April 4, 2004

The Neptunes' Guilty Pleasures

.E.R.D. Everything the Neptunes leave out of their hip-hop hits goes into their songs for N.E.R.D., the band that includes the Neptunes — Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo — and their friend Shay Haley. On N.E.R.D.'s second album, "Fly or Die" (Virgin), that includes rock guitars, melodic verses, Beatles chords, live drums and a distinct hippie streak, from light-headed optimism to antiwar sentiments. It also includes more mixed emotions than chartmaking hip-hop allows. Between the romantic come-ons and dance workouts, N.E.R.D. has sympathy for misfits and teenage runaways, and it understands that positive thinking can be hard-earned. While Mr. Williams isn't much of a singer, "Fly or Die" has goofy charms to spare.

SUSAN MCKEOWN From the bottomless trove of Irish ballads, Susan McKeown's "Sweet Liberty" (World Village/Harmonia Mundi) comes up with songs of love, emigration and battle. Her voice has a mournful purity, and it's usually backed by pristinely folky guitar, fiddle and whistles. But she adds surprises: trip-hop electronics, mariachi trumpet and even Ensemble Tartit from Mali sharing a Gaelic call-and-response song that taunts, "May a peeled potato with the moon in its middle choke you."

`NIGHT TRAIN TO NASHVILLE' Nowadays Memphis means rhythm-and-blues and Nashville means country, but things weren't so black and white in the decades after World War II. "Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm-and-Blues 1945-1970" (CMF), released in conjunction with an exhibition at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, fills two CD's with rare jump-blues, boogie-woogie, blues, soul, doo-wop and rock 'n' roll, plus some uproarious commercials, that were recorded in Nashville. The title of the 1946 Cecil Gant song that starts the album sums it up: "Nashville Jumps."

50 FOOT WAVE Hold the introspection: 50 Foot Wave, the latest band led by Kristin Hersh, who founded Throwing Muses, cranks up a punky guitar frenzy on its self-titled debut EP (Throwing Music). In songs fueled by wounded fury, the music holds on to the tightly wound, shifting meters of Throwing Muses, but punches harder while the lyrics grow confrontational. These songs should roar from the stage, and Ms. Hersh plans to let people hear them at 100 tour dates a year and on a new EP every nine months.

RON SEXSMITH Chiming 1960's folk-rock and Beatles-tinged melodies can't quite pull Ron Sexsmith out of the moderate despair that suffuses his songs. His voice seems wary, tempted to retreat at any moment. But hope is creeping up on him despite himself on "Retriever" (Nettwerk), an album full of reluctant love songs and grudging contentment: "If this ain't happiness, baby, it'll do," he sings, as if unable to believe his luck.

MYLAB It's easy to tell how the pieces on "Mylab" (Terminus) began: as vamps and loops for jamming in the studio. Yet it's impossible to guess where they'll end up. Mylab's core duo, the keyboardist Wayne Horvitz and the drummer Tucker Martine, refuse to settle into their own grooves; they add unlikely overdubs, dissolve the tracks' foundations and flesh out musical connotations from country fiddle to big-band saxophones. Every free association yields a new treat.

EYEDEA AND ABILITIES Speed thrills on "E & A" (Rhymesayers/Epitaph), the second album by the duo of Eyedea, a rapper, and Abilities, a disc jockey. Abilities digs deep into his collection of obscurities to spin collages that don't neglect the beat, and he scratches them like a turntablist to activate the mix; Eyedea's rhymes leap between slow, stubborn syncopations and breakneck verbal marathons. While Eyedea spends less time philosophizing and telling stories and more time bragging than he did on the duo's previous collaboration, "First Born," the music's momentum makes up for it.

CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE From his Mississippi birthplace to Memphis to Chicago, Charlie Musselwhite has soaked up the blues in the right places and eras, and his harmonica playing has been respected since the 1960's. "Sanctuary" (Real World) pays equal attention to Mr. Musselwhite's modest, lived-in voice and a selection of songs that probes the blues' existential lessons about loss, wandering and death. The title song is from "The Gospel at Colonus," with others from Ben Harper, Randy Newman and Mr. Musselwhite himself. The Texan guitarist Charlie Sexton, from Bob Dylan's band, leads a lean, bluesy backup group that brings out both Mr. Musselwhite's roots and his unfinished search.

ELLIS HOOKS There are still young singers who can belt like classic soul shouters as musicians recreate the gospel-country backbone of Southern soul. The next hurdle is coming up with new songs worthy of the tradition. Ellis Hooks was born in Alabama and sang in a Southern Baptist church before making his way to New York City, and he gets material worthy of his voice for about half of "Uncomplicated" (Artemis). When he gets riled up, as in "Can't Take This No More," or jubilant, as in the album's title song and the mambo-gospel rocker "The Hand of God," he testifies like a master.

SALIF KEITA On his radiant 2002 album "Moffou," the Malian singer Salif Keita revisited old songs with an acoustic band that meshed West African intricacies with global hybrids. Such beauty could not go unsullied. "Remixes From Moffou" (Decca) dismantles and remakes "Moffou" for European dance clubs, with mostly disastrous results. Producers place snippets of the original airborne vocals and plucked strings in repetitive rhythm tracks chained to their downbeats. Only Gekko and La Funk Mob have a clue about the delicate mystery of the originals. Elsewhere, all the electronic gizmos in Paris can't make the imposed ideas any less primitive.