Rave On Buddy Holly (Fantasy)

High-profile film-music supervisor Randall Poster assembled quite the high-profile cast to revive these 19 ancient titles. The Black Keys! Cee-Lo Green! Florence + the Machine! My Morning Jacket! She & Him! A whole bunch of rather dull yet commercially viable succès d'estimes! But lo, handed the gift of Buddy's simple tunes and simpler lyrics, they joyfully escape the craft-by-numbers of their own compositions, leaving it to father figures Paul McCartney and Lou Reed to disrespect Holly's classics and to materfamilias Patti Smith to solemnize Holly's fluff‑-which they can, because they're Holly's coequals. The way his heedless old songs liberate cautious young professionals lays to rest any doubts as to whether he belongs in the same pantheon as George M. Cohan and Irving Berlin. He just bequeathed us a smaller book. A MINUS

Grin: The Very Best of Grin Featuring Nils Lofgren (Spindizzy/Epic Associated/Legacy '99)

Lofgren is an even better argument than Buddy Holly himself for the historically dubious proposition that rock and roll is the proper province of inspired striplings, because he didn't die. Instead he turned pro, grinding out dozens of overstated, unfulfilled albums before and after Bruce Springsteen provided a use for an enthusiasm that got pretty grotesque as his spontaneity vanished with his chronological youth. Consisting entirely of material selected from or contemporary with the three albums he released before he was 22, these 19 songs are dazzling evidence of the grace and spritz with which the kid fused teen spirit and prodigious virtuosity‑-an evolved rock and roll that articulates the romantic lyricism left implicit by Holly. Nothing wrong with implication. But you can feel it rising up in such unnecessarily obscure titles as "Slippery Fingers" and "Everybody's Missin' the Sun." A

Shabazz Palaces: Black Up (Sub Pop)

Play loud. I can't speak to the listening practices of the post-illbient beatmakers whose tricks Palaceer Lazaro gathers together and improves on like he's just been waiting for the go-ahead from Tricky himself. But though I wouldn't be surprised if they blasted everything at 10, I think of them as background guys best heard on de facto dinner comps like, say, Mush Filmstrip (Frame 1). Don't make that mistake on an album that improves mightily when the volume is high enough to break the beats into components so they're impossible to ignore. That way, there's no mistaking it for the aimless prog Sub Pop probably hopes gullible white youngsters lump it with. Special favorites for me are the children's-chorus loop turned mbira-and-hand-drums​ on "An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum," the kinetic drum'n'whatever of "yeah you," the faux-woodwind-lick/s​urrogate-maracas-ele​ctroclicks/African-e​tc.-outro of "Swerve . . . the reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)." But I like them all‑-the beats, that is. The titles are for the gullible, and shouldn't give you the wrong idea about the rhymes even though the beats are why you'll play this. Loud. A MINUS

Street Sweeper Social Club: The Ghetto Blaster EP (SSSC)

For Tom Morello to swap Zack De La Rocha for the smarter, funnier, savvier, flowinger Boots Riley looked better than it sounded on the resultant album, due partly to Riley's loss of lyrical bite and partly to the musical falloff from Coup to mere Rage. But on this apparent afterthought Riley sounds as mad as ever, calling out the pres by name and declowning himself on "Scars (Hold That Pose)": "This old ripped jacket is 'cause I am an artist/I'll burn rubber on you if my car'll get started/Third month avoiding landlords is the hardest/It's only funny 'cause you don't see where the scar is." And this being an EP, there are killer covers. "Paper Planes" is subtly revised from a song about how they'll take your money to a song about how we will. A verbatim "Mama Said Knock You Out" becomes a threat. "Everythang" was a Coup song to begin with. A MINUS

Shabazz Palaces: Of Light (Switchblade Music/Templar)

Ishmael Butler surfaced as Digable Planets' Butterfly, briefly led the electrofunk CherryWine a decade later, and then sunk from view until the near simultaneous 2009 release of two illegibly documented alt-rap EPs‑-even determining Butler's involvement required investigative reporting. Lead track on the first promises both "ideology to go" and "attack of the funky clones," but until the be-what-you-are closer, the record delivers mostly clones or at least "clones," including Butler as raggamuffin and a rent-a-thug calling out such "drug pushers" as Osama, Bush II, and old-schooler Oliver North. Fortunately, when the funk is this deep and weird, replicas sound like singletons every time. A MINUS

Shabazz Palaces: Shabazz Palaces (Switchblade Music/Templar)

Rhyming dark and down over beats artier than Dilla's, the artist currently known as Palaceer Lazaro dares you to pin him down. Although the music is less peculiar than first appears, exotica guitar and group-hey-with-fogho​rn and looped-mbira-tunelet​ don't exactly shout street. Yet quietly but clearly, the rapper sticks to MC swagger, casual criminality, partying till you wild out, "a lot of hopes and wishes and dreams in here"‑-plus just enough cautionary reality to keep his ideology fresh. Think of him as a locally based documentarian‑-a "bright light on the dark side of town" with a cool hand on the dimmer switch. A MINUS

Teddybears: Devil's Music (Big Beat/Atlantic)

Where the nominally similar Gorillaz are cool and detached, Teddybears want the world and they want it soon. Early in the lead track Eve‑-you remember Eve‑-utters, in fact sings, "I am the robot Elvis rocking my bionic pelvis/I'm Technotronic sipping vodka tonics yeah I'm selfish/I am the Killer shaking up some more rock and roll," at which point a vocodored Patrick Arve, Joakim Ahlund, or (most likely) Klas Ahlund murmurs, "Them drum machines ain't got no soul." Joke or gauntlet? The cheap answer is both, but let's make it gauntlet. Not afraid to be funny because they're having so much fun, Arve-Ahlund-Ahlund are one more electrobeat-wielding​ Swedish cartel bent on proving that rock and roll proceeds from enlightened capitalism like we had in America before our plutocrats started expanding the national income gap up past Colombia's. As soon as Eve is through, here come B.o.B. exulting about how he's gon' "Get Mama a House," Wayne Coyne having a go at "Crystal Meth Christians," Cee-Lo and the B-52's praising a pussycat who happens to be named "Cho Cha." There's also some unusually cheerful Krautrock and the antidrug "Cardiac Arrest," featuring the Teddybears' close personal business associate Robyn, who's why they got to make another U.S. album. Last one was Soft Machine, 2006. Sounded good then. Now it sounds like rock and roll busy being reborn. A

The Russian Futurists: The Weight's on the Wheels (Upper Class)

Throwing off his electrofuzz duvet, bedroom-pop solitary Matthew Adam Hart ambles over to a handy recording studio, where he dispenses with comforting layers of echo as if he's finally decided to let the obscure objects of his desire understand his intentions. A few tunes do some stretches, and then a young woman decides it's worth her while to look good too. Soon she and Hart are back in the bedroom, but together, spending "the rest of the night under the covers." Hart suffers his usual second thoughts: "I don't even know what it's like to be honest." But the warmth they shared sticks with him. Maybe he's finally decided that in Toronto you need all the warmth you can get. A MINUS

Ofori Amponsah: Odwo (Supermusic '07)

In Twi and in English, highlife new jack Amponsah has one of those tenors you assume is a falsetto until he feels obliged to spend quality time up even higher, as on the self-pitying "Nothing but Love" or the pitying "Homeless," the sentimentality of which would be easier to resist were it more contained and also if there weren't so many homeless African children. More often he's a cheerleader, as on "Highlife Dancing," with its good Ghanaian sunshine, and "Babicue," where champagne will be served. So sweet he has no need for Auto-Tune, he butters it on anyway, and as with the sentimentality the music just gets more beautiful as a result. He tries so hard you'd be a cad to tell him no. A MINUS

Nigeria 70: Sweet Times: Afro-Funk, Highlife & Juju From 1970s Lagos (Strut)

As with 2008's Lagos Jump, the boon is that the "funk" is so tentative‑-mostly a few chicken-scratch guitars that barely qualify. The bass lines lope and what trap drumming there is owes nothing audible to Jabo Starks or Ziggy Modeliste. Strut says none of these recordings has ever been released outside Nigeria, and indeed, when I pulled down my vinyl on Dele Abiodun's 15-minute keeper "It's Time for Juju Music" I learned that it had in fact been manufactured in the mother country. Such little-heard luminaries as Victor Olaiya and Ebenezer Obey stake their claims, and I enjoyed Ali Chukwumah's un-chicken scratch "Henrietta" so instantaneously I assumed I'd already heard it somewhere‑-which it would appear that I had not. A MINUS

The Real Bahamas, Volumes I & II (Nonesuch Explorer Series '98)

Recorded by two young amateurs in 1965, initially released in 1966 and 1978, then re-released minus two tracks on one CD, these part-sung, finger-picked gospel songs constitute one of the great treasures of folkiedom's collecting adventure. Here is the individual untutored genius in the person of the literally nonpareil guitarist Joseph Spence. But here also for once is communal creativity in action, as leaders rhyme their couplets while so-called background singers dab, smear, and pixilate the music we're there for, and I dare you to decide who's who for the entirety of "God Locked the Lion's Jaw." Although full-fledged tunes rise up only intermittently from the quirkily articulated babble, many of these have been anointed classics‑-"I Bid You Good Night," "Out on the Rolling Sea," "Don't Take Everybody to Be Your Friend." The Bahamas became a haven for escaped U.S. slaves after slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834. Friendly but also mischievous and not all that easy to know, these folks sound as if they know the limits of friendship to be one of God's great truths. A

Fania Records 1964-1980: The Original Sound of Latin New York (Strut)

