Given the numbers in play, it would be easy to assume that the music from long-running jazz/ambient/post-rock duo of cornetist Rob Mazurek and drummer Chad Taylor would be full of wide-open spaces or perhaps tension-filled gaps between the somewhat limited tonal palette involved.

If any of those in attendance were new to this duo's tricks and were operating under such assumptions, they were quickly corrected. Hatched out of the same fertile Windy City jazz and improv scene that spawned post-rock standard-bearers Tortoise and saxophonist Ken Vandermark, the Chicago Underground Duo's performance at the Bootleg Theater on Friday night was dedicated to the art of doing more with less. 

Performing before an engaged, indie-leaning crowd of scruffy beards and horned-rimmed glasses, the duo conjured the spirit of the '70s loft jazz scene of New York City under the Bootleg Theater's raw, high-beamed ceilings. At times the band's songs crested into dissonant waves of fiery energy, such as with the aptly named "Labyrinth," which rose out of a remarkably knotted vibraphone-and-drums introduction by Taylor, while with others they locked into a taut but free-flowing groove that flirted with propulsive rock.

The week's biggest pop story isn't the "We Are the World" remake or the new Erykah Badu single -- even if it should be -- but the fallout from John Mayer's recent interview with veteran music writer Rob Tannenbaum in Playboy.

The nearly 7,000-word piece surfaced online Wednesday and appears in the magazine's March issue; in it, Mayer bared his psyche in relation to many topics, including his ex-girlfriends Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston, his Internet porn dependency and the way he communicates with his 82-year-old father. (He fixes Dad's electronics.)

But the firestorm that's overtaken Twitter and the rest of the Web, and caused Mayer to nearly weep during a seven-minute onstage apology in Nashville, resulted from the singer-songwriter-guitarist's comments about race and sexuality -- specifically, his use of the strongest racial epithet possible to describe his relationship to black culture, and his unfortunate use of the term “David Duke” to refer to his sexual organ, comparing his preference for Caucasian women to white supremacy.

The first thing that struck me about the Mayer interview, before I even read it, was the byline. I've known Rob Tannenbaum, now a contributing editor to Playboy, since our salad days as young music critics in 1990s New York. He was my editor in the early 2000s when I was a contributing writer at Blender magazine. He's an exceedingly thoughtful person and an excellent interviewer; I wasn't surprised that he got even more from Mayer, a notoriously reckless interview subject, than others who've probed his ego.

This afternoon, Tannenbaum agreed to an e-mail exchange about the interview and its aftermath. This is the first such interview he has granted. Our back-and-forth touched upon Mayer’s character, the changing reality of entertainment journalism in the Internet age, and the reasons why no white person can say at least one thing that Mayer said.

Ann Powers: John Mayer is, in some ways, an interviewer's dream. He's smart and totally reckless with his opinions and disclosures. You went deeper than most with Mayer by getting him to talk about his place within music culture in terms of race -- and what he said has caused a huge storm. When you brought up the subject, did it seem like he'd considered these matters before?

Steve Earle's son's stripped-down songs run the emotional gamut.

Justin Townes Earle is a young man of awesome traditions, who signifies his heritage every time he signs his name. Talent isn't a genetic trait that can be inherited, but Earle inhabits genuine country and blues with unusual force, transforming the old-timey back into something modern and dangerous.

He did it with a smile on his face at the Echo on Thursday, during 90 minutes of sad songs and barn-burners, simmering Texas blues and anxious honky-tonk. Many of the songs were from his new album, "Midnight at the Movies," a lively, graceful collection fueled on passion and bite. Onstage, the songs were stripped down and cut like a razor.

"Sometimes for a song to get finished, somebody's got to cry," Earle said, maybe not even half-joking.

He's the son of Steve Earle, with a middle name taken from the late Townes Van Zandt, two singer-songwriters of defiance and hurt. And he dealt with his place in that hard-headed tradition on "Mama's Eyes," strumming his acoustic guitar as he drawled: "I am my father's son, we don't see eye to eye / and I'll be the first to admit I've never tried / It sure hurts me, it should hurt sometime."

He's the studio virtuoso behind some of Lady Gaga's futuristic electro-pop tracks, and he's worked with artists as diverse as Enrique Iglesias and Akon, even New Kids on the Block. Now RedOne, the Moroccan-Swedish producer, can add a few dozen more names to that list, including Barbra Streisand, Kanye West, Sugarland and Miley Cyrus, thanks to his involvement with the new incarnation of the "We Are the World" single. A roster of 100 star-studded voices recently gathered in Los Angeles to re-record the song, which was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie 25 years ago originally to raise money for African famine relief. The revamped version, proceeds from which will benefit aid efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, will premiere today on NBC during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.  

