POP/ROCK: Cate Le Bon, "Cyrk" (Control Group)

Don't settle for the surfaces of Le Bon's music on her second album. You might think you've already heard it all before. Stay with these songs a little while, and see where they go.

Le Bon, 28, a Welsh singer-songwriter, has dyed her admirations in Nico's slow and chilly phrasing; Stephen Malkmus' episodic, melody-first, clonkadonk songwriting; and the brittle and ungainly guitar sound Lou Reed got with the Velvet Underground. She starts with a full and organic understanding of how these things work and assembles her own songs under their influence. She's of her time, but not content to nibble on the leaf-ends of alternative rock: She follows it right down to the root ball.

She sings like an outsider, in a clear voice made for drowsy madrigals and folk rusticana; her voice lies on top of stomps and drone-chants. Sometimes a synthesizer plays simple notes and chords in an overdriven, ungainly organlike pre-set. She seems to want you to hear the splinters and rough ends in this music as coding for honesty, individuality and romantic stubbornness. And there's nothing new in that.

But it's what she does with it. These tracks, generally, are about boys and girls, but they're set in old-fashioned physical spaces -- courtyards, fields, moors -- and the music sounds as if she's moving through those spaces. The songs often turn corners on to new strains, melodies and tempos, some of them quiet singalongs, some of them repetitive, pulsating stretches of psychedelic art song. Le Bon's lyrics are nonspecific but intimate, as if she's squinting hard to describe very familiar subjects, as in "Fold the Cloth." --BEN RATLIFF, NEW YORK TIMES

POP/ROCK: Ani DiFranco, "Which Side Are You On?" (Righteous Babe)

DiFranco begins with a summation of what she has done best in 20-plus years in the trenches. "Every time I open my mouth / I take off my clothes / And I'm raw and frostbitten / From being exposed," she sings on "Life Boat." Consider it a preface to the bracing sentiments she explores here, marking a return to political rhetoric after its more relaxed predecessor, 2008's "Red Letter Year." Particularly on the title track, DiFranco sounds emboldened -- fed up with consumer culture, war and big corporations. Pete Seeger, who first made "Which Side Are You On?" an anthem, contributes vocals and a banjo intro before the song kicks into overdrive, replete with horns and new lyrics by DiFranco.

She tempers her politics with tender, tightly held ruminations on love ("Albacore"), the ways we find it ("Promiscuity") and getting older ("If Yr Not"). She's still painting in broad strokes; the swelling orchestrations on "Splinter" are a refreshing detour. Most of this spirited album strikes a natural balance between matters of the heart and causes close to DiFranco's heart. --JAMES REED, BOSTON GLOBE