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Brokeback Mountain
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Argentina-born, California-based Gustavo Santaolalla helped shape the rock en Español movement by producing Mexican bands Molotov and Café Tacuba , and Colombian singer Juanes. In the late 1990s he made a switch to soundtracks, working on well-received albums for Amores Perros and The Motorcycle Diaries. His instrumental contributions to Ang Lee's tale of two cowboys in love are acoustic guitar-based and, let's face it, a bit on the sonic-wallpaper side. The vocal tracks, on the other hand, are uniformly lovely, even if the selection of interpreters falls on the predictable side. Linda Ronstadt, Steve Earle, Willie Nelson, and Mary McBride on the soundtrack to a contemporary Western? What a shock! Still, they're all wonderful and Santaolalla wrote at least a couple of classic-sounding country ballads ("A Love That Will Never Grow Old," sung by Emmylou Harris, and "No One's Gonna Love You Like Me," sung by Mary McBride). And don't miss Teddy Thompson and Rufus Wainwright's sweet cover of Roger Miller's 1964 "King of the Road." --Elisabeth Vincentelli Read
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Black Cadillac
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Her father called her "The Brain," and while it's always been apparent why, Rosanne Cash will likely astonish listeners with the new level of writing and depth of feeling she brings to Black Cadillac, her aural memoir of loss, ancestry, and negotiating ongoing relationships with the dead. Cash--who lost her father, Johnny; her stepmother, June Carter Cash; and her mother, Vivian Cash Distin, within a span of two years--makes it clear throughout this rootsy exploration of her past that while grief is unavoidable, faith and salvation eventually become its companion. And as the rockabilly "Radio Operator" points out ("I am calling like a friend / from my future / from your memory / and it never has to end"), the departed seldom really leave the living. Cash's first album since 2003's Rules of Travel, Black Cadillac is darker than its predecessor, but with melodies often more complex and lyrics more stunningly poetic than anything its creator has conjured before, the album is more transforming than depressing, and exquisitely beautiful. In the achingly mournful, yet redemptive "I Was Watching You," she writes of waiting in heaven as her parents meet and wed, and of eventually joining them on earth, only to realize her parents now view life's events from her first vantage point. Other songs ("House on the Lake," "Burn Down This Town") frame more tangible real-life events, i.e., the Cash compound in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and the Man in Black's firebug tendencies. Producers John Leventhal and Bill Bottrell dot the lean, atmospheric, and genre-blending production with instrumental hallmarks that recall both the Appalachian sound of the Carter Family and the work of J.R. Cash (the horns in the title cut pay homage to those in "Ring of Fire"). But while elegiac, Black Cadillac never turns maudlin or morphs into a tribute record to a fallen icon (the lawyers get skewered in one particularly clear-eyed passage). Instead, this extraordinary, intensely moving work is made up of dreamy and deeply personal pages from a psychic scrapbook, delivered on the cashmere-and-corduroy voice of one of music's purest and most visionary artists. --Alanna Nash Recommended Rosanne Cash
Seven Year Ache
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King's Record Shop
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Interiors
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Back to Bedlam
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As a piece of propaganda, James Blunt’s album Back to Bedlam does more for changing the face of the British Army than a series of television adverts ever could. Swapping a rifle for a guitar, the former cavalryman’s ballad-heavy debut is a clearly aiming to win the battle for the public’s hearts and minds. The U.K. success of singles like "You’re Beautiful" and "No Bravery" (inspired by his time stationed in Bosnia) are both heartfelt and sensitive, the latter packing an additional emotional punch beyond the typical lovelorn ballads of his contemporaries like Damien Rice. But Blunt also sings with conviction about matters of the heart, and that’s the territory that most of Back to Bedlam visits, with songs of loss like "Goodbye My Lover", "So Long Jimmy" and "Billy". And throughout, the arrangements remain understated yet effective, thanks to the input of such heavyweight producers and songwriters like Linda Perry and Guy Chambers. All of which prove that there’s a lot of depth to this modern, musical hero. --Robert Burrow Read
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Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall
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Every year sees a crop of newly found jazz gems, but rarely are listeners treated to anything as special as this 1957 concert recording of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, which was accidentally discovered in an unmarked box by a Library of Congress engineer early in 2005. Until now, fans could only dream of hearing these two immortals play together beyond the three studio tracks they left behind. But here they are, hitting their stride at an all-star benefit concert, basking in the chemistry they had developed in Monk's quartet during the preceding weeks at New York's Five Spot. Coltrane's playing is a revelation. He's both an inspired accompanist and a galvanizing soloist, taking the music to new heights with his bold, brilliantly challenging, and sometimes jaw-dropping phrases, note clusters, and blasts of power. Sharing with Coltrane a newfound sense of freedom following the personal and professional troubles that had plagued them both, Monk is clearly tickled to be in the tenorist's presence, injecting humorous commentaries and otherwise asserting his eccentric genius as a pianist. The material, which was very well recorded by the Voice of America, includes Monk classics like "Epistrophy," "Monk's Moods," and "Evidence," as well as a striking rendition of the standard "Sweet and Lovely." This is music that not only bears repeated listenings, but also demands them--the ultimate definition of a classic. --Lloyd Sachs Read
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Amarantine
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From the first blanket of choral voices awash in reverb, Amarantine is instantly recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. Although it's been five years since her last CD, on Amarantine it's as if time stood still. The triumvirate of Enya, lyricist Roma Ryan, and producer Nicky Ryan work the formula they perfected on Watermark, layering her voice in lush choirs pushed along by pizzicato synth strings, swooning orchestral pads, and harpsichord arpeggios. On tracks like "Less Than a Pearl" and "Drifting," Enya flirts with a timeless sound born in gothic chants and hymns. The former is one of three songs that she sings in Roma Ryan's fictitious language of Loxian. It seems to free her, especially on "The River Sings," a veritable rave-up where she gets the tribal choir going in the style of Scottish mouth music. But to get there you have to slog through slo-mo ballads that manage to be dirge-like and singsong at the same time, like the Carpenters on Quaaludes. The relatively restrained arrangement of "It's in the Rain" almost attains a folk-like simplicity that Enya hasn't experienced since she sang with her siblings in Clannad a quarter-century ago. Amarantine sounds like it was born in cloistered solitude, self-referentially echoing Enya albums past. --John Diliberto More Enya 
The Celts | 
Watermark | 
Shepherd Moons | 
The Memory of Trees | 
A Day Without Rain | 
Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya |
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