CD reviews: Gaslight Anthem's "Handwritten"

Gaslight Anthem, "Handwritten" (Mercury)

In the broadest sense, Gaslight Anthem is simply Jersey-sounding, flitting between shades of