Blake Shelton, "If I'm Honest"

(Warner Music Nashville)

You get the sense that Shelton's team hurried this record, which arrives at a moment of peak pop-culture exposure for the country star. It's his first since his divorce from Miranda Lambert and subsequent hookup with "Voice" co-star Gwen Stefani. Although "If I'm Honest" is advertised as raw and personal, the default setting in Nashville is polished professionalism; rawness actually takes time. And here Shelton seldom pushes beyond that finesse to reach something less smooth. Which doesn't mean "If I'm Honest" is without pleasure. There's no denying the craftsmanship in a cut like "Bet You Still Think About Me," a low-slung power ballad, and "She's Got a Way With Words," in which Shelton runs down a list of all the ways an ex hurt him. He summons a gloomy sensuality in "Came Here to Forget," about huddling with someone "back of the bar, thick as thieves," that recalls Fleetwood Mac. And he's spirited enough in a handful of sly party tunes. Yet there's little depth to his musings on the end of one relationship and the beginning of another — especially compared with Stefani's album, on which she captures the complexity of her parallel situation in tightly composed pop songs that never sacrifice hooks or grooves. Indeed, the most striking lyrical moment comes from Stefani in "Go Ahead and Break My Heart," a handsome duet in which the two play new lovers on the rebound. "I'm so scared, I don't know what to do," she sings, cutting to the heart of the matter in a way Shelton seems unable (or unwilling) to do.

Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times

Mudcrutch, "2" (Reprise)

Mudcrutch is the band that couldn't be denied. Tom Petty started as a bass player in the Gainesville, Fla., quintet in the early '70s, and the band had promise and chops. Its lineup included guitarist Tom Leadon, brother of the Eagles' Bernie Leadon. But after one single, the group dissolved, and Petty enlisted former Mudcrutch members Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench for his new band, the Heartbreakers. Mudcrutch finally released its 33-years-overdue self-titled debut album in 2008, and it didn't sound all that far removed from an early Heartbreakers record. "2" picks up where the debut left off, with trace elements of Southern swampiness mingling with sun-kissed West Coast mellowness. The harmonica-led "Trailer" looks back on one of countless characters the band left behind in Florida. The narrator sounds like he could have been a contender, but ended up meeting a girl and settling down in a mobile home that he couldn't afford. "I can't find a thing, babe, that gives me an answer, that shines a light on the way things went," Petty drawls. It's a welcome change of pace when this band takes a few spins around the barroom floor amid the fuzz guitar and garage rock organ of "Hope" and the bluesy stomp of "Victim of Circumstance." It all comes into focus on "I Forgive it All," an Old West yarn that would've fit well on the Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." The tale of consolation and resilience is much like Mudcrutch's own.

Mudcrutch, "2"

GREG KOT, Chicago Tribune

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