POP/ROCK

Christopher Owens, "A New Testament" (Turnstile)

If his music got any more guileless, it would start bending backward into subterfuge.

Owens' songwriting, in the San Francisco band Girls and in his solo records, of which "A New Testament" is the second, mixes serious literacy in the past 50 years of pop with a spirit of honesty, not only the performed kind but possibly even the real thing. His changeable voice often settles in the intimate, transparent high register of Elliott Smith; that's craft. But the specificity of the lyrics have often indicated firsthand torment, romantic or chemical or spiritual, and his interviews, which have usually mentioned opiates, specific relationships and his early years growing up in the cult then known as the Children of God, did the rest.

But this album is not tormented. Neither is it explicitly a new-morning, season-of-renewal record. It's just a different kind of guilelessness, one that leans toward country, gospel and a kind of settled, adult pop more than garage-punk and psychedelia. Faster songs suggest Buck Owens or Gram Parsons. Slow songs, including "Stephen" and "Overcoming Me," get close to John Lennon solo records or Wilco.

There are some serious by-the-numbers clichés of American music here, which might be more problematic if the CD weren't so suffused with a spirit of trust — in idealized relationships, in his favorite musical sources. The sounds on top become secondary; it's all the belief on the bottom that remains interesting.

BEN RATLIFF, New York Times

Jhené Aiko, “Souled Out”

R&B

Jhené Aiko, "Souled Out" (ARTium/Def Jam)

Aiko, of Los Angeles, is part of that new breed of "girl singer" who gets her first acclaim making boy rappers look good and sound better (think Skylar Grey with Eminem and Lupe Fiasco) but whose songwriting chops are as formidable as her voice. Aiko's hip-hop duets are stellar: She's added her sultry, Aaliyah-like voice to hits for Drake, Big Sean and Childish Gambino. Her own 2013 EP, "Sail Out," features top MCs Vince Staples and Kendrick Lamar.

For her debut full-length album, however, Aiko smartly uses few guests (Common, Cocaine 80s), preferring to present her own aesthetic touched, but not defined by, hip-hop. "To Love & Die" and "Spotless Mind" are atmospheric, hypnotic R&B tunes. For a singer who has spent so much of her career getting in your face, these tunes, as well as the paean "Promises," show off Aiko's tender side. "Lying King" may throb, and "The Pressure" may lean deeply into hip-hop, but it's the softer side that defines "Souled Out."

A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer