Lúnasa
The Story So Far
(Compass)
If St. Patrick's Day leaves you yearning for more than guys in cable knit sweaters crooning "Danny Boy," check out The Story So Far, 16 gleanings from Lúnasa's back catalog. It's no exaggeration to call Lúnasa one of the finest lineups in Celtic music history. The tracks were selected by double bass player Trevor Hutchinson, whose off-kilter rhythms alone make Lúnasa a cut above ordinary. Add a few tracks from past members, toss in Kevin Crawford's flute, Cillian Vallely's uilleann pipes, Paul Meehan's driving guitar and Sean Smyth's passionate fiddle, and you'd have to go back to The Bothy Band to find instrumentals this tight and inventive. The album's only defect is that it will make you want all the recordings from which the material was drawn. —Rob Weir
Iron and Wine
The Shepherd's Dog
(Sub Pop)
The Shepherd's Dog is Iron and Wine's most polished and plushly orchestrated album yet, but it's actually one of their least immediate efforts. Where early albums starkly focused on Sam Beam's quavering voice and lyrical songs, these tunes come wrapped in intricate arrangements that include snatches of African rhythms, classic rock guitar, lilting grooves and dub effects. The good news is this is Beam's most ambitious and musically varied album. The bad news is that the poetically volatile lyrics that set the band apart tend get defused in all the busy textures. Ultimately, the album reveals its charms slowly, rewarding patience and warming ambivalence for those willing to fully absorb its dark tales. —Jeff Jackson
Destroyer
Trouble in Dreams
(Merge)
As a rule, I think it's a bad idea for songwriters to use words like "alabaster" and "azure," but maybe that's a bit extreme. Still, Dan Bejar, known as the quirkiest and artiest of the songwriters and singers of the New Pornographers, is a tunesmith who knows a thing or two, and he drops the "A" words on the new CD by Destroyer, Bejar's side project or main project, depending on how you look at it. I'm not so sure he pulls it off completely. As a singer, Bejar likes to shift to a whisper, to draw out a vowel syllable dramatically, or to employ a sort of purring growl. Bejar's lyrics read a little like short fiction, and his delivery can shade toward camp. But the record has brilliant flashes of bright color painted with washes of piercing high-pitched feedback and Frippertronics-like guitars. —John Adamian
Kathleen Edwards
Asking For Flowers
(Zoe Records)
I remember when Kathleen Edwards was one of the guys: jeans, T-shirt and sarcastic sneer, with a beer bottle standing at her feet as she rocked out on electric guitar. Some of her songs were pretty good, and her exhilarating, kick-butt attitude made up for the rest. Now that she's taken to putting on makeup, wearing turtle-necks, and calling herself an artist, I don't know her any more. The opening ballad on the new CD stretches her thin voice out far beyond breaking point, and some songs that could have been edgy and fun are caked so thick with production Ms. Edwards sounds like she's singing karaoke to an Emilylou Harris album. I wish she'd just kick back and pass the joint. —Mark Roessler
