The Swell Season
Strict Joy
Anti

Following up their 2006 debut and soundtrack to the film Once, which earned the duo a Best Song Oscar for “Falling Slowly,”  The Swell Season have returned with a new studio set, Strict Joy.  Glen Hansard and once romantic and still musical partner Marketa Irglova are The Swell Season, along with musicians that include members of Hansard’s other band, The Frames.  Some of the songs have been previewed live for the past year-plus, including “Low Rising,” while other highlights include “Feeling the Pull,” the passionate “The Rain,” and surging build of “High Horses.”  Irglova contributes fewer songs, though “Fantasy Man” and “I Have Loved You Wrong” are both little gems. Examining themes, clearly this is very much a break-up album, yet the tone remains hopeful. The deluxe edition includes a second CD of live tracks from the last couple of tours for a total of 32 tracks in all — 13 on the new album and 19 live recordings for a fine package.

Twilight: New Moon Soundtrack
Chop Shop/Atlantic

Okay, even if you’re not swept up in Twilight-mania (especially if you’re a male who just does not get it at all), the soundtrack from the latest film, New Moon, stands on its own as a superior songs collection that comes off like a sampler from music-minded public radio outlets such as KCRW in Southern California.  Featuring known artists, lesser-knowns and some unknowns, it’s a well-constructed set of songs that includes Death Cab for Cutie’s moody opener “Meet Me on the Equinox,”  followed by the more jagged “Friends” by Band of Skulls. Thom Yorke of Radiohead plumbs dark electronica with “Hearing Damage,” while The Killers’ “A White Demon Love Song,”  is one of the clear stand-outs.  You’ll also find a remix of Muse’s new single, “I Belong to You,” that sounds a bit too Supertrampish to me, though Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s folksy turn with “Done All Wrong” is probing, while Hurricane Bells charge things up with “Monsters,” and OK Go’s new  “Shooting the Moon” is typically playful pop rock. The closing “No Sound But the Wind” by The Editors is a comforting piano-anchored ballad that could score the UK band the sleeper U.S. hit it deserves.  In between, you’ll find plenty more to check out, even if you don’t get near the movie. The New Moon soundtrack may well be better than the actual film (though that’s for Twilos to decide).

R.E.M.
Live at the Olympia
Warner Bros.

Available as a 2-CD set or CD/DVD package, Live at the Olympia is the concert set R.E.M fans have been waiting for.  Sure, there’s plenty to argue that’s missing from the set list, but it still covers various eras of the band, with 39 songs from the band’s 2007 “working rehearsals” in Dublin, Ireland at the Olympia Theatre testing new material from Accelerate over five, mixing in older songs.  Produced by Jacknife Lee  (who also co-produced Accelerate), the band’s revitalized energy is fully captured on stage.  The old fan faves include  ”Harborcoat,” “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” and “Maps and Legends” among them, as well as what one might call mid-period R.E.M. such as “Circus Envy” and “Electrolite,” while the band – no surprise – nails the newest songs like “Until the Day is Done” and the scorching “Living Well is the Best Revenge.”  You’ll also find the ever-soulful “Cuhahoga” and ringing “South Central Rain.” Some of the obvious hits are missing here, but the real R.E.M. faithful won’t mind at all.

Los Lobos
Goes Disney
Walt Disney Records

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah?  You betcha’, as the skillful Los Lobos offer up a special album of Disney songs done their way. Of course, they did it years ago on a Disney tribute album with a version of “I Wanna Be Like You” from Jungle Book, which also appears here in a new incarnation.  Goes Disney is a sheer delight, especially the opening rave-up of “Heigh Ho” from Snow White, a straight-ahead tropical-Latin “Tiki Tikki Tiki Room” from The Enchanted Tiki Room attraction at Disneyland, ska-styled “Grim Grinning Ghosts” from The Haunted Mansion, a blues-walk “Cruella DaVille” from 101 Dalmations, and “The Bare Necessities,” again from Jungle Book. The band wraps it up turning a medley of “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “It’s a Small World” into a surf music-meets-Conjunto party.

Lyle Lovett
Natural Forces
Universal Nashville

Not his best but still good, Natural Forces does a push-pull between somewhat whimsical-laced country the Lyle Lovett way, and more introspective and even sorrowful balladry.  The stand-out is “Pantry,” which is here twice in a country roadhouse two-step take and then at the end of the record as more of a bluegrass number.  The silly “Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel” is still fun (“choke my chicken” indeed), while “It’s Rock and Roll” (co-written with Texas compadre Robert Earl Keen) is the most (the first?) cut-loose rock song Lovett has recorded over the past two decades-plus.  He covers — again — some of his favorite songwriters in interpretations of David Ball, Eric Taylor, Vince Bell, and longtime hero Townes Van Zant’s “Loretta.”  A mixed bag here.

Gogol Bordello
Live from Axis Mundi
Side One Dummy

Gypsy-punks Gogol Bordello are best experienced live, and this CD/DVD explains what the circus is all about.  Fronted by madman Eugene Hutz, Live from Axis Mundi is loaded with manic material driven by campfire violin and spry Eastern European rhythms.  The CD includes six tracks from the group’s 2008 sessions for the BBC’s Radio 1, along with unreleased tracks from session for the albums Gypsy Punks and Super Taranta. The DVD features a 15-song set shot over two nights in NYC at Irving Plaza, along with an hour of bonus footage that includes music videos.  Too bad the entire live set couldn’t be on a CD as well, from songs like “Sally” and “Mishto” to “Start Wearing Purple” and “Think Globally, F*&k Locally.”  Still, the mishmash offered here is a load of fun and will make you want to see Gogol live, should you get that chance.

Leonard Cohen
Live at the Isle of Wight
Sony Legacy
CD/DVD

The much-younger Leonard Cohen here, then 35, was already a veteran songwriter when he appeared in the wee hours of the morning on August 31, 1970 to play the third annual Isle of Wight festival which would go on to be a historic UK/European concert event.  This CD/DVD captures Cohen’s haunting performance which captured a quite heated and even dangerous crowd. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner (From Mao To Mozart, Festival, Message To Love) shot the footage, which includes versions of Cohen’s now-classics “So Long, Marianne,” “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye,” “Suzanne,” “Bird On The Wire,” and other songs, along with spoken word pieces and poetry. The CD mirrors the DVD in selections, and this release is also available on 180-gram Vinyl and Blu-ray.  Also, this is a fine companion to Leonard Cohen Live in London, which finds him at 75 still hushing and mesmerizing an audience with what is often the quietest of material.

Rickie Lee Jones
Balm in Gilead
Fantasy

On Balm In Gilead, Rickie Lee Jones presents a very folksy sets of songs that are quite warm and inviting.  Among the the key tracks are “You’re Old Enough to Know” and the heartfelt “Remember Me,” while “The Moon is Made of Gold” reworks a song she first recorded more than 20 years ago, written by her father, Richard L. Jones.  Other stand-outs include the more decorous “His Jeweled Floor” and curio “The Blue Ghazel.”  This is a crafted set that resonates with an organic feel – something to be appreciated in this age of easy electronic fix-its and studio sheen.

Mark Stuart and the Bastard Sons
Bend in the Road
Texicali/Dualtone

Pick this up and you’ll hear one of the best country music albums of the year, vastly superior and more rewarding than most Nashville-churned “product.” On Bend in the Road, Mark Stuart, who has long led alt-country band The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, has now transitioned to playing under his name with the The Bastard Sons tag.  He leads off with a cover of Billy Joe Shaver’s wishful “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal” (“but I’m gonna be a diamond someday”), then shifts to the original tune “Restless Ramblin’ Man” with a bluegrass underpinning.  The Bastard’s Sons’ prior sound echoes through tracks such as “When Loves Comes A Callin’” and “Gone Like A Raven,” which is just fine.  Things get bluesy for “7 Miles to Memphis” and chipper “Everything’s Going My Way,” while “Firefiles (And Corn Liquor)” is a fired-up tune, and “Carolina” makes for a nice ballad closer. There’s plenty of twang and roadhouse revvin’ up overall, as Stuart enters his next phase looking back a bit, but more so staring straight forward at what’s to come.