than Animal Collective’s enchanted meanderings, and full of Beach Boys bliss, Five Roses distills euphoria into a pastel wall of sound. Play “Hold Your Secrets to Your Heart” twice daily and its cascading keyboards alone should eradicate any nasty mood swings. JENNIFER MAERZ

Rootsy visionary finally reins in his genre mania

Ryan Adams Easy Tiger ITUNES MYSPACE

Municipal Waste The Art of Partying ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Welcome to Richmond! Now, go pass out in the street.

With everyone and their Wolfmother shredding retro-metal riffs, it wasn’t long before a gang of headbangers revived ’80s crossover thrash. Municipal Waste do it so well that any track from their third album could squeeze comfortably between D.R.I. and Gang Green on a mix tape. Like their sozzled ancestors, they focus first on getting blitzed (“Beer Pressure,” “The Inebriator”), but the Waste pack a lot into these two-minute furies—deft riffs, killer drumming, and Tony Foresta’s motormouth vocals. If there’s any irony here, it’s been moshed into oblivion. JASON BUHRMESTER

Back to the Country
At peace with
those “Cuts Like
a Knife” jokes

Ryan Adams has indulged his every artistic impulse: In 2005, the former Whiskeytown frontman released three studio albums (including one double-disc set), and last year he posted on his website more than a dozen CDs’ worth of goofy hip-hop and crusty punk rock under a variety of pseudonyms. Adams’ range is undeniably impressive (check out the pitch-perfect C+C Music Factory impression on DJ Reggie’s East Side Story). Yet the surplus of material has made it hard to remember how potent his alt-country vision can be; Adams hasn’t really made a record you can listen to from beginning to end since 2000’s Heartbreaker.

Until now. Recorded with
his current backing band, the

Cardinals, Easy Tiger plays like a tightly focused best-of compilation from Adams’ past six or seven efforts: You get deep-twang country rock (“Goodnight Rose”), fuzzy new-wave pop (“Halloweenhead”), some mellow Workingman’s Dead– style Americana (“Rip Off”), a little old-school mountain music (“Pearls on a String”), and a handful of acoustic emo-folk ballads that mercifully dial down the scenester-

A handful of ballads
mercifully dial down the
scenester petulance.

brat petulance that has become Adams’ calling card. Lyrically, too, he stays away from the sweeping sub-Springsteen poesy that bogged down his ambitious 2001 album Gold, singing mostly about girls and their ability to hypnotize. At last, Adams has rediscovered that power himself. MIKAEL WOOD

Neurosis Given to the Rising ITUNES MYSPACE Punk dreadnought brings the pain to unsuspecting newbies

As prog-metal bands multiply like flies on a rotting corpse (Isis, Pelican, Cult of Luna, etc.), these Bay Area vets produce the genre’s heaviest album since Bill and Monica. “To the Wind” Rolodexes their skill set, from a gorgeous, spacey intro that mocks imitators with its casual beauty to full-contact rock to Scott Kelly’s 29-second, senses-shattering scream. Track after track, pretenders to the throne are slashed and burned with detailed dynamics, elephantine riffs, and actual grooves. As Steve Von Till puts it on “Hidden Faces”: “I. Will. See you coming!” Your move, Tool. JOE GROSS

has something to prove: At My Age, Lowe’s first studio outing since 2001, is a soul-drenched, horn-inflected labor of lust. The countrified “I Trained Her to Love Me,” which casts Lowe as a lethal lothario, is the album’s best moment, but Age is full of keepers, including “Feel Again,” a dirty-minded honky-tonk shuffle, and “Hope for Us All,” a simmering mix of soap-opera organ and altar-call seduction. SHANNON ZIMMERMAN

in “Gardenia,” and with songs so warmly soul-searching, it’s easy to second that emotion. DOUGLAS WATERMAN

 

Mandy Moore Wild Hope ITUNES MYSPACE Teen-pop princess baby steps toward artistic adulthood On 2003’s Coverage, Mandy Moore showed she had good taste—covering XTC, Joni Mitchell, Joe Jackson, etc.—but artistically, she was still stuck in a candy-pop bubble. Now, on her fifth album, she finally tries to tell her own story, with cowriting help from singer/ songwriters Rachael Yamagata and Lori McKenna, as well as Boston folk-pop duo the Weepies. The tunes are catchy and heartfelt, as Moore moves from lush ballads to acoustic folk that recalls Patty Griffin. “It’s been good, getting to know me more,” she confesses

Sinéad O’Connor Theology ITUNES MYSPACE No pope-bashing for peace-seeking universal mom

As personally conflicted and complex as her hyperexpres-sive voice is pure, the Irish iconoclast flees pop celebrity again with this overly generous two-CD set of originals and covers about spirituality. The musically conservative, but more flattering, acoustic disc smooths out the stodgy biblical sentiments by focusing sympathetically on O’Connor’s croon, but the second record (with full-band versions of the same songs, save one) falters with a clunky combo of Celtic rock and leaden hip-hop rhythms that squashes the fragile, hook-free tunes. This reclusive talent doesn’t require reverent studio sheen to sound prayerful. BARRY WALTERS

On their second album in less than two years, this melodic Tennessee foursome deliver everything that a group of new-school mall punks angling for the big time should—massive guitar riffs, sweetly infectious choruses, and soaring power ballads that are sure to get some play at this year’s winter formal. Their biggest asset, though, is singer Hayley Williams, an 18-year-old siren with a killer fashion sense and an undeniable knack for writing contemplative love songs. In a scene overrun by boring boys with flat-ironed hair, she stands apart. Call her Karen Emo. TREVOR KELLEY

ing—finding the styles they do
best, honing them rigorously,
and chucking everything else.
That process is complete on
their third album, with the title
track and the strongly melodic
“Bliss in Concrete” achieving in
five- or six-minute mini epics
what used to take the band
twice the time and effort.
J. NIIMI

NEAL CASAL

Nick Lowe At My Age ITUNES MYSPACE Jesus of cool bares soulful roots, still has his mojo

Nick Lowe produced Elvis Costello’s first five albums and the Damned’s debut, and as a solo artist, he’s never released a dud. But he still acts like he

Paramore
Riot! ½
ITUNES MYSPACE
Fierce Benatar heir leads
enterprising pop punkers

Pelican City of Echoes ½ ITUNES MYSPACE The Platonic ideal of no-nonsense heavy riffage

When I first saw Pelican live in their hometown of Chicago a few years back, they sounded, well, young: The quartet’s instrumentals guilelessly ventured from futuristic neo-metal à la Voivod to ominous, Neurosis-like art-doom to the high-prog constructions of King Crimson. Why? Because they could. The band’s maturation has been a matter of winnow-

Pissed Jeans Hope for Men ½ ITUNES MYSPACE A moment of silence for Am Rep Records—raarrrrggh!

Of today’s numerous punk bands reminding us that the Jesus Lizard and their queasy ilk didn’t die in vain, this quartet of mopes from Allentown, Pennsylvania, might be the best. Their blown-amp sludge punk demonstrates, as noise-rock godfather Steve Albini once put it, “how fucking holy distortion sounds on just about anything.” Amen, brother. Matt Korvette’s hotfoot howl stays safely buried under landfills of guitar grumble and bar-fight drum pound, but he sounds like he’s just dying to break out and rub himself on you. Of course he says he’s “not a people person!” Who wants friendly scum? JOE GROSS