Shivaree have built a career out of the torch song. The California trio, Ambrosia Parsley (vocals), Duke McVinnie (guitar), and Danny McGough (keyboards), combine the subtle twang of the Cowboy Junkies with the jazzy sophistication of Billie Holiday. The end result makes for the perfect late-night listen. On Who's Got Trouble, they're joined by over a dozen musicians on cello, violin, and other instruments, but Parsley's girlish, yet knowing voice is the centrepiece of their seductive sound. Their third full-length follows an auspicious appearance in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 2 ("Goodnight Moon," from their debut, I Oughtta Give You a Shot in the Head For Making Me Live in This Dump, plays over the end credits). It features nine originals, highlighted by the reverb-laden "I Close My Eyes," and two fine covers, Dave Bartholomew and Pearl King's wistful "Someday" and Brian Eno's strange, surrealistic "The Fat Lady of Limbourg. " -Kathleen C. Fennessy.

BR5-49's first full-length disc isn't a bad album, but it offers nothing that hasn't been done earlier and better by nouveau honky-tonk and rockabilly bands in Boston, Austin, LA, Washington and Baltimore. Gary Bennett and Chuck Mead, BR5-49's two singing/songwriting guitarists, mix six originals with old songs by the likes of Webb Pierce, Mel Tillis, Ray Price, Moon Mullican and Gram Parsons. BR5-49 perform with the enthusiasm and competence of the seasoned bar band it is, but neither Bennett nor Mead is a special singer or picker and the rhythm section lumbers along without distinction. One suspects that BR5-49 were signed because they showcased regularly on Lower Broadway in Nashville, where country-music executives who don't get out much thought they were seeing something unprecedented. -Geoffrey Himes.

Named in honour of the three-word codes used by short-wave radio operators, Wilco's fourth album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sounds like a late-night broadcast of some weirdly wonderful pop station punctuated by static and the sonic bleed of competing signals. Songs that begin with simple, elegiac grace-"Ashes of American Flags" and "Poor Places"-end in a cathartic squall of distortion. The results can be initially jarring, but it's these tracks more than the sturdy jangle pop of "Kamera" or "Heavy Metal Drummer" that demand, and reward, repeated listens. Mixed by studio experimentalist Jim O'Rourke and produced by the band, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot harkens back to a time when the words "pop" and "sonic adventurism" weren't mutually exclusive. The Beatles and Kurt Cobain knew this, and clearly so do Jeff Tweedy and company. -Keith Moerer.

Roots and groove mark this teaming of John Hiatt and the North Mississippi Allstars. On Master of Disaster, legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson and his sons Luther and Cody (the Allstars' guitarist and drummer, respectively) team with veteran bassist David Hood to give Hiatt's music a slow simmer rather than the high voltage fans might have expected from the collaboration. Yet the airy, organic interplay of the band provides the perfect complement for Hiatt's songs of folkish simplicity and lyrical grace. With the title track, he addresses the artist's midlife crisis and finds creative renewal in the process, a theme revisited in the country balladry of "Old School. " There's a ragtime spirit to "Wintertime Blues" and "Back on the Corner," the insistence of a tom-tom's thump on "Love's Not Where We Thought We Left It" and "Find You At Last," a slide guitar that slices and dices through "Ain't Ever Goin' Back. " With "When My Love Crosses Over," Hiatt returns to the soulful, soaring romantic balladry that remains a signature specialty, while "Cold River" tells a story that probes the coldest resources of the human heart. The result is his richest and most consistently satisfying release since the late 1980s. -Don McLeese.

Allison Moorer's passionate power earned her first two albums substantial and well-deserved critical acclaim and a loyal fan base. On Miss Fortune, she's shifted away from eclectic neo-traditionalism to more contemporary (i. e. , conventional) Nashville studio arrangements, and the approach is different enough that it may prove disconcerting to some fans of her earlier albums. Still, her original lyrics remain sharp and focused as she explores a wide spectrum of emotions. The magnificent "Steal the Sun" and acerbic "Hey Jezebel" balance the melancholy of "Tumbling Down", the grim cautionary "Dying Breed," and the torchy "No Place for a Heart". While her vocal and compositional integrity remain intact, the question is what this budding paradigm shift portends for her future. Others who emerged as acclaimed neo-traditionalists (Sara Evans comes to mind) failed to significantly broaden their appeal until they firmly embraced the bland, mechanical predictability that still pervades Nashville. If Moorer is aiming for mainstream success by mollifying country radio, it's understandable. Whether that strategy works remains to be seen. [+]

On his third release of a most prolific year, Ryan Adams takes a break from his band, the Cardinals, to fashion an introspective song cycle with stripped-down arrangements focused on acoustic guitar or solo piano. After the propulsive, self-mythologizing title track opens the album in brazen fashion, forging an unlikely bond of comparison between John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and the early '70s Grateful Dead, much of the rest of 29 finds Adams at his dreamiest (the reveries of "Strawberry Wine" and "Elizabeth, You Were Born to Play That Part") and most rapturously romantic (the aching falsetto on the lovesick "Starlite Diner"). He continues to take chances and not all of them pay off, with the underwatery echo of "Night Birds" and the over-the-top dramatics of "The Sadness" showing the downside of self-indulgence, though "Carolina Rain" suggests he can return to the alt-country prime of Whiskeytown whenever the mood strikes. With the intimacy of the closing "Voices," Adams sounds less like he is singing a song than sharing a secret. Refusing to rein himself in or pin himself down, he sings on the title track, "You can't hang on to something that won't stop moving. " -Don McLeese.