They're due tomorrow...

Let's open today's musical reviews with...Asleep at the Wheel the eponymous major-label debut by the biggest Texas swing band of the past couple of decades. I'd always heard great things about them, but apparently it turns out that I don't really enjoy Texas swing all that much, at least not this album of it.

I don't think it's a bad album, just not one that I enjoyed - too sharp, too twangy - sort of the same complaints that I have with the purest of Bluegrass music.

Rock N Roll by Ryan Adams isn't the greatest album that Adams has put out, but it's another example of Adam's having diarrhea of the pen and record producer. I gave this one a try when it first came out - a couple of years ago - and was very disappointed. Adams is the alt-country idtio savant, able to toss of spectacular hooks and songs with just a casual brush of his pen, but he's the same guy who tosses off pieces of crap even more easily and doesn't seem to notice the difference. He's as derivative as can be one moment and as brilliant as anybody the next. It's really frustrating.

With my diminished expectations, I found this album to be better than I'd remembered. It's far from a great album, but there are a few hooks here and there that just stick with me for hours and days. Catchy stuff, good stuff - surrounded by crap here and there, sure, but catchy stuff if you give the album a chance. It is surely harsher than most of Adams's work, but it's pretty much the same work with the acoustic guitars swapped out for electric ones. Seriously, catchy stuff, but don't get the hopes up too much. I'd drop the whole thing onto iTunes and delete the chaf. There's a wheaty bit or two there.

Not enough people know about Paul Kelly. He's an Australian guitarist and songwriter who is one of the best writers of tunes around. Quality guitar licks, rich imagry, and a wonderful sense of life is all that Kelly has. It's not much, but it's what he's got to offer on Ways and Means, a double disc that lets Kelly explore all sorts of love. He drops the joy of finally being able to be with someone after hiding feeling for so long, he goes with the pain of unreqited love, and he relishes in the pure carnality of physical love, and never does he put out a sappy note. It's all simple and straight forward with great music underneath - and in one case, a modern classic of surf instrumentals. There's that surf, blues, the jangle of Byrds-era pop, slide guitar, and drips of other styles that Kelly puts together into a sound that works seemlessly even though it's full of disparate notes. Give Paul Kelly a try if you haven't before.

Ah, instrumental jazz with a pretty guitar lead. Bill Frisell has made a career out of doing nice instrumental interpretations of songs that you know. On his newest double disc - East/West - Frisell captures a couple of nights of live club performances. He takes some nice meanders through "Heard it Through the Grapevine", "Hard Rain", "Masters of War", "Shenandoah" and a bunch of other tunes that I don't know nearly as well (his website suggest that they're originals of his. There aren't a lot of tracks here, but that's because Frisell's style is often to take soem pretty long journeys through the tunes, letting the pacing build slowly as phrases flit in and out of the music at first, hinting at the song that is to follow and letting those notes become slowly more numerous until the song has come together almost without the listener noticing. The music never wanders from the core of the tune, however, but there are moments when the focus slips just a bit before coming straight back. It's jazz, good jazz - nothing too out there, just pleasant jazzy tunes. It's not going to set the world on fire, but it's pretty music. Not that I'm going to buy it, but I'm willing to drag a few of the songs onto the iTunes.

I don't remember Nickel Creek being quite as dark as they are on Why Should the Fire Die?, but that doesn't diminish the musical quality of the disc. It's not happy stuff as it sounds like the boys in the band has been through some rough times romantically, especially on the first few songs. The couple of instrumentals tear through the talent, and the stuff underneath the dour lyrics. It's a heck of a lot more fun to listen to This Side, but this disc shows that this isn't a band afraid to push the boundries. There are more drums and electric guitar here than there've been on their previous releases, but this trio isn't afraid to drop the traditional for what they want to play.