JAZZ: Esperanza Spalding, "Radio Music Society" (Heads Up)
No matter how you felt about Spalding's 2011 Grammy win for best new artist, there's no questioning her willingness to live up to it. Conceived as a companion to her breakthrough "Chamber Music Society," Spalding's follow-up melds airtight jazz with pop, funk and soul with disarming assurance.
"Radio Music Society" primarily delivers the sort of upbeat head-bobbers celebrated in opener "Radio Song," a quaint, lilting valentine to musical discovery anchored by Spalding's nimble vocal and rubbery electric bass line. Like the soulful sway of lead single "Black Gold," it manages to aim for those who might not ordinarily listen to jazz while keeping the music firmly in its bones. Saxophone great Joe Lovano guests on a percolating cover of Stevie Wonder's "I Can't Help It," and drummer Billy Hart turns up on the swooning, big band- accented "Hold on Me." Two tracks co-produced by Q-Tip merge with the record's breezy, jazz-funk bounce seamlessly, including "City of Roses," a Banana Republic-commissioned valentine to her Portland home that's about as idyllic and tourism-friendly as it sounds.
Sometimes Spalding's ambitions get the better of her, as with the moody but meandering social commentary "Vague Suspicions." Her interpretation of Wayne Shorter's "Endangered Species" strains with such knotty, fusion-shaded complexity that there's little room left to breathe. Still, there's no arguing with Spalding's talent for disregarding expectations while spinning her influences into something new. -CHRIS BARTON, LOS ANGELES TIMES
COUNTRY: Lionel Richie, "Tuskegee" (Mercury Nashville)
Nashville loves, loves, loves it when pop stars come a-courtin', which makes Richie's entry into its field a sure bet for a warm welcome in Music City -- especially as he revisits his monster hit duets from the '80s with country stars including Willie Nelson, Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles and Blake Shelton.
Country now draws so extensively from the pop and R&B sounds of the 1970s and '80s, when Richie was one of the kingpins of mainstream music, that his new album is less the 180-degree career shift it may seem. Acoustic guitars replace glistening synths, bittersweet steel guitars slide in to provide the patina of rural rootsiness, yet Richie still never really steps away from the polished sheen that characterized his musical heyday.
The highlight is "Easy," with Nelson's signature elastic vocals elevating the tune. Rascal Flatts' singing behind him about "Dancing on the Ceiling" or Shania Twain's handling of Diana Ross' lines in "Endless Love" don't materially add to -- or subtract from -- the original versions. Richie's recordings were always among the fluffier hits of the time, anyway, never seriously challenging Prince or Michael Jackson among R&B-rooted pop innovators, and now he's not giving Hank, Merle or Johnny anything to fret about, either. -RANDY LEWIS, LOS ANGELES TIMES
