New CDs: Cat Power, Rosanne Cash

On the 2004 DVD Speaking for Trees, the Georgia-born singer-songwriter Chan Marshall stands in the middle of a forest and slowly works her way through stark, mournful covers of songs by luminaries like Bob Dylan, the Stones, Otis Redding and Duke Ellington. For almost two hours, the camera stays trained on Marshall as she wanders in and out of the frame, strums her electric guitar and sings like she wishes she were somewhere else. The effect is unsettling but intimate: Marshall, who has put out records as Cat Power since 1995, is one of those blessed, slightly unstable artists whose songs can find that expressway to your spine -- and can also make you wonder how she finds her pants in the morning.

Cat Power albums never exactly come up and give you a kiss, though at their best they get under your skin something fierce. Marshall's most eerily affecting moments range from a mournful 2000 cover of "Satisfaction," which conjures a long night of cold sweat and bad thoughts, to 1996's "Not What You Want," five and a half minutes of droning catharsis that erupts into wails and what sounds like a fist (or a head) pounding against a wall. But Marshall has been mellowing in recent years, and The Greatest is her prettiest album yet. Recorded at Ardent Studios, the legendary Memphis soul factory, with former members of Booker T. and the MG's and Al Green's band, The Greatest works up subtly atmospheric, sweet-and-sour country folk, propelled by a voice that sounds weathered by bad love and two packs a day -- but determined to make autumnal beauty out of her bad memories.

The older, more maniacally depressed Marshall pops up once on The Greatest: "Hate" is a crawling death-blues built around staccato guitar riffs, with a creepily murmured refrain borrowed from Kurt Cobain ("I hate myself, and I want to die"). On most of the other songs, Marshall prefers to weave a spell of subdued melodies and low-affect lushness rather than make you live her pain. On "Living Proof," organ swells and a sturdy funk-lite rhythm frame Marshall's takedown of a poisonous lover, which blends wordy jabs and deliciously elongated vowels. "Empty Shell," a dusty bouquet of cascading harmonies that ends with Marshall lying alone in bed, is a bona fide country song in its fiddle ornaments, its gentle shuffle and its ability to sound sweetly hopeful despite its heartbreak.

Marshall mostly uses her backup musicians as an extension of her piano, leaving plenty of room for her smoky swoops and swoons. On "Willie," the album's best song, swirling sax, brushed drums and reverb-laden guitar dance around descending piano chords as Marshall sings about an unlucky couple determined to make their love last, then drifts into a quiet first-person reverie about a lover she may have dreamed up. The song runs nearly six minutes, building to a gorgeous wash of barely intelligible coos, like a Van Morrison tone poem sung by a waif.

The music's easy lilt and Marshall's self-effacing vocals mean a couple of tunes hide their heads in their hoodies. "The Moon" sounds like a demo, with sluggish, slightly low-fi guitar and piano propping up a hazy melody and a tossed-off refrain about how "The moon is not only beautiful/It is so far away." But what's remarkable about The Greatest is how much Marshall accomplishes without ever straining. The closing "Love and Communication" works up an ominous groove of electric guitar and string slashes that sounds as if it could go on for hours. Marshall drops some typically obtuse poetry -- "Drawn to the party like a spider filling up your guts" -- but ultimately declares something better is on its way, providing a fittingly elliptical capper to an album full of bittersweet love and tiny pleasures. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Rosanne Cash Black Cadillac (Capitol)

This record -- Rosanne Cash's best and darkest since the intimate noir of 1990's Interiors -- is for and about ghosts: her stepmother, June, and father, Johnny, who both died in 2003; and her mother, Vivian, Johnny's first wife, who passed away as Rosanne finished the album in 2005. The first thing you hear is Johnny, recorded at home in the Fifties, calling tenderly to his young daughter. But this is not a prelude to mourning. The title track, actually written before his death, is about vigil: the long wait before staggering loss. "One of us gets to go to heaven/One has to stay here in hell," Rosanne sings against brooding garage rock, in a whisper etched with worry. Yet the greater fight in these songs, all written or co-written by Rosanne, is for light: the peace and understanding that come from confronting anger and re-examining memories. The documentary detail is striking. In "I Was Watching You," Rosanne looks back at the innocent adventure of her parents' wedding and how she struggled with hurt and anxiety as Johnny found new life with June. The exhausted acceptance of "God Is in the Roses" (and "in the thorns") is followed by the acute missing in "House on the Lake," a song about the echoes of music and love still alive in a home now on the auction block. And at every turn -- high-mountain balladry, brassy R&B, near-metallic blues rock -- Rosanne sings of coming through loss with a poise and confessional will that are utterly country and absolutely in the family tradition. (DAVID FRICKE)

