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Chris Isaak Always Got Tonight (Reprise)
"I'm the original American boy," Chris Isaak sings on Always Got Tonight, his first album in four years. And he is. Blending the crooning of the great Roy Orbison and the sex appeal of Elvis Presley, Isaak embodies the dichotomy of an ideal American character: the blue-collar kid with a college education, the surfer who pens tender ballads, the singer who loves rockabilly and the Rat Pack in equal measures. "American Boy" is also the impossibly catchy theme to The Chris Isaak Show, his Showtime series, which revolves around yet another dichotomy: hunky rock star with girl trouble. Good looks are no match for love's complicated messes. He rebounds from a failed relationship by falling for a friend on the mid-tempo "Cool Love," and flirts with a married woman on the frantic rocker "Notice the Ring." Isaak's songs hover on love's circumference, existing in the vulnerability of the approach (the gorgeous "Let Me Down Easy") and the desperate ache of its aftermath ("Life Will Go On"). There's as much rock here as there are dark, dreamy laments, but, best of all, these tales of sweetly fractured hearts arrive just in time for Valentine's Day. (MEREDITH OCHS)
Louise Goffin Sometimes a Circle (DreamWorks)
Setting unusually sophisticated lyrics against richly textured musical backdrops, Louise Goffin reintroduces herself to today's pop audiences with an album's worth of material co-written with her producer/husband, Greg Wells. (The daughter of legendary songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King, she first surfaced as a New Wave pop-rocker on 1979's Kid Blue, but spent most of the last two decades outside the spotlight, aside from dueting with her mom on The Gilmore Girls theme and -- more recently -- in a Gap TV spot.) Wisely emphasizing her slightly smokey lower register and her gift for old-school melodies, Goffin splits the difference between the introspective pop of Alanis Morissette and the techno-rock stylings of Garbage. While the opening track, "Sometimes a Circle," sports the sharpest hook and the set's closer, "Quiet Anethesia," has the most unsettling story line, everything in between benefits from an authentically eccentric authorial perspective and what-the-hell-was-that? splashes of sonic weirdness. (DON WALLER)
Teenage Fanclub Howdy! (Thirsty Ear)
Teenage Fanclub have always had a golden touch with simple, open guitar chords and classic pop progressions, a la Alex Chilton and the Beatles. But a few albums ago, on Grand Prix, they turned off the distortion, upped the harmonies and made a creative breakthrough: Now every song was a ray of brilliant, clear sunshine over the calm Scottish landscape. Howdy! -- released more than a year ago in Britain and only now available here -- is typically sunny Fanclub, yet more nuanced and colorful than anything the band has done before. The arrangements balance ringing guitars with organ, keyboards and occasional strings and horns, intimately and economically. Every instrument has something important to say. And Raymond McGinley, Norman Blake and Gerard Love have become a real songwriting triumvirate -- they split the album's twelve tracks almost equally, exploring similar themes of humility in the face of spiritual crisis from three distinct perspectives. From "I Need Direction" to "If I Never See You Again," the dominant theme is an earnest quest to find love and a place to call one's own. But they've never sounded more comfortable and in control. (BEN SISARIO)
Josh Clayton-Felt Spirit Touches Ground (DreamWorks)
As the frontman for the early Nineties outfit School of Fish, Josh Clayton-Felt was pushing smart, polished pop just as grunge began hogging the spotlight. His 1995 solo debut was met with raging indifference, and now his second solo effort is marked by tragic bad timing: Spirit Touches Ground arrives a year after Clayton-Felt succumbed to cancer at thirty-two. Setting aside the urge to perform the typical rock & roll, post-mortem canonization, Spirit Touches Ground is nonetheless an impressive display of stylish songcraft. The soulful grooves and mesmerizing guitar work on tracks like "Backwards World" and "Love Sweet Love" encourage Jeff Buckley comparisons, though cascades of sweeping, melodic hooks clearly mark Clayton-Felt as a spiritual heir to Nineties pop wunderkinds like Crowded House and Squeeze. Ultimately, the slick production probably cleans a little too much of the blood and guts from these songs, but it rarely obscures their abundant charms. (DAVID PEISNER)
Pat Metheny Group Speaking of Now (Warner Bros.)
To many, guitarist Pat Metheny is simply the good face of smooth jazz, a long-haired fusion holdout who isn't afraid to lambaste Kenny G yet can also out-play traditional fuddy-duddy Wynton Marsalis. With a new album featuring an all-new group, Metheny pares down his big Muzak for burning, bad-ass space bop. Closer in style to his quintessential Bright Size Life or his recent trio recordings, Speaking of Now sounds like a hard-edged acoustic jazz quintet smoking up a small club. Songs like "Proof" and "The Gathering Sky" enable drummer Antonio Sanchez to maneuver tricky metric modulations with a Latin style, while Metheny solos, frenetically spitting out blazing demented runs and freak chords. Vocalist Richard Bona is another hot find, endowing Metheny's lush pop melodies with a warm West African lilt. Speaking of Now offers high-flying jazz as comfortable as an old pair of cowboy boots, and just as sharp. (KEN MICALLEF)
The Distillers Sing Sing Death House (Hellcat)
Like Civil War re-enactors and other fastidious keepers of the flame, punk rock bands twenty-five years on adhere to the strict formulas once devised in the heat of battle. Hard to imagine bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Exploited, G.B.H. and the like establishing rules as opposed to demolishing them. But that's what's goin' on these days. The Distillers are led by Brody Armstrong, the wife of fellow punk-rock revivalist Rancid's Tim Armstrong. Like hubby, Brody pumps out anthems more shouted than sung that touch on punk's "classic" themes of self-image ("Hate Me"), drugs ("Desperate") and topical violence ("Sick of It All"). The sound is pure garbage-truck scuzz, twin guitars scraping past a rhythm section likely to careen out of control without notice. Especially poignant for those who missed it the first time around. (ROB O'CONNOR)
(February 11, 2002)