)

Kenny Chesney No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems (BMG)

With Alan Jackson and Garth as the last two men in hats to top the charts, a country resurgence would seem to be hinged upon the early nineties class that led its previous renaissance. But Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney have given us a few fresh faces to lead the charge. Chesney's sound is polished, make no mistake about it, but the hat's not an act. He believes in country music, and that's more than can be said for no small number of artists Nashville has produced over the past five years. Chesney's great trick is that he loves rock & roll, but he's fairly adamant about letting it in a step at a time, rather than throwing the stable doors wide. "Young" is a nice balance of old and new, fusing Stones-y "woo woo"'s with a poignant, country look back. With his cover of Bruce Springsteen's beautiful "One Step Up," Chesney gets hip to what Emmylou has known all along; that Springsteen is one of country music's finest tunesmiths. But lest one think, there's wandering going on, this album stays rooted in Music City with tips to Conway, Whisperin' Bill and other Nashville cats. Country music is off to its best start in recent years, and with fresh faces like Chesney and Brad Paisley, it's safe to say it will always keep at least one boot in tradition, while looking for new ground to leave its mark. (ANDREW DANSBY)

(April 29, 2002)