Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. "Two Men With the Blues." Blue Note.

Two musicians from different corners of the record store collaborated for two days of concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center last year, and this album is the harvest. Country and jazz? No, this record isn't about country and jazz; it's a lot more interesting than that.
First it's about Willie Nelson fitting his wayward, contract-and-expand vocal phrasing into the sharp swing of Wynton Marsalis' small group, and the cool rhythmic discrepancies that come of it. Then it's about improvising: Marsalis' trumpet solos poised and gleaming, Nelson's guitar solos dusty and crotchety but full of early-jazz knowledge. (The other musicians play with power too: Mickey Raphael on harmonica, Walter Blanding Jr. on saxophones, Dan Nimmer on piano, Carlos Henriquez on bass, Ali Jackson on drums.)
It's about the persistence and adaptability of the 12- and 8-bar blues forms: "Caldonia," "Rainy Day Blues," "Ain't Nobody's Business." It's a little bit about the arrangements -- the Mingus-like, organized street ruckus in "Bright Lights, Big City," the harmonized long-tone drapings in "Stardust," the New Orleans parade beats in "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It." But above all it's a smart and heartfelt record about someone whose name doesn't appear anywhere here: Louis Armstrong. Armstrong did something like this in 1930, when he recorded "Blue Yodel No. 9" with Jimmie Rodgers.
Armstrong remains the model of phrasing and narrative in Marsalis' boldest playing here. And he was precisely the kind of performer for whom Willie Nelson is a living analogue: a troubadour with wicked, transformative rhythmic and melodic powers, an improviser comfortable with a sturdy song regardless of style. Armstrong's example created the conditions for this to happen, and the record is an almost classical example of his old game: eluding American stereotypes of country, city, blues, jazz, race, class, humor and sadness.

— Ben Ratliff, c. New York Times News Service

John Mellencamp. "Life Death Love and Freedom." Hear Music.

John Mellencamp, 56, is feeling his age and then some on "Life Death Love and Freedom." It's an album presented like a deathbed testament: bleak, solitary, bluesy and unbowed. In "Don't Need This Body" Mellencamp sings, "All I got left is a headful of memories/And a thought of my upcoming death," and that just about sums up the album.
Everywhere he looks he sees shattered expectations and looming sorrow, both in his own future and in the wider world. And where, in decades past, he would shrug off any odds against him and come up grinning, now he strives for simple perseverance. It's a brave album in the way it sets aside all his old consolations.
His voice is gruff and weary, with a craggy matter-of-factness replacing his old swagger. The album was produced by T Bone Burnett, and it shares the rootsy, spooked tone of Burnett's 2007 production "Raising Sand" by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. This album's most upbeat track, "My Sweet Love," is rockabilly heard from afar, a love song with a queasy undertow: "It sure would feel good to feel good again," Mellencamp sings.
In the new songs he trades his familiar brawny rock for sparser settings, like the bluesy riff and echoes of "If I Die Sudden" and the Celtic-Appalachian modality of "Young Without Lovers." Burnett disassembles Mellencamp's usual sound, placing his own down-home guitar within the band and, for nearly half the album, devising arrangements without drums. Mellencamp can still come up with blunt, righteous choruses -- like those in "Jena," a song about racial confrontation in a Louisiana town -- but on this CD he underplays them, as if he's all too aware of every limitation.

— Jon Pareles, c. New York Times News Service

The Watson Twins. "Fire Songs." Vanguard.

Love is elusive in the songs of Chandra and Leigh Watson, the Watson Twins. On their debut album, "Fire Songs," love comes and goes, fades mysteriously yet lingers where it shouldn't, providing ample opportunity for the comforts of the sisters' close harmony.
The Watson Twins, who are from Louisville, Ky., arrived nationally when they collaborated with Rilo Kiley's lead singer, Jenny Lewis, to make the album "Rabbit Fur Coat" (Team Love) in 2006. But where Lewis grows contentious when love goes bad, the Watson Twins turn melancholy instead. Their songs are full of yearning and forgiveness, not revenge. "You say that I'm wrong and I need to move on/But it just ain't that easy," they sing in Leigh Watson's "Bar Woman Blues."
Like Rilo Kiley, the Watson Twins are steeped in 1960s and 1970s folk-rock and folk-pop; musically they are closer to Canada and California (they live in Los Angeles) than to their own Kentucky. "Fire Songs" sometimes echoes the Byrds and Neil Young, while the sisters' alto voices also hint at the Celtic inflections of Natalie Merchant and Beth Orton. Their preferred tempos are unhurried, even languid, with their voices moving in close tandem while guitars ripple and peal around them. The songs hold sorrow and longing, keeping self-pity in check with serene grace.

— Jon Pareles, c. New York Times News Service

Jim Jones & ByrdGang. 'M.O.B. The Album." Asylum.

On "ByrdGang Money," a lush stew of neat piano, dense synthesizers and crisp drums produced by the up-and-comer Chad Beatz, Jim Jones sounds at home reminiscing about his early days around the drug game. It's an accomplishment, especially because even though he's the most famous member of ByrdGang, a splinter crew of Harlem's Diplomats, he's the least talented, with a flow that routinely stumbles into a sneer.
On "M.O.B. The Album" it's occasionally magnetic, as on "Money Right," on which Jones sounds so eager to recount his glory days that he might run out of breath. But mostly he's an obstacle on this largely unmemorable album. Instead the bright spots come from Noe, a nimble Baltimore rapper whose flat, nasal affect seems lifted entirely from Jay-Z's 1996 debut album, "Reasonable Doubt." He's pensive on "Oopsy Daisy," scornful on "Money Right" and, on "Hustle," he's moving on up: "Black Philip Drummond/Penthouse coming/Lawyer still dealing with last year's summons."
Noe is a natural for this crew, facile with the casual polysyllabic rhyming kiln-fired to perfection by Cam'ron, head of the Diplomats, with whom Jones has been quarreling (and who does not appear here).

— Jon Caramanica,
c. New York Times
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