POP/ROCK: Carolina Chocolate Drops, "Leaving Eden" (Nonesuch)

Two years ago, this North Carolina string band turned heads with a smart, sharp cover of "Hit 'Em Up Style," the R&B hit by Blu Cantrell. The song illuminated connections between cultures and eras; it taught listeners about what has changed (and what hasn't) in the South and in African-American vernacular music.

But the Carolina Chocolate Drops learned, too, from their version of "Hit 'Em Up Style": The most immediately arresting cut on the band's new album is "Country Girl," an original tune in which singer Rhiannon Giddens ponders her background over Adam Matta's beatboxing.

For all its associations with hip-hop, beatboxing is a pretty old-timey approach to percussion, and the band spends much of this very fresh-sounding album aligning itself with traditional values. "Best kind of food is made by hand / The only place to get it is from the land," Giddens declares in "Country Girl." Later, in the title track, she laments the death of industry in a small North Carolina town. Yet the attitudes here don't feel received; they never arrive free of the sense that they've been examined thoroughly. The result is a rarity in the Chocolate Drops' world: roots music as useful as it is beautiful. They play the Cedar Cultural Center May 2. -MIKAEL WOOD, LOS ANGELES TIMES

POP/ROCK: Andrew Bird, "Break It Yourself" (Mom + Pop)

Bird is a brilliant and eclectic musician, which comes through in his new album. But that doesn't make it particularly engaging.

Bird's a musical know-it-all, and he tends to overthink and overdo on the hourlong release. He's a classically trained violinist, a provocative lyricist and a terrific whistler. The prolific Bird has melded pop, rock, Americana, folk, world and electronic music into a seamless blend behind his philosophical persona.

Recorded in his Illinois studio-barn, "Break It Yourself" feels most genuine in the small moments, as when the sound of crickets serves as the foundation for bells on the hypnotic, album-closing instrumental "Belles," or when Bird's winsome whistling escorts the fittingly languid "Lazy Projector." And there's charm in the gallows humor of the tango "Near Death Experience Experience," in which those on a crashing airplane vow to "dance like cancer survivors."

Bird's imaginative lyrics, relayed by his adequate vocals, tend to be enigmatic and heavy (he sings about mistaking clouds for mountains, legendary tragedies and breaking your own heart) and open to interpretation.

Yet as "Break It Yourself" wears on, it's burdened by the weight of protracted tracks and Bird's self-indulgent meanderings, compounded by the lumbering pace of later cuts. -CHUCK CAMPBELL, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE