CDs of the week

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LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver

Joss Stone: Introducing Joss Stone

Simply Red: Stay

Maria Taylor: Lynn Tweeter Flower

Au Revoir Simone: The Bird of Music

Wynton Marsalis: From the Plantation to the Penitentiary

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Joss Stone, Simply Red, LCD Soundsystem and New Orleans jazz star Wynton Marsalis all release CDs this week. Read the reviews here.

POP

LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver (EMI)
*****
James Murphy has been a fashionable name to drop for a while now, thanks to his work as head of New York dance label DFA, his production duties for punk-funk bands such as the Rapture, and a handful of witty, dancefloor-melting singles as LCD Soundsystem. This second album is a fabulous amalgam of all he does best, from slow-building, epic electronica to twinkling ballads and sharp, embittered lyrics. It should shoot him from the hipster ghetto to major crossover success. His vocals move from gruff towards touching on the lovelorn buzz of Someone Great, and in the raucous North American Scum, he has created an ironic new national anthem for his compatriots. The pulsing rhythms will still sound fantastic in the disco, but there's more than enough depth here to fascinate anywhere. David Smyth

Joss Stone
Introducing Joss Stone (Universal)
****
Despite her nine million album sales, being a white teenager from Kent who sounds like a broken-hearted black American has left Joss Stone with a freakshow tag that's been hard to shake. Without trying too hard to contrive a new sound, however, her third album goes some way to rectifying this, representing a logical progression from her more derivative previous work. New single Tell Me 'Bout It may be produced by smooth R&B dude Raphael Saadiq, but there's really nothing "street" about it. The track has a pleasingly funked-up Seventies soul flavour with Stone's voice sounding more natural and genuine than ever. Tell Me What We're Gonna Do Now, featuring a rap from Common, represents a more meaningful engagement with the 21st century, its fusion of hip hop, R&B and acoustic guitar bringing back memories of TLC's Unpretty. Still only 19, Joss Stone has proved beyond all doubt that she's more than just a pretty voice. Chris Elwell-Sutton

Simply Red
Stay (simplyred.com)
***
Simply Red's hopelessly misguided decision to go their own way as a cottage industry without record company backing may have killed their career at one suicidal stroke, but the crime is mitigated by Stay's many charms. Reduced budgets and concomitant cheap packaging notwithstanding, it finds Mick Hucknall at his most vocally seductive in years, although at one English-mangling point, he manages to rhyme "tirade" with "laugh". If we forget Money TV, a childish anti-MTV rant and the lumpen Good Times Have Done Me Wrong, he's even upped his songwriting game, with the impossibly romantic The World and You Tonight and the title track. Meanwhile The Death of the Cool and Little Englander suggest a sense of humour and a still smouldering fire respectively. Mostly admirable. John Aizlewood

Maria Taylor
Lynn Tweeter Flower (Saddle Creek)
****
If critics are to be believed, last year's extraordinary Ys by Joanna Newsom made all other female singer-songwriters redundant. But it doesn't mean that terrific, if more conventional, outings such as Lynn Tweeter Flower are inferior - not everyone aspires to be cutting edge. Taylor's second album is a glorious melange of melancholic harmonies, teardrop-sad lyrics and lush pop. Clean Getaway, for example, is a spartan but upbeat account of leaving a long-term relationship - until the killer last line, which will bring tears to your eyes. Taylor needs no fancy five-part epics to impress: sometimes the simplest stories are the most moving. Paul Connolly

INDIE

Au Revoir Simone
The Bird Of Music (Moshi Moshi Records) ****
Take three girls from New York state, three keyboards, a drum machine and a certain bookish frisson and what you end up with is this rather special little record. The Bird Of Music is Au Revoir Simone's second album in as many years, and while it won't make them global superstars, those who like their music literate, warm and evocative will love it. Stars builds to a sparkly, deceptively romantic chorus ("You make me wanna measure stars in the back yard with a calculator and a ruler, baby") and Sad Song trips along on a Stereolab pulse while limpid banks of synths swirl around. Often beautiful, always intriguing. Paul Connolly

JAZZ

Wynton Marsalis
From the Plantation to the Penitentiary (Blue Note)
****
The bright New Orleans optimism of Wynton Marsalis has darkened significantly since the Bush administration allowed his flooded hometown to stew in its soggy ruins. Blending his eloquent trumpet with the alto voice of Jennifer Sanon, Walter Blandings's tenor sax and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra's rhythm section, Marsalis takes a harder look at the black man's progress in the Land of the Free. Paced with swing, Charleston, shuffle, Latin and Motown beats, his new suite paints sardonic pictures of the "tattered ragmen" of America, bypassed by super-capitalism and marginalised into a world of drugs, prostitution and street crime. Moulded with controlled anger and subtle dissonances, the songs have a bitter beauty. Jack Massarik

 

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