I'm reviewing this 29-track double-CD with my judgment, conscience, and sense of history as half a dozen imagined family members roll their hips slightly while looking over my shoulder; my ears, body, brain, and musical tastebuds, while present, aren't dominant. What you get without fail is impressive singing in half a dozen pleasurably varied Afro-Hispanic modes, more clave than you can shake a peg at, and montunos of noticeable firmness and vigor; what you get sometimes is piano solos of jazzlike sophistication, a rare thing, and big-band arrangements of playful sophistication, a rarer one. What you get too often is arrangements that are overbearing, even bombastic. By the second disc, as the music bigs up the way world-beating pop styles always do, the horn tuttis take over, leading inexorably and paradigmatically to the strings that puff up Hector Lavoe's 10-minute "El Cantante," which aficionados revere and I can't stand, especially once the strings start eliciting soundtrack moves from the horns. But right around there Ruben Blades is throwing his simplifying intelligence around and Celia Cruz is chipping in some female principle. Fania was the definitive salsa label, and there are unmistakably great records I'd never heard here: Richie Ray & Bobby Cruz's "Sonido Bestial," Johnny Pacheco's "Dakar, Punta Final," the Fania All-Stars' long, live "Quitate Tu," maybe even some on the second disc. Also, you're probably more tolerant of tuttis than I am. B PLUS

Jerry Lee Lewis: "Live" at the Star Club, Hamburg (Rhino '92)

Assembled from two shows recorded in one night in 1964, released in Europe shortly thereafter but in the U.S. not till a 1986 Mercury LP that's barely a rumor, this legendary 37-minute performance is our last and clearest glimpse of Jerry Lee as a young world-beater. Not only has he bulled his way past the incest 'n' bigamy tour of 1958 and the drowning death of his son in 1962, he's some kind of hero in a Europe rediscovering '50s rock and roll via Beatlemania. Without cracking the charts or drawing crowds commensurate with his ego on the endless tour that is his life, he believes so profoundly in his pact with the devil that he remains unbowed. Here that faith is both made manifest and recorded for posterity, which otherwise never happened on the same night. Admirers attribute this ungodly miracle to one emotional resource or other, but I find Lewis so impenetrable psychologically that I hesitate to put a name on it. Instead I'll list a few technical attributes. Both performance and recording are very clean. Tempos are speedy, and the backing band‑-the Nashville Teens of "Tobacco Road" renown‑-keep up manfully. "Mean Woman Blues" and "Money" are definitive. And the piano kills. A

Wire: 14 September 2002, Metro, Chicago (pinkflag.com download)

"The best rock show I've seen in years," I crowed to my diary about their visit to the Bowery Ballroom on 6/27/03, when they were still flogging the same '02-'03 Read and Burn/Send material they detonate here. The cruder, broader, louder live versions are executed in precisely the same arrangements as the studio originals, and after the seven-minute buildup of "99.9," every song they choose to play rocks. Avant-garde dabblers who counted punk among their disciplines, they made their decision to define unrelenting and moved on. Just this year, at the Bowery 4/6/11, their formalism was equally uncompromising. But it treated rock as the one option among many it is. I was disappointed. A MINUS

Lady Gaga: Born This Way (Streamline/Intersco​pe/KonLive)

First of all, avoid the "Special Edition." Of the three extra songs, only "The Queen" would be a decent B side, and the remixes are as unnecessary as usual. Even at normal length, moreover, this isn't up to The Fame or The Fame Monster. But both of those keep growing, and with its mad momentum and nutty thematics, this one could too--despite being laid down on tour trailed by 28 semis. Ever the non-Catholic, I let "Judas" and "Bloody Mary" slide while going all googly-eared for the hilarious "Hair," where the nimbus of every woman's vanity becomes the cutting edge of every woman's freedom, and "Americano," a marriage proposal to a Chicana in a flowered skirt that's as sincere and unreliable as The Fame Monster's "Alejandro," where the title inamorato keeps morphing into Fernando and Roberto. This lags seriously only on the one with unicorns in it, a no-no not even Gaga can safely defy, and a big closer that just doesn't take the whole effort over the top where it belongs. The country song in particular is a hoot, which reminds me that the title track wasn't inspired solely by "Express Yourself." Close your eyes on the refrain and you can almost hear Carl Perkins lining out "You've got the right string baby but the wrong yo-yo." A MINUS

Pink: Greatest Hits . . . So Far!!! (LaFace/Jive)

Nine of these 16 tracks are from albums with their own strong identities, including four from the 2001 policy statement Misundaztood, the rest of which holds up fine even without them. Normally, that would be too many. But the same four songs transfer nicely from that concept album to a best-of that salvages the pugnacious "So What," links "Trouble" to "Glitter in the Air," and adds two top-shelf Max Martin blends. It's where I will go for a shot of the longterm hitmaker rather than the 21-year-old who's finding herself in public. A MINUS