The Human Side of a Songwriting Machine

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RYAN ADAMS

“Demolition”

Lost Highway

Rather than release the four (!) albums he has on the shelf, Adams placed what are presumably their 13 best songs on “Demolition” (due in stores Tuesday). The move had its risks, because the works were recorded at different times with different musicians and frequently with different emotional tones in mind. But remarkably, the competing elements blend together so well that this may be Adams’ most immediately appealing and consistent album.

Where his two earlier solo albums tended to focus on specific sides of his music, this celebrates all of them, and makes him seem more interesting and human in the process. The music benefits from the intimate nature of the recordings, which are little more than the demo tapes an artist makes before going into the studio and putting on the final polish. Adams, nominated by many critics and fellow musicians last year as the young singer-songwriter of the day, has never sounded so free vocally or more consistently heartfelt as a writer.

The North Carolinian’s themes range from desolation to desire, and the musical shading shifts from harmonica-driven folk-rock (“Hallelujah”) and bittersweet pop (“Cry on Demand”) to dark, fearful blues (“Jesus: Don’t Touch My Baby”) and the rousing barroom country-rock that the Rolling Stones learned from Gram Parsons (“Chin Up, Cheer Up”).

Through it all, he’s the helpless romantic, reflecting the ups and downs of that role--nowhere better than in “Hallelujah,” where he speaks of being a “desperate man” sheltered only by “a lonely dream,” and “Cry on Demand,” where he admits tenderly, “The truth is I miss you.” Adams plays L.A.’s Wiltern Theatre on Oct. 23.

--Robert Hilburn

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UNDERWORLD

“A Hundred Days Off”

V2

With the 1999 departure of DJ and producer Darren Emerson, Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde faced the question of whether they could maintain their relevance. While Hyde and Smith have a pop sensibility, Emerson brought the dance aspect to the table, and it was when those two elements combined that Underworld became electronic music royalty.

The first studio recording (due Tuesday) from Smith and Hyde since Emerson’s exodus answers the relevance question quickly. “Two Months Off,” the album’s lead single, is a club smash, and with good reason. Vintage Underworld a la the hit “Born Slippy,” the song features a pulsating bass line, synthesizers and a vocal refrain that all rise together to a fever pitch.

The percussive “Dinosaur Adventure 3D” is another dance-floor barnburner. But aside from those two tracks, much of “A Hundred Days Off” is subtler, as in the samba flavorings of the instrumental “Twist,” the whispered vocals of the acid jazz “Little Speaker” and the elegant strings of “Ballet Lane.” Underworld (which plays the Wiltern Theatre on Oct. 21) has always known how to throw down a beat, but what’s distinguished the band from the rest of the electronic field is its ability to do it smartly and with a nod to other genres. That is still intact on “A Hundred Days Off,” and as long as it is, Underworld will remain unquestionably relevant.

--Steve Baltin

***

PETER GABRIEL

“Up”

Geffen/Real World

In a 180-degree swing from the party-rock frippery that made “Sledgehammer” ubiquitous on MTV, Gabriel makes a refreshing return to the contemplative, incandescent work of his late-’70s solo albums. The opening track, “Darkness,” charged with fits of noise and Gabriel’s most hushed and introspective lyrics, makes it clear that “Up” refers here not to an emotional state, but to vertical movements in and out of this life--to birth and death.

Although “I Grieve” descends into the morose and “The Barry Williams Show,” a bizarre rumination on Springer-style trash TV, is a throwaway, other tracks, such as “More Than This,” channel more successfully the theatrical experiments of Gabriel’s legendary proto-prog years with Genesis (especially the vocal treatments).

The entire album (in stores Tuesday) is elevated by “Signal to Noise,” an intelligent and moving struggle for moral clarity in a universe of media overkill, hitting with the resonance of “Games Without Frontiers” or “No Self Control,” and touched with short bursts of the inspired qawwali incantations of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The quiet piano end piece, “The Drop,” is like a lost parenthetical from “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.” Ten years since the saccharine pop of “Us,” Gabriel arrives right on time with a touchstone for the seeking spirit of the day.

--Dean Kuipers

** 1/2

JACKSON BROWNE

“The Naked Ride Home”

Elektra

Browne watchers have had to find their rewards where they can since those days in the ‘70s when the quintessential L.A. singer-songwriter put out album after album brimming with eloquent songs from and to the human heart.

His first new album in six years (due Tuesday) provides one of those rewards in the title song, a rumination on the difference between outer and inner beauty as moving and finely crafted as the best songs from his “For Everyman” and “Late for the Sky” artistic peak.

It’s followed by the first single, “The Night Inside Me,” a strong rocker about the ongoing struggle to live an authentic life. Then the album nose-dives into the clumsy geopolitics that have been the bane of his albums for two decades.

As much as he yearns to be Bob Dylan, Browne has rarely been able to make his views on the world situation personally compelling. He doesn’t come close in “Casino Nation” or “Walking Town,” which miss by a country mile the difference between one person struggling to map out his place in the world (as he once did in “The Pretender”) and lecturing others about theirs.

Things turn around again at album’s end with the meditative rock-gospel number, “Don’t You Want to Be There,” benefiting from Daniel Lanois-like production atmospherics, and the closing treatise on unexpectedly finding new love, “My Stunning Mystery Companion.”

--Randy Lewis

In Brief

** 1/2 Sahara Hotnights, “Jennie Bomb,” Jetset. Better watch your back, Joan Jett ... er, Siouxsie ... um, Babes in Toyland ... ah, Elastica. Here come Sahara Hotnights, riding the Swedish tsunami and placing their trendy skater sneakers squarely in the footprints of their female-rock forebears. What this foursome’s U.S. debut lacks in range and depth, it recompenses with energy, its sassy guitars buzzing with digestible melodies and sprinting breathlessly toward called-out choruses. Never confrontational enough that they aren’t sexy and never heady enough that you forget you’re here to party, Sahara Hotnights offer visceral rewards based on one principle: Waste no time between hooks. (The band performs Wednesday at the Roxy in West Hollywood.)

--Kevin Bronson

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.