The Avett Brothers

"I and Love and You"

Columbia

Like punk-blues trio Gossip, punk-folk-country quartet the Avett Brothers have been signed to Columbia by Rick Rubin, the Run-D.M.C., Johnny Cash, and Dixie Chicks producer who knows a thing or two about streamlining a band's sound in pursuit of a larger audience. That's what he does with the ever-earnest Avetts - fronted by brothers Seth and Scott, and backed by drummer Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon - though not to their detriment.

True, some of the frantic punk edge of this, a terrific live band that's been barnstorming pretty much nonstop for the last decade, has been smoothed over. And the Avetts do have a tendency toward the unabashedly corny, as when they fret over the difficulty in saying out loud the three words in the title track.

But the baker's dozen of mostly piano-based ballads - with a few notable exceptions, such as the giddily jaunty "Kick Drum Heart" - convey a genuine (and genuinely tuneful) sad-eyed dignity, as the North Carolina band-on-the-rise evokes The Band in its attempt to carve out a safe haven from the "darkness all around us," as Scott Avett put it in the tender, mandolin-flecked "January Wedding."

- Dan DeLuca

Philadelphia Inquirer

Nick Cave

"The Death of Bunny Munro"

Macmillan Audio

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

"White Lunar"

Mute

Away from his Bad Seeds, Nick Cave's been moonlighting in remarkable ways. His sexed-up "Grinderman" and screenplay for "The Proposition" were tart and totemic - as is his new novel, "The Death of Bunny Munro." But soundtrack music with Seeds violinist Warren Ellis has proved to be Cave's most fascinating sideline, what with the duo's subtle, emotional tones.

"White Lunar's" compilation of evocative elegies for flicks such as "The Assassination of Jesse James" and the forthcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" shifts effortlessly from pensive to thrilling. You can see the lonely prairies of the big-screen dramas and sense the pains that drove each character's vicious actions - even when the pair stick to ominously sparse piano, bass, and violin.

The "Bunny" audiobook is a treat - seven CDs of Cave speaking with a stately brimstone accent. Yet for all the scratching violins, and quiet industrial whirs in the background, Ellis and Cave manage moments of pastoral orchestration so lovely and lonesome you could cry.

- A.D. Amorosi

Philadelphia Inquirer

Gossip

"Music for Men"

Columbia

Beth Ditto, the singer in this Portland-via-Arkansas trio, has become a celebrity overseas because of her anti-diva attitude, robust physique and gutsy voice. Her outspoken views on feminism and gay rights, combined with her band's exuberant dance-punk, have turned her into an unlikely star.

After three independent albums and a breakout hit, the 2006 single "Standing in the Way of Control," she and bandmates Brace Paine (guitar) and Hannah Blilie (drums) make their major-label debut, "Music for Men" (Columbia), with producer-to-the-icons Rick Rubin (Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers) making sure everything sounds appropriately polished for a big mainstream roll-out. The sound is a bouncy mix of new-wave guitars and disco beats, hearkening back to the early '80s heyday of Romeo Void, the B-52's and Gang of Four.

Though Rubin has certainly made the band sound crisper, with Blilie's drumming in particular gaining a new clarity, the smoothness doesn't suit Ditto. She has a gritty voice big enough to knock down walls. But on "Music for Men" she sounds muted, even as she curses her romantic travails. (Love, don't you know, is a "Four Letter Word.") The singer cuts loose only as "8th Wonder" winds down, building to the kind of fury that makes one wonder what this album could've been with less polish and a lot more Ditto, unfiltered.

- Greg Kot

Chicago Tribune

Built to Spill

"There Is No Enemy"

Warner Bros.

It may be that "There Is No Enemy," but Built to Spill's latest album has such a melancholy vibe, there may as well be.

Decidedly darker than 2006's "You In Reverse," the Boise quintet tones down its trademark guitar-driven rock on its seventh CD. "Enemy" is still a rock record, but the tempos are taken down a touch to carry frontman Doug Martsch's musings on mortality and the meaning of life.

He opens "Done" with "Loneliness is getting hard to perceive/Seems it never comes or it never leaves," and closes with a refrain of "It's already done, it's already done."

"It doesn't matter if you're good or smart," he sings on "Things Fall Apart," a languid tune punctuated by a lone happy horn.

But all is not hopeless. Guitarists Brett Netson and Jim Roth, bassist Brett Nelson and drummer Scott Plouf get upbeat on "Good of Boredom" as Martsch sings, "Most of my dreams have come true." On "Nowhere Lullaby," a slow track rich with reverb, he concludes "everyone gets through the night and everyone wakes up all right." He takes the sentiment further on the album's cheeriest track, "Planting Seeds": "We can make it if we try/If we don't it's still all right/Because your mind is still alive."

"There Is No Enemy," but according to Built to Spill, there's still plenty to think about.

- Sandy Cohen

Associated Press