Aerosol - Airborne

Electronica/Ambient - On his new October 6 album Airborne, Danish electronica wiz Rasmus Rasmussen --aka Aerosol -- creates lavishly layered ambient landscapes of uncommon depth and beauty. Any geek with a keyboard, a computer and half an ego can create "music" but to do it well, to paint the canvas with real melodies, however densely compacted or stretched out, is something special. As with most of these shoe-gazing epics the style of Airborne is almost one of protracted soundtrack pieces, more atmospheric and ethereal than simply disclosed. Chords linger, melodic fragments of guitar and keyboard washes build and drift like oversized white clouds in a clear blue sky, with the effect akin to dreaming half-awake.

"Midnight Ride Down the Mental Freeway" and "Softly Slipping" are typical of what makes an Aerosol track eminently distinguishable out of a sea of processed mediocrity and oversweet new agey dweebtracks. Stately and hazily serene, here the electronic strata nevertheless take on an organic feel, setting a creeping, evolving series of moods and colors in chilled, high-grained slow motion. Recommended.

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Aerosol - "Midnight Ride Down the Mental Freeway" (from the album Airborne)

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Air - Love 2

Pop/Electronica - When the inventive French electronica duo Air return with their fifth studio album Love 2 it will something of a landmark for Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin. Moving into their second decade of creating sophisticated, often languid synth-pop, the pair have also made the decision to handle all of the writing and production themselves -- and at their own new Atlas studio in Paris. Working with LA-based drummer/percussionist (and former touring mate) Joey Waronker, Dunckel and Godin continue to mine the chilled-out, dance floor instrumentals and sultry, iced-cocktail vocals that have characterized their albums since their best-selling 1998 debut Moon Safari.

Lead track "Do The Joy" whips up a mighty Moog souffle, with warbly electronics and eerily menacing tones, hushed, spoken vocals and drifting production underscoring the dark atmosphere. First single "Sing Sang Sung", on the other hand, slinks by with an ear candy hook and gently ticking percussion, a kind of loping, mellow 70's porn soundtrack for a lazy, sunny summer day. Throughout Love 2, there's an air (so to speak) of studied fashion, a crisp, slightly stilted formality that suggests that while the band will never be accused of too much soul swinging there's always room for a moody, mysterious button-down approach to a 2am spinner. Put on your best, coolest shades...tug gently on those white starched cuffs... and order one straight up.

Air - "Do the Joy" (from the album Love 2)

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Alicia Keys - Element Of Freedom

Element Of Freedom, Alicia Keys' long awaited new project arrives two years after the release of her quadruple platinum-selling album As I Am. "The music is really strong, and the drums are really aggressive, but my voice is vulnerable and delicate,” says Keys. She adds that the new album encapsulates her process of "eliminating all of the boundaries and all the limitations, so that you can feel your freedom and express your freedom in every way you possibly can and that’s what I did with this album."

First single "Doesn't Mean Anything", written and produced by Keys and longtime production partner Kerry “Krucial” Brothers, features a simple piano chord hook - more Coldplay than Jay-Z - and is at radio now. “Alicia Keys Is Back” gushed NYPost.com’s "Pop Wrap" column. “It’s so perfect, it’s so brilliant and it’s so unmistakably Alicia.”Second focus track "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" is waiting in the wings for a November 9 radio launch. TV: Regis and Kelly today (10/12) and Ellen (10/30). "There's a feeling theme," Keys observes. "And I think somewhere in there, there's a balance. It's like one side is strong and one side is vulnerable. So that's the theme throughout the album. It has this kind of strong, edgy feel. But it's also intimate and vulnerable and delicate."

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Alicia Keys - "Doesn't Mean Anything" (from the album Element of Freedom)

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Allison Moorer - Crows

Allison Moorer has decided to mix things up a bit for her new February 9 album Crows (Rykodisc). Shifting to the left of her usual "new country" style, Moorer and producer R.S. Field have fashioned an album that emphasizes piano-based writing, personal and poetic lyricism and what is being termed a "sophisticated, pop flavored" style favoring "intricate arrangements and delicate dynamics." Lead track "The Broken Girl" reflects an album that she says "surprised me every step of the way": punchy rhythm backing, guitarist Joe McMahan's rough-edged riffs and a memorable melodic hooks meld into a song that burns brightly from start to finish. “I felt like I was being the most open I’d ever been. I don’t know if that’s age or confidence or what, but after all this time, I’m starting to feel like I know what I’m doing as a singer. Songwriting is very mysterious to me. I know how songs work but I don’t always understand how they come to be.”

"I really just set myself free and just threw all the rules out the window," Moorer tells Billboard. "Y'know, I've never been that concerned with fitting in anywhere, and I've always been sort of a square peg in whatever hole anybody would put me in. This time I just said I'm gonna do what I want to do and let this be as me as I want to." Crows is Moorer's seventh album since her 1998 debut and her first since Mockingbird, her fine (and criminally overlooked) '08 album of eclectic and diffuse covers (Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone) made with producer/guitarist Buddy Miller. Highly recommended.

Myspace  Label Site

Allison Moorer - "Broken Girl" (from the album Crows)

Allison Moorer - "Both Sides Now" (from the album Mockingbird)

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Basia Bulat - Heart of My Own

A certain rustic, old-fashioned folksy attitude is stitched through the musical fabric of Ontario, Canada's Basia Bulat, a heartfelt and straightforward sensibility that emerges fresh-faced and clear-eyed, fusing simplicity of style with innate, effortless sophistication. As a follow up to 2007's acclaimed debut album, the perfectly titled O My Darling, Bulat's new January 26 release Heart of My Own again charts a path positioned between smart, modern indie pop and classic folk/pop traditions. Often clutching an autoharp in concert, encouraging audience handclaps and singalongs (sometimes joining her onstage) Bulat isn't as fearless as she is simply, unpretentiously committed to her craft. Boisterous choruses soar, feet stomp and her rhythms sway and then gallop as she moves easily from mood to mood, a spirited burner followed by a sweet and tender ballad.

First single "Gold Rush" epitomizes what we've come to love about Bulat's special talent for making music that seems to spontaneously tumble from the speakers while still sounding so focused and assured. In just under three minutes, "Gold Rush" is indeed a rush, fusing influences that range from the fiddling flurries of rural Appalachia to busking Celtic folk melodies to breakneck pop a la Arcade Fire. Produced again by Howard Bilerman and glowing internally with a self-generated source of energy, Heart's eclectic punch promises to be a sweet and swooning knockout.  “I think it is at times extremely sparse and, well, spacious, with big choirs singing,” Bulat says, “and then it gets really dense with really spirited and rolling drums.” Recommended.

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Basia Bulat - "Gold Rush"  (from the album Heart of My Own)

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Beach House - Teen Dream

"We’re the same people, but this record has changed our directions,” says Beach House's Victoria Legrand of the Baltimore duo's forthcoming third album Teen Dream (January 26). “We were forced to let go of people and things we were holding onto as individuals: normalcy, daily rituals, the ability to take care of ourselves. We were dropped into a wilderness, but we had more clarity than we’ve ever had before." As the eagerly awaited successor to their 2008 Devotion, the new Dream was created with Legrand and co-conspirator Alex Scally in virtual seclusion, first in an isolated rehearsal space and then in a converted church recording "studio" with producer/engineer Chris Coady (Blonde Redhead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). The result is a more personal album of impressive scope and clarity of message, something Scally refers to as "instinctual" and "private."

“There’s a different level of intimacy, a physicality on Teen Dream,” Legrand enthuses. “Rhythmically, there’s new motion. This record touches you. On your chest.” Reflecting that aesthetic is lead track "Norway", a song that is both expansive in sound, all droning celestial layers of rich instrumentation, and a slightly left-of-center, woozy, note-bending edginess. This Dream truly does have a drifting, nocturnal feel, a surreality of half-sleep and early hour tossing andturning. Imaginative currents stream through the album. art-pop that remains centered around striking melodic twists and novel new-meets-old production touches. As a visual bonus, Teen Dream comes packed with a companion DVD containing a special music video for each of the disc's ten tracks by a different director. Recommended.

Myspace  Sub Pop Label Site

Beach House - "Norway" (from the album Teen Dream)

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Blair - Die Young

Former New Orleans native now living in Brooklyn, 24-year-old Blair delivers her debut full-length Die Young on January 26 (Autumn Tone), an impressive collection of alt-country and jagged indie-pop that hovers somewhere between the bristling force of early Liz Phair and the melodic tw-angst of Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis. Recorded in the sultry summer steam of the Crescent City with producer Keith Ferguson, Die Young has the blurred fuzz of distorted guitar pickups and small, overheated amps, Blair's girlish voice bobbing above the fray with an unexpectedly vulnerable quality. Like her heroes The Replacements, she manages to find the sweet spot of frayed and shaggy edginess and hook-laden melodic tenderness.

"A record of violence and daydreaming" says her label of Die Young and with song titles such as "Murder", "Kamikaze" and "Rampage" you might think that this is primarily an exercise in blunt, caustic blood letting. And, in a more cerebral, mostly lyrical sense, it is. But below the surface on tracks such as "Hearts", with its gleaming, roll-down-the-windows splendor, a delicate balance of grace and power is found. Recommended.

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Blair - "Hearts" (from the album Die Young)

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Brandi Carlile - Give Up the Ghost

Pop/Rock - Brandi Carlile has already worked with the legendary T-Bone Burnett (on her 2007 album The Story) so working with yet another legendary producer - Rick Rubin - who also happens to be the Co-Chairman of her Columbia label home shouldn't be TOO much of leap for the Washington singer/songwriter. Forthcoming October 6 album Give Up The Ghost boasts Rubin's special production ear as well as a special guest appearance from Elton John on the song "Caroline", but it is still Carlile's fearless attitude and knockout songwriting chops that make Ghost such a sensational listen.

 Signed in 2005 after a series of home-made recordings began to turn up on adult and college radio stations, Carlile has built up a devoted international base of fans. Her engaging, roof-rasing live performances, flanked by the tall, bald twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth, also helped spread the word of her music -- a heady mix of from-the-heart personal directness and high-flying melodic lines. Not many songwriters have the ability to move easily from a piano ballad into a charging rock gallup or push their vocals to the limit as Carlile did memorably on the title track of The Story. New single "Dreams", in a similar burst of acceleration, simply grabs and doesn't let go.

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Brandi Carlile - "Dreams" (from the album Give Up the Ghost)

Brandi Carlile - "Turpentine" (from the album The Story)

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Brooke Waggoner - Go Easy, Little Doves

Pop/Adult - It's obvious from just a perfunctory listen to her ornately orchestrated, sumptuously produced and sophisticated songs that Nashville-based Brooke Waggoner is definitely coloring outside of the lines of what normally passes for piano-based singer/songwriter fare these days. Cinematic in scope, sweepingly theatrical in style, dramatic in presentation, Waggoner's precocious, witty songs recall Aaron Copeland and Stephen Sondheim as much as any contemporary ivory tickler. We're not that surprised to learn that she's had 17 years of formal classical piano training (and she's all of 24 years old) -- this is richly detailed, complex music. She is, perhaps, Nellie McKay's less jaded, more grounded and earnestly spiritual alter ego.

Second full-length album Go Easy Little Doves, is an astonishingly mature album, a collection of songs that she's written over the past 10 years and brought to life with dramatic flair and what she calls a "fresh approach". The handful of brand spanking new songs could be thought of as the real hook here but frankly everything we've heard from Doves -- old, new, borrowed or blue -- sounds inspired. It is, she adds, "laced with all sorts of Q & A, pensiveness, elasticity, and romance." However you describe it -- and you'll have fun just trying to do just that -- this is music that deserves not only to be heard, but listened to. Highly recommended.

Myspace  Artist Site

Brooke Waggoner - "Femmes" (from the album Go Easy Little Doves)

Brooke Waggoner - "Go Easy Little Doves, I'll Be Fine" (from the album Go Easy Little Doves)

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Caroline Herring - Golden Apples of the Sun

Folk - It takes a certain amount of daring -- and special artistry -- to head into the studio knowing that it's basically going to be just your voice, your instrument and your particular creative vision on the line. For Austin performing songwriter Caroline Herring, leaving the comfort of the supporting roots/country musicians that have graced her previous three acclaimed albums to go it alone was part of a plan to try something new -- and deliberately take her out of her "comfort zone." "I didn’t have an absolute idea of what it was going to be when I started," Herring observes. "I just knew I wanted to get back into the studio and do something new and different while also representing my sound clearly and truly."

New album Golden Apples of the Sun (Signature Sound), offers sublime vindication for her decision. While it features the hushed simplicity of a stark acoustic setting, calling it simply a "folk album" is to miss the larger point. Assuredly working solo with just producer and instrumentalist David Goodrich on board, Herring makes Golden Apples decidedly retro, a throwback to the 60's and 70's folk period of Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins.

But there's also a timeless, uncluttered beauty at work in these songs that sounds equally fresh and modern. Whether she's singing her own songs, like the blissfully bare-boned "Tales of the Islander", or interpreting an array of covers (including an imaginative reworking of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors"), Herring finds the core of each and embellishes them with only her voice, guitar and Goodrich's spare instrumental shadings. Rarely has the old adage "less is more" been proven as convincingly. Highly recommended.

Myspace  Artist Site

Caroline Herring - "Tales of the Islander" (from the album Golden Apples of the Sun)

Caroline Herring - "True Colors" (from the album Golden Apples of the Sun)

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Catherine Feeny - People In the Hole

Talent is one thing. Fortitude is another. In the insanely upside-down music biz an artist usually needs a healthy shot of each to succeed. Fortunately for us, L.A.-to-London-to-Portland, OR performing songwriter Catherine Feeny has an abundance of both. New third album People In The Hole, recently self-released, should be the successful second release via major label but, well...we've seen how that can go. Signed to EMI in the U.K., dropped as another victim in the changing of the executive guard, Feeny decided to go it alone. People, recorded in London this past year with producer Sebastian Rogers, proves that in the face of career adversity, gifted artists can still persevere. And we're the better for it.

From atmospheric folk musings ("Jacaranda", "You'd Better Run") to darkly symphonic, epic ballads ("The Rest of Them") to slinky, mid-tempo pop/rock shuffles ("He's Like You Only Better", "Bleeder"), Feeny presents a warm but provocative vision that is matched in clarity only by an alluring, ethereal vocal presence. In an intimate, stripped fashion with the vocals caressing often as a hushed whisper, People In the Hole draws you closer to exhibit some finely crafted production touches. The end result is an opulence of style and tasteful restraint, songs that linger in the air like whiffs of sweet smoke. Take six minutes and indulge the amazingly cinematic "The Rest of Them". Highly recommended.

Myspace  Artist Site

Catherine Feeny - "People In the Hole" (from the album People In The Hole)

Catherine Feeny - "The Rest of Them" (from the album People In The Hole)

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Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM

The idea for a full-fledged collaboration may have come in 2006 when French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg made her return to recording with her album 5:55 and utilized arranger/composer David Campbell for the string orchestrations. Campbell is also known as the father of indie-God Beck who, as it turns out, was supposed to work on the album as well, but, as he puts it, "couldn't get over there." The payback now comes back bigtime as Beck shepherds her new IRM project as producer, songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. "I pulled a bunch of songs out," says Beck of the pair's early meetings. "And then I wrote a few, with her in mind, but when we spent time together they changed because I got more of a feeling of where she wanted to go. We got in the studio and I could see all the possibilities.

Scheduled for release January 26, IRM is, says Gainsbourg, the result of trying "very different things." The songs, she adds, "are all in different styles but one proper album." Following the release of the monotone, electronica/industrial workout of the title track last month, Gainsbourg and Beck join voices for new single "Heaven Can Wait", a slithering, piano-punctuated ditty that comes alive in a completely surreal video (watch it after the jump).

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Charlotte Gainsbourg - "Heaven Can Wait" (duet with Beck) (from the album IRM)

Charlotte Gainsbourg - "IRM" (from the album IRM)

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Clare and the Reasons - Arrow

Pop/Adult - Filled with elegant arrangements, tongue-in-cheek wit and sophisticated chamber pop melodies that would charm the most ardent indie hipster, Clare and the Reason's 2007 The Movie was an ingenious and auspicious debut. Fronted by singer/songwriter extraordinaire Clare Muldaur Manchon, the Brooklyn outfit dished up delicate, starry-eyed miniatures that found a way to be both big-screen ravishing and meticulously orchestrated. Singing of the demise of the planet Pluto or the joys of cooking in your underwear, Manchon has a delightfully coy wistfulness in her voice, a whispery little-girl quality gives her songs a playful, bittersweet innocence.

“Most of the ideas behind [the songs] are sort of 'What world can I write about?', says Clare,  'What thing can I enter into?'” It's this special whimsical vision that permeates the new album Arrow, arriving October 20 via their Frogstand label. The new project continues The Movie's exotic, intelligent musical script with thirteen tracks including the wonderful "Ooh You Hurt Me So", a song that rolls up sweet and icy 60's pop, eccentric Broadway theatricality and deftly detailed arrangements into one richly layered, luxuriant pastry. Highly recommended.

Clare & The Reasons - "Ooh You Hurt Me So" (from the album Arrow)

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Clarence Bucaro - New Orleans

Pop/Rock - Recalling the laid back folk/soul vibe of early Van Morrison and the pensive and personal lyricism of Jackson Browne, Clarence Bucaro has quietly carved out his own special niche of singer/songwriter: a strumming acoustic romanticism tempered with a classic R+B undercurrent of Hammond B3 fills, rhythmic bass lines and gospel inspired harmonies. On his 2008 breakthrough album Til Spring, Bucaro captured his most potent, fully realized collection of songs yet, an eloquent and vibrant mix of jazzy troubador-spun R+B that critics hailed as "inspirational", "beautiful" and "timeless".

New Orleans is, like Bucaro's own personal style, a combination of both old and new. Originally recorded in The Crescent City in 2004 with producer, mentor and collaborator Anders Osborne, these tracks sprang from a particularly fertile time for the young songwriter, a period of new love and a new life in a city filled with history and musical roots. But when it came time to release the album, Bucaro had already moved on, emotionally and geographically (to L.A. and then New York), and the songs sat untouched.

Recently, Bucaro decided to "reopen" the recordings and complete them for release. With his warm, oft-falsetto vocals and a crack studio band behind him, Bucaro takes songs like "Let Me Let Go Of You" and "Light In Your Eyes" and, as he sings, "bares (his) soul cold and naked", telling the confessional tale of a all-consuming love affair. While not as blissfully masterful as Til Spring, New Orleans still shines with a warm knowing glow. Recommended.

Clarence Bucaro - "Let Me Let Go Of You" (from the album New Orleans)

Clarence Bucaro - "Light In Your Eyes" (from the album New Orleans)

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Clientele - Bonfires On the Hearth

Pop/Rock - We automatically became fans of U.K. dream popsters Clientele when we read that early on the band collectively voted that "it was OK to be influenced by Surrealist poetry but not OK to have any shouting or blues guitar solos." Formed with that heady vision in place and fronted by guitarist/singer Alasdair MacLean, Clientele have released four albums of exceedingly cerebral, atmospheric and reverb-laden pop leaving no doubt that this troupe was gazing at their shoes way before it was fashionable. Oddly enough, the band has achieved greater recognition here in the U.S. with solid reviews ("hauntingly beautiful" gushed Billboard) though their restrained, cooly neo-psychedelic trappings have limited their trendiness quotient with the indie elite gatekeepers.

New album Bonfires On Earth (October 6) is something of a return to Clientele's earlier trippy aural portraits, an intoxicating elixir of 60's-styled post-Brit invasion paisley acid shadings and ornately decorated folk/rock. Lead track "Harvest Time" seems made for a headphones-and-bong setting with an eerie, spacious production and near-funereal rhythmic dustings serving as the underpinning to MacLean's breathy vocals. "I Wonder Who We Are", meanwhile lets a little dappled sunshine in with a boss bossa beat, punchy horns and staccato guitar riffs setting up an Austin Powers groovalicious retro frug. Recommended.

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Clientele - "Harvest Time" (from the album Bonfires On the Hearth)

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Cold War Kids - Behave Yourself EP

Rock - California's Cold War Kids have earned comparisons to Bruce and Bob with their convincing tales of human experience and timeless-sounding rock grit. Rusty and dusty, their music amalgamates influences from Les Paul to Led Zeppelin without lapsing into cliche like so many artists who mine rock history and "Americana" tropes. Two well-received albums and a handful of EPs have established a strong reputation and an unmistakeable sound: Nathan Willett's tenor runs an impressive dynamic and emotional range as he shouts and murmurs hard-luck tales from a cast of imaginary characters; fuzzy guitars and plodding piano are delivered in short, spare statements; drums shuffle or stomp but the kit always sounds like the one from U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday." Sonically, their latest EP Behave Yourself doesn't take The Kids anywhere they haven't been, but where they're at ain't a bad place to be, and there are so many stories left to tell. Check out the teaser video after the jump, which features snippets of each of the EP's four songs. iTunes will have an exclusive early release December 21st.

Artist Site    MySpace    Downtown Records

 Cold War Kids - Audience (From the EP Behave Yourself)

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Corinne Bailey Rae - The Sea

Four is the operative number today as Brit singer/songwriter extraordinaire Corinne Bailey Rae presents the followup to her genre-breaking, best-selling eponymous debut album. New project The Sea is arriving four years after the release of the triple-Grammy-nominated album that featured the international hit "Like A Star" -- an album that exploded in the U.S. upon the release a year later, entering the charts at #4 and going on to sell four million copies. But while beginning work on her new songs last spring, Corrinne's world came crashing down on the news that her husband and musical partner Jason Rae had died of an accidental drug overdose. "My life was going in one direction, then, in an instant, it was turned around," she tells The Guardian. Immersed in her own overwhelming grief, Bailey Rae retreated from music into her own private world for almost a full year.

Beginning late last year, however, she began to emerge back to songwriting, performing in a couple of small clubs and then, this spring, recording again. The difference this time, though, was the emotional support of performing live in the studio with a band rather than simply singing her songs to crafted backing tracks that she had overseen with her producer on her first outing. Also at play is Bailey Rae's voice, described by those that have heard the new songs as deeper, richer and even more jazz-nuanced, more Nina Simone and Sly Stone than the soulful folk/pop voice of "Star" or "Put Your Records On". New tracks include the plaintive ballad "Are You Here" and the powerful anthem "The Sea", reflecting what she calls her "more serious" outlook for the new project.

"You find out there's a lot of beauty and grace even in the darkness," she reflects.  "In the way people treat you, in nature, in the things you maybe took for granted. There is something miraculous that pushes you along, makes you keep going, makes you carry on. It's really about the mystery of that. In fact, the whole album is about that in a way; it's about loss but it's also about hope, about keeping going and trying to find that beauty."

Check out the message from Corinne and read the full interview with The Guardian here.

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Crazy Heart - Original Soundtrack

Early Oscar nomination handicappers are already abuzz over Jeff Bridges' extraordinary performace as an aging, down-on-his-luck and world-weary country singer in the film Crazy Heart, opening December 16. Of particular note is the incredible soundtrack produced with the usual meticulous care from T-Bone Burnett, a man who certainly knows his way around soundtracks having handled three of the best with country and Americana themes: the multi-platinum O Brother Where Art Thou, the Johnny Cash biopic I Walk The Line and the wonderful Civil War epic Cold Mountain. The soundtrack to Crazy Heart oddly enough doesn't arrive until a month after the movie opens but we're thinking that this collection will be essential listening. Tracks from the Louvin Brothers, Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt bring some classics to the mix, but it's Burnett's new productions that distinguish the album.

 Bridges handles five of the soundtrack's songs solo, most co-written with the recently passed Steven Bruton (to whom the film is dedicated) while supporting actor Colin Farrell takes one and the two team up for one of the many highlights: "Fallin' and Flyin'". But the biggest beneficiary of the whole project just may turn out to be Ryan Bingham, the Lone Star alt-country singer/songwriter who released the excellent Roadhouse Sun this past June, an album we called "a musical recipe that's soaked in equal parts whiskey shots, truckstop hash and a spicy burrito." His track "The Weary Kind" is a quietly brilliant slice of real and raw music, a song that captures the film's spirit (and Bridges' performance) perfectly and Burnett wisely chose the song to be the film's theme (and end credit roller). Look for an expanded version of the soundtrack (with seven more songs for a total of 23) on February 2. "The Weary Kind" video and Crazy Heart trailer after the jump...

Official Film Site New West Site

Ryan Bingham - "The Weary Kind" (from the soundtrack to Crazy Heart)

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David Sanborn - Only Everything

Legendary saxman David Sanborn stays in the "key of Ray" with Only Everything (January 26, Decca), a second collection of songs influenced by the great Ray Charles and again produced by the equally legendary Phil Ramone. First volume of Sanborn's homage came in 2008 with the well received Here and Gone featuring a nice array of guests (Eric Clapton, Joss Stone, Sam Moore, Derek Trucks) and generating some solid critical buzz: "a disarming delight" summed up the New York Times. New album features a pair of guest vocals - Joss Stone again as well as James Taylor - but it is Sanborn and his fine band, including Hammond B-3 master Joey Defrancesco and noted drummer Steve Gadd, that are rightly in the spotlight here.

"If anyone would ask me what Ray -- or Ray's musicians -- meant to me, my answer might be, `only everything," says Sanborn. "As a concept, Only Everything is about gratitude. I'm grateful not only for the musical life I've been able to live, but the original sources of inspiration that continue to inform and excite me fifty years after encountering them." U.K. soul belter Stone again makes an appearance on the new album following up her explosive version of "I Believe To My Soul" from Only Everything (and her own recent Colour Me Free album) with a reworking of the classic "Let the Good Times Roll". "Joss is a young woman with an old soul," observes Sanborn. "She's a force of nature who understands the primal power of soul music." James Taylor's distinctive voice graces "Hallelujah I Love Her So", a song Taylor says he performed many times early in his career and one that could have easily been at home on his own recent Covers collection.

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David Sanborn w/ Joss Stone - "I Believe To My Soul" (from the album Here and Gone)

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Doveman - The Conformist

Pop/Adult/Alt - If you imagine iconic Brit folkie Nick Drake playing piano around sunrise you'd get a bit of what in demand session and touring keyboardist Thomas Barlett - aka Doveman - sounds like. Then you'll need to slow it down. Mostly whisper quiet, with a style that naturally makes you want to lean in closer to take it all in, new album The Conformist (October 20, Brassland) boasts Bartlett's hushed, intimate vocals, a 4am mellow vibe and an A-list group of studio guests. Drawing from some of the artists that he's played with, Doveman's third "solo" project includes assistance from the likes of Glen Hansard (The Swell Season), Norah Jones (who duets on "Aftermath"), Martha Wainwright, Beth Orton and members of The National. "He's not afraid to go in", says Hansard, "in where the good stuff is, in where you might get lost without a compass, in and deeper in."

There's a smattering of uptempo moments here such as "Hurricane", where synth beats and a chugging bass line perk things up, but Bartlett's understated wisp of a vocal style manages to keep things sounding subdued even when the energy level is rising around him. As with previous efforts, it's the shimmering near-crawl pace of the decidely down-tempo tracks that define the Doveman sound: savory sweet and slow as honey dripping in slow motion. Says Pitchfork: "One wants to build a seedy yet expensive wine lounge somewhere in East Village just to be able to play this album around last call."

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Doveman - "Breathing Out" (from the album The Conformist)

Doveman - "Hurricane" (from the album The Conformist)

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