Yellowcard Lights and Sounds (Capitol)

In 2004, when they sold more than a million albums, Yellowcard symbolized just how undeniably mainstream punk pop had become -- and, for many, just how miserably watered-down the music was now. With Lights and Sounds, the Southern California group has moved even more into the middle -- and has made what ends up being one of the best straight-up pop-rock albums of 2006. Sometimes, all you can do is prove your critics right.

Like the Goo Goo Dolls, who were never as punk as they thunk, Yellowcard have rightfully recognized the transcendent value of a big, fist-pumping anthem coated with a light dose of romantic schmaltz. Lights and Sounds' "City of Devils" employs an orchestra for a chorus with such a sublime lilt that it could melt even the hardest heart. On "Waiting Game," the band turns what otherwise might have been a cheesy melodic hook into irresistible pop confection. The bright, wistful "Two Weeks From Twenty," meanwhile, echoes Ben Folds Five with its gentle oohs and ahs, jazzy guitar and horn solos, and singer Ryan Key's airy falsetto. And on the rootsy acoustic number "How I Go," Key duets with Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks; their voices intertwine beautifully, however overwrought the lyrics.

Lights and Sounds has a little heft. The searing "Rough Landing" and the title track boast seismic alt-rock riffs and mosh-worthy refrains. Perhaps the most significant proof of Yellowcard's maturity is their restraint: Violinist Sean Mackin's chops are showcased with much greater subtlety on Lights and Sounds. It may undercut their punk-pop-with-fiddle shtick, but when you've got songs this good, you don't need a gimmick. (JENNY ELISCU)

P.O.D. Testify (Atlantic)

The prospect of a bunch of Christian groove metalers releasing a record called Testify, which is what P.O.D. have done with their fifth album, might seem instantly off-putting. To P.O.D.'s credit, Testify is not as pompous or overblown as you might think; it just feels tired. With help from superproducer Glen Ballard, barnburners like "Mistakes and Glories" achieve heavy-rock propulsion, but their all-too-familiar parts -- sludgy guitars, call-and-response shouts and brawny rhymes -- have all the iridescence of an old sweatshirt. A couple of cuts, including two collaborations with the Hasidic toaster Matisyahu, show off a novel fondness for reggae. But ballad-ish numbers like "Let You Down" truly feel like a drag, expressing spiritual exhaustion through slate-gray melodies and diaristic laments like "I'm so tired of faking my life." The most notable aspect of Testify, in fact, is how little P.O.D., or their guitars, have to say. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Jenny Lewis With the Watson Twins Rabbit Fur Coat (Team Love)

Conor Oberst may grow to regret encouraging Jenny Lewis, leader of the idiosyncratic California band Rilo Kiley, to release her debut solo album on his label. The inviting, country-fried disc -- with its warsh-your-sins-away vocal harmonies (from folk duo the Watson Twins), barbed lyrics and homespun arrangements -- makes her a strong contender for his crown as Gen Y's premier old-school singer-songwriter. Her girlishly seductive vocals are more versatile than ever; she sounds like Lucinda Williams' clean-living little sis on the gorgeous, full-moon ballad "Happy" and delivers a poppy chorus with Sheryl Crow-ish elan on "Rise Up With Fists!!" Perhaps best of all, Lewis enlists Oberst and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard to risk their indie cred with an affectionate cover of a dad-rock fave, the Traveling Wilburys' "Handle With Care." (BRIAN HIATT)

Test Icicles For Screening Purposes Only (Domino)

Test Icicles are three London lads who bring together dance-punk verve and hardcore mayhem on a debut that's often brilliantly messy and sometimes just a mess. At its best, the band smashes up serrated riffs, throat-scorching screams, breakneck rhythms and thuggish posing with the flair of angry young snot-noses and the arty flow of a Minutemen record. The scary-funny "Catch It!" begins with thirty seconds of speed metal, then finds a hurtling groove while guitarist Dev Hynes shouts, "Bitches don't know me!" before sliding into an eerie half-time breakdown that evokes spiders all over your arms. Even straighter numbers like "Maintain the Focus" -- which sets agitated call-and-response shouts over ice-pick guitar -- are at once thrillingly propulsive and gratuitously overstuffed. By the time Test Icicles send what sounds like a reconfigured Iron Maiden tune through their Ginsu-sharp blender on "Party On Dudes (Get Hype)," For Screening Purposes Only reminds you that art and ADD can work together just fine. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3 . . . tick . . . tick . . . tick (Down There)

I heard most of these songs before they were recorded: at a raging open rehearsal at New York's Lakeside Lounge, before singer-guitarist Wynn and his 3 (guitarist Jason Victor, bassist Dave DeCastro and drummer Linda Pitmon) split for Arizona to put tick on tape. None of the rough edges have been lost. "Wired" and "Wild Mercury" are fast and feral in the way of Wynn's Eighties fire with the Dream Syndicate ('66 Dylan with superfuzz and a Nuggets backbeat). And in the two-part finale, "No Tomorrow" -- angst at high speed, then death-do-us-part passion declared with crushing drums and snarling guitars -- Wynn has made his own kind of "Layla," with all of the scars showing. (DAVID FRICKE)

The Elected Sun, Sun, Sun (Sub Pop)

In Rilo Kiley, Blake Sennett is the guitarist responsible for meticulous licks and ace melodies. The second album from his side-project band takes Rilo's bright romance to a dreamy L.A.-rock extreme, with Neil Young and Gram Parsons looming large. "Fireflies in a Steel Mill" is a gorgeous indie-boy lullaby with bouncy horns making a nice old-school filigree, and though the vocals are too breathy for their own good on most of the album, that's not a problem with "Biggest Star," which builds from a moonlit ballad your parents could love into an impassioned rave-up. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Al Green Box Set: Livin' for You (1973), Al Green Is Love (1975), Full of Fire (1976), Have a Good Time (1976), Truth N' Time (1978) (Capitol)

Unquestionably the greatest soul singer to come to prominence in the Seventies, Al Green unites the sensual soul of Saturday night and the sanctified gospel of Sunday morning. At the peak of his powers in the early Seventies, Green's first four hit albums -- 1971's Gets Next to You, '72's Let's Stay Together and I'm Still in Love With You, and '73's Call Me -- define his earthy elegance so thoroughly that his subsequent LPs only intermittently match their sustained excellence. Green's second '73 album, Livin' for You, lacked its hit-packed predecessor's hooks but features "Let's Get Married," which delivers its message with a passion both churchy and carnal. Al Green Is Love maintains the melodic momentum regained by 1974's Al Green Explores Your Mind, particularly on "L-O-V-E (Love)," a sublime summation of Green's gifts that matches the grace of earlier smashes, and "Love Ritual," a daring dance track flaunting intricate African rhythms. Full of Fire updates Green and producer Willie Mitchell's songwriting and studio formulas to accommodate disco's faster tempos and more aggressive rhythms. The gamble pays off particularly on the title track but misfires on Green's second '76 album, Have a Good Time, his final secular collaboration with Mitchell until their 2003 reunion disc, I Can't Stop.

Capitol's current batch of Green reissues curiously omits the singer's first and finest self-produced disc, 1977's The Belle Album, but includes 1978's Truth N' Time, which contains too much filler for an album not even twenty-seven minutes long. What doesn't change on these albums is Green's nimble tenor, which smoothly negotiates between falsetto sweetness and baritone grit, and embodies Southern R&B. At the end of the Seventies, the Rev. Al Green devoted himself almost exclusively to his ministries for well over a decade. Gospel's gain was soul's loss. (BARRY WALTERS)

Audio Bullys Generation (Astralwerks)

The second album from this British electronica duo specializes in dark, grimy robot disco -- a largely vocals-free mishmash of brittle beats, buzzy sound effects and hipster ambience that sounds great when Dizzee Rascal is rhyming over it but cold and tinny on its own. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)