Pop & Hiss snagged a few minutes with the producer to talk about the new single.

A fiendish contraption that may well send Damian Kulash to his death lies in the basement of an Echo Park warehouse. The OK Go singer has spent the last month as part of a dozens-strong team designing and building a giant, convoluted contraption for the band’s new video for “This Too Shall Pass,” whose reason for existence is succinct.

“Its only purpose is to be awesome,” Kulash said while leading a tour of his two-story Rube Goldberg behemoth. “When I was a kid, all I did was play with Legos and Transformers. This isn’t Optimus Prime, but it’s cooler.”

OK Go has made other charmingly homespun videos in its career – perhaps you’ve seen them? On the Internet?  But this second version of “This Too Shall Pass” (one was a goofy live take) looks to break ground in its nerdily stylized clips.

It starts on the outdoor stairwell, with bassist Tim Nordwind soaked in red paint knocking over a chain of small objects (dominoes, steel balls, etc.). That eventually coalesces into car tires, skateboards and pianos on pulleys all flinging about the warehouse and triggering new gadgetry. The machine takes a turn for the perilous with the introduction of a crossbow and a volley of rat traps, but gets downright harrowing once it descends an elevator shaft and culminates in a wayward car careening about and Kulash being launched via slingshot across the entirety of the warehouse into a waiting mattress. Banana Republic is probably glad it got to his great bone structure first.

The video’s full of sly little allusions to the band’s other videos -- its famous “treadmill” clip is playing on a TV that meets an untimely end. But Kulash said the biggest obstacle wasn’t surviving the slingshot, or the physics of the whole thing.

“Thinking of 700 different objects for a five-minute video has fried my brain,” he said. “The whole time I was telling the team, ‘No, this is too good. You have to theoretically be able to build this at home.’ ”

We promise to keep you posted on the progress of the official Pop & Hiss Blogger Catapult, Damian.

-- August Brown

Photo courtesy Big Hassle Media

 

Not counting the group’s triumphant appearance at last year’s Electric Daisy Carnival and a Coachella or two, big beat electronica duo the Crystal Method has not performed a stand-alone set in Los Angeles for six long years. That's an eternity, especially when measured against the platinum-selling group’s choice to maintain a SoCal home base since the early '90s.

But all that is about to change with the group’s date at Hollywood’s Avalon on Friday night – a rare live set booked into the Crystal Method’s North American “Divided by Night” tour that band members Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland promise will be “full of surprises.” So much so, that until fairly recently, they didn’t know for sure what was going to happen.

Pop & Hiss bumped into the Vegas natives on the red carpet at the Grammys last month, moments after it had lost out to Lady Gaga in the best electronic/dance album category. Adding insult to the injury of their defeat, the pop diva skipped collecting her trophy in order to primp for show time, leaving the Crystal Method to stew in its own vitriolic juices.

“Lady Gaga took us down and she couldn’t even show up to collect the award,” Kirkland groused. “Next year, I think they should implement a thing where if you’re not in the room to collect the award, your award goes to someone else. It’s like, if you put in to win the blender, you’ve got to be there to win the blender, right? You gotta be there to win the award!”

A recap of our conversation follows.

The short answer to the headline is probably not. In an earnings call this week, Warner Music Group Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. seemed to put free, ad-supported streaming services on notice. In now much-quoted comments, Bronfman stated that the major would not be licensing content to such services.

"Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry," Bronfman said during the earnings call (read a full transcript here). "And as far as Warner Music's concerned, will not be licensed. So, this sort of get all the music you want for free and then maybe we can -- with a few bells and whistles -- move you to a premium price strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future."

The comments have generated speculation that Warner Music Group may not play nice with Spotify, the popular streaming music service in Europe that is set to launch soon in the U.S. Overseas, Spotify boasts 7 million users and content from all four majors, and it's a widely held belief within the industry that the company is targeting mid-March to unveil its U.S. service, timed for the annual South by Southwest interactive and music conference in Austin, Texas. 

Spotify took to its Twitter to clarify Bronfman's comments, stating that WMG "is not pulling out of Spotify" and that "the media is taking things out of context." A WMG spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the record on Bronfman's comments, but did state that no current deals already in place would be affected. 

“Now the evening has come to a close and I've had my last dance with you/so on to the empty streets with me/and it might be my last chance with you/so I might as well get it over with/the things I have to say/won't wait until another day."

So commenced El-P’s debut solo album, 2002’s “Fantastic Damage.” The 27th release on Definitive Jux distilled the trailblazing label’s aesthetic down to 70 minutes – it was a hard-boiled, cigarette-huffing hallucination through post-9/11 New York. Like all the first round of Def Jux releases, it exploded with the brisance of a cluster bomb, shrapnel flying in furious metallic streaks. Filled with caustic poison-pen rants against alcoholic stepfathers and war-mongering presidents, "Fantastic Damage" also saw the Brooklyn-based rapper offer heart-on-sleeve laments to ex-girlfriends and issue sardonic salvos aimed at unethical record labels.

Around the time Y2K fears dissipated, the Def Jukies took the torch from an already-on-the-decline Rawkus Records and flipped the underground paradigm on its wool-knit beanie. Carefully attuned to the jittery zeitgeist of Giuliani-era New York, El-P, Cannibal Ox, Mr. Lif and Aesop Rock had no use for jazzy neo-soul boom-bap, instead twisting familiar samples into fractals, re-shaping clean angular landmarks into polygonal Frank Gehry facades. Agitated and out to inflict pain on everything from greedy corporations to  politicians to a deck ostensibly stacked against its artists, Def Jux held strong as one of the last citadels of un-compromised hip-hop while their indie peers fell by the wayside.

The folksy, Grammy-winning musician sings about optimism in the face of bad times.

Loudon Wainwright III was fighting a losing battle with his guitar Tuesday night at Largo at the Coronet: He wanted it to stay in tune, the guitar didn't. So roughly an hour into his show the L.A.-based folkie hatched the kind of plan that comes naturally to someone with Wainwright's experience. "I'm gonna do a blues now," he announced. "That way it don't matter."

That his plan worked probably says more about the ingenuity of Wainwright's lyrics than it does about his fiery juke-joint chops; the blues was about Paul Krugman and contained enough jokes to fill one of the Nobel Prize-winning economist's columns.

Yet even though he succeeded in distracting the audience from his tuning issues, Wainwright still couldn't resist making some minor mid-song adjustments to his instrument -- a perfect illustration of the unfailing attention to detail that's made Wainwright one of his generation's most well-regarded songwriters.

Tuesday's concert, the first stop on a brief California solo tour, came shortly after Wainwright received his first Grammy, for last year's "High Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project," on which Wainwright pays tribute to the obscure 1920s banjo player. An admitted cynic who leavens his misanthropy with disarming sensitivity, Wainwright didn't pretend that the Grammy win victory lacked personal or professional meaning; he opened with "The Grammy Song," a smirking plea for acknowledgment from his 1983 album "Fame and Wealth." 

Mumford & Sons is a fine example of young English musicians' recent interest in that country's old folk. But at Tuesday night’s sold-out set at the Troubadour, singer Marcus Mumford revealed a dark secret about his past. He was actually born in Anaheim.

It makes a certain sense that Mumford’s frontman would hail from a town whose most famous business is devoted to dazzling displays of artifice and nostalgia. Mumford’s intricate and immaculate pub-folk comes from four musicians preternaturally talented at old ideas about acoustic arrangements and lyrical storytelling. But they use so many au courant ways to get there – swooning four-part harmonies, instrument-swapping, occasional punkish breakdowns – that their sold-out Troubadour set felt like a star-making turn.

The band’s name is a bit deceiving on that front. Mumford is the songwriting force and the lead voice of the band, but they’re most powerful when he’s not clearly up front. On “Little Lion Man,” the breakout single from their debut, “Sigh No More,” the song rides an urgent kick drum and a ferocious little tangle of banjo and guitar picking before stacks of harmonies kick in for the exhilarating chorus. Live, those harmonies aren’t just a really impressive onstage parlor trick – they’re the real face of the band.

 A little TV exposure continues to go a long way. Country trio Lady Antebellum tops the chart for the second straight week, leading in a week that saw big increases for acts that appeared on the Jan. 31 Grammy Awards. Artists such as Pink, Green Day, Taylor Swift and the Dave Matthews Band all saw large sales jumps, and the Who's appearance on Sunday night's Super Bowl seems to already be paying dividends.

Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" racked up an additional 209,000 sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In just two weeks of release, the Capitol Nashville set has moved a total of 690,000. The group performed the hit title track on the Grammy telecast, and that cut was the second-bestselling digital track this week, shifting more than 212,000 downloads. It has sold close to 1.9 million downloads to date. 

SoundScan tracks sales through the end of the business day on Sunday, meaning the full impact of the Who's appearance on the Super Bowl won't be evident until next week's chart is released. Even so, sales are already increasing for the classic rockers, despite the fact that their performance wasn't among the best reviewed of Super Bowl halftime shows. 

The Who's "Greatest Hits" (Geffen) collection sold just under 8,000 copies last week, up from about 4,000 the week before. Additionally, "Baba O'Riley" appeared on the digital singles chart at No. 111. It sold 17,000 copies last week, a mighty increase over the 5,000 it moved in the prior week. 

The biggest beneficiary of the Grammys, in terms of a sales increase, was pop star Pink. Her "Funhouse" (LaFace) was up 235% over the prior week, selling a total of 31,000 copies. To date, it's sold 1.5 million, while the cut she performed on the Grammys in all its acrobatic glory, "Glitter in the Air," sold 114,000 downloads this week, which is the biggest sales week for the track. It sold about 9,000 last week, and 1.5 million to date.

Green Day went all Broadway on the Grammys, and fans don't seem turned off by the punk rock act turning its "21 Guns" into a "Glee"-friendly song. The version of the cut on the album sold 55,000 copies this week (up from 39,000), and an additional take, recorded with the cast of the Green Day-inspired musical "American Idiot," sold 15,000 copies this week (up from 5,000). Meanwhile, the Reprise album  "21st Century Breakdown" sold 7,000 copies, more than doubling its sales of around 3,000 last week.

Eric Clapton is hosting his third Crossroads Guitar Festival on June 26 in Chicago, inviting many of the same stellar guests who appeared at the first two events. This year’s lineup includes B.B. King, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, John Mayer, Vince Gill, Steve Winwood, Robert Cray and ZZ Top.

The event, benefiting Clapton’s  Crossroads Centre in Antigua for people with chemical dependencies, also will include Sheryl Crow, the great Brazilian jazz guitarist João Gilberto, James Burton, Albert Lee, Keb’ Mo’,  the Allman Brothers Band, Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas and  Italian musician Pino Daniele.

The first Crossroads Festival in Dallas in 2004 and its successor three years later in Chicago both were filmed and released on DVD. In addition to the main-stage performances, the festivals encompass music workshops, demonstrations and various forums for interaction among fans and participating musicians.

Tickets are $100 and go on sale Feb. 20 through Ticketmaster.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Eric Clapton at the Hollywood Bowl in 2004. Credit: Los Angeles Times

It's been a couple of days since the Saints told the Colts "Who Dat!" New Orleans has drunk its round of recovery Bloody Marys. Peyton Manning has had time to crawl into his Snuggie and contemplate his missteps (and missed passes). And the Who's "Pinball Wizard"-style laserfest of a halftime concert has been roundly discussed, criticized, defended and dismissed -- the latter by Roger Daltrey himself, sort of.

There's even been a call for the next generation of pop stars to take over the Super Bowl halftime show, which in fact would be a return to pre-Nipplegate, when all varieties of performer distracted us from what's usually a boring ball game. For years, this intermezzo was a multi-act affair, with only a few artists (Michael Jackson, Diana Ross) earning the entire spotlight. Only after the 2004 game in Houston, when Justin Timberlake caused mass hysteria by dislodging more of Janet Jackson's costume than was intended, did the event's producers opt for the relatively safe plan of having one well-rehearsed, popular touring act give a mini-concert instead of staging a Top-40 free-for-all.

But let's face it, this mode has become boring. Sure, Green Day or the Foo Fighters might rock a bit more vigorously than did Daltrey and Pete Townshend (though the famed guitarist daringly showed a bit of belly while doing his patented windmills, perhaps in honor of Miss Jackson). The Black Eyed Peas would jump around and have cool-looking dancers; Jay-Z would trot out his 50,000,000 best friends to share a verse. But no matter which star the Super Bowl folks secure, the mini-concert approach to halftime will still be a tiny, little, compressed version of an actual pop show. It will feel rushed and anticlimactic, especially because such snippets of live action are now so common on television, whether during awards shows or on episodes of "Gossip Girl."

It's not a geezer problem. Prince is the only performer who's really surprised us on this stage in recent years, and he's old enough to have had a hip replacement. It's a structural problem. The best televised guest spots by pop stars play up the connection between the music and the program featuring it. The MTV Video Music Awards are nutsy and chaotic, just like that network and its series. The Grammys are glitzy; so were Lady Gaga and Beyoncé this year. "Saturday Night Live" thrives on celebrity culture making fun of itself, which Taylor Swift did with her winning host turn.

So, for the Super Bowl halftime concert, let's see a competition.

 
Rapper Jay-Z, pop band Weezer and psychedelic rockers the Flaming Lips are among the headliners for the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. The lineup for the four-day June fest in Manchester, Tenn., was  being doled out in excruciating fashion Tuesday, with acts being announced via a digital cuckoo clock with cutesy animations on the festival's MySpace page. 

The mid-South's hippie cousin to Southern California's hipster-aimed Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, Bonnaroo organizers were announcing one artist every five or six minutes on Tuesday. It's a groundbreaking promotional strategy, one that uniquely brings some of the frustrations of the multi-day festival -- long lag-times with little payoff -- to the online world.

Bonnaroo is set for June 10-13, and there's some expected Coachella overlap in the initial artists announced. Minimalist indie-rock act the XX, vintage-pop band She & Him, Parisian's Phoenix, Jack White's outfit the Dead Weather and soul revivalist Meyer Hawthorne will be on the festival circuit this summer. And while Coachella can boast the Gorillaz, Bonnaroo can brag about a cartoon-ish act of its own, with metal goofballs Gwar on the bill. 

The Who were far from the only rock band to take part in Super Bowl Sunday. Acts such as the Arcade Fire and Grizzly Bear were featured in advertisements debuting during the big game. Caught by surprise, however, were the White Stripes, who say an instrumental track used in an ad for the Air Force Reserve closely resembles their hit "Fell in Love With a Girl."

The White Stripes have posted a statement on their website and embedded videos of "Fell in Love With a Girl" and the ad, the latter of which is no longer readily available. 

"We believe our song was re-recorded and used without permission of the White Stripes, our publishers, label or management," reads the all-CAPS statement (screen shot below) from the duo of Jack White and Meg James. "The White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserves presenting this advertisement with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support." 

Calls to Blaine Warren Advertising were directed to a press office for the Air Force Reserve. A spokeswoman for the latter stated that the 30-second television spot was created solely for the Super Bowl, and that it was no longer airing. The Air Force Reserve issued the following statement: 

"In response to the claims being made today regarding the Air Force Reserve regional ad that aired in select markets during the Super Bowl; The Air Force Reserve, through its advertising agency, hired Fast Forward Music of Salt Lake City to score original music for its commercial. There was never any intention to utilize any existing music, or to sound like any music by the band White Stripes or any other musical performer. Any similarity or likeness to any other music is completely unintentional."

Though the band stated that it does not support current military endeavors, it did express support for American troops. "We simply don't want to be a cog in the wheel of the current conflict," reads the statement. Read the White Stripes' full comments below, a screen shot taken directly from the band's site:

Among the myriad other disruptions that massive snowstorms are causing on the East Coast, a Black History Month concert at the White House delineating the role music played in the civil-rights movement has been hastily bumped up a day, to Tuesday. It originally was scheduled for Wednesday.

“They’re expecting another 20 inches of snow, and the federal government probably will be shut down tomorrow,” the Grammy Museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, said Tuesday morning from Washington, D.C., where he was caught up fast-forwarding plans both for the concert with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Smokey Robinson, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson and numerous others, as well as an educational program that First Lady Michelle Obama was hosting for about 100 high school students from around the country.

“If we didn’t do it today, it probably would have been canceled,” said Santelli. A planned broadcast of the  concert Thursday on PBS stations is still in place, he said, as well as a live stream of the educational program for the benefit of students around the country starting at noon Pacific time. The telecast is being handled by veteran Grammy Awards show producer Ken Ehrlich, and the concert also will be streamed live Tuesday night on PBS' website.

Because of the schedule change, Santelli said a portion of the program will be recorded and made available at a future date for those who weren’t able to watch it live.

A list of upcoming concerts across the Southland, with on-sale dates in parentheses.
 
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Bajofondo, May 14 (Sat.)

Honda Center
Los Tres, April 10 (Fri.)

Gibson Amphitheatre
Invasion Del Corridos III, March 27 (now)

Wiltern
The National, May 21; Tears for Fears, March 21 (Fri.); Patty Griffin, April 10 (Sat.)

El Rey Theatre
The Bronx, April 20; Converge, May 18 (now); the Slackers, April 30 (Sat.)

 The first track on V.V. Brown's debut album is called "Quick Fix," and that turns out to be something of a watchword for this young English singer: As the latest export from a supersaturated U.K. retro-soul scene, Brown figures the best way to differentiate herself from the likes of Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Adele is to keep her music moving at a breakneck pace; she waits until she's halfway through the aptly titled "Travelling Like the Light" before slowing the tempo to a groove that might be described as ballad-ready.

The result is a smart, sharp little sugar high, with Brown working her slightly scuffed vocals over zippy, high-gloss arrangements loaded with ear-candy detail. "I'm crying tears from my eyes that I can't deny," she sings in "Crying Blood," yet all her music does is deny those tears. If last year's underappreciated Noisettes record, "Wild Young Hearts," didn't satisfy your desire to hear what the Hives would sound like as a hopped-up R&B band, "Travelling Like the Light" certainly will.

Perhaps inevitably, Brown relaxes her grip toward the end of the album for a handful of supper-club slow jams perfect for future placement in some CW teen soap. (The weepiest one is called "I Love You," which should let you know what you're in for.) But even when her material blands out, there's a fresh-faced charm to Brown's delivery that sets her apart from the vintage-vinyl pack. She's the rare retro-soulster unafraid to act her age.

-- Mikael Wood

V.V. Brown
 "Travelling Like the Light"
 Capitol
 Three stars (Out of four)

RELATED: 2009 artist to watch: V.V. Brown

 Since rising out of the same jam-happy acid jazz scene that hatched the Greyboy Allstars and Soulive in the '90s, Galactic has struggled to settle on an identity of late. After early records worked a vintage soul-jazz vibe, the band has since flirted with electronic loops with producer Dan the Automator, and dove into underground hip-hop with the Coup's Boots Riley and others on 2007's ambitious but uneven "From the Corner to the Block." 

But now Galactic is back where it started. Always steeped in the second-line pulse of its native New Orleans, Galactic's "Ya-Ka-May" calls on a multitude of Crescent City voices for a funky and original late-night travelogue. The band's skills as a jazz-funk party act excel in rollicking guest spots from Jazz Fest favorites the Rebirth Brass Band, Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas (whose swampily soulful "Heart of Steel" is a highlight). But it's Galactic's foray into "bounce," New Orleans' nascent hip-hop sound, that really turns heads. 

Growling over rumbling percussion and a mean harmonica melody from saxophonist Ben Ellman, Big Freedia gives Galactic its first rowdy club anthem with "Double It." "Katey vs. Nobby" features transsexual rapper Katey Red trading free-associative barbs with Sissy Nobby over a martial beat from drummer Stanton Moore that recalls early Beastie Boys.

Elsewhere Cheeky Blakk's unprintable shouted greeting anchors the rollicking "Do It Again" over a sinister backdrop from keyboardist Rich Vogel and guitarist Jeff Raines.

Named after a New Orleans street food, "Ya-Ka-May" mixes a whole variety of ingredients that shouldn't hold together but do. While no record could truly capture the sound of New Orleans in 2010, Galactic sure has a great time trying.

-- Chris Barton

Galactic
 "Ya-Ka-May"
 -Anti
 Three stars (Out of four)

An album named for a creature often viewed as a harbinger of doom given to a batch of songs more than half of which are written in minor keys promises some heavy emotional going. And on "Crows," Alabama-born singer and songwriter Allison Moorer's first collection of original material in four years, she's wrestling with how to find some sort of acceptance of life's dark side.

Moorer and big sister Shelby Lynne were orphaned as children when their father killed their mother and then himself.

Her honesty in exploring the underpinnings of depression reveal the potential for liberation in facing one's demons. That process allows her to truly savor the sweet moments she celebrates in "Easy in the Summertime," a reverie of youth that quickly transcends the stock-image concoctions so common in contemporary country music.

Moorer and producer R.S. Field go for sonic atmospherics that ideally frame her songs, from a Chris Isaak-like down-in-the-tunnel-of-broken-love grandeur for "Goodbye to the Ground" to the flamenco-folk drama of "Just Another Fool." "The Stars and I (Mama's Song)" is a poetically compact expression of love, a powerful hymn carried aloft on a simple three-chord progression.

In the one song on the album she didn't write -- one composed by Field -- she sings "It's Gonna Feel Good (When It Stops Hurting)." Wringing beauty from her pain, Moorer creates music that illustrates an age-old truism: Without sorrow, there is no joy. 

-- Randy Lewis 

Allison Moorer
 "Crows"
 Ryko
 Three and a half stars (Out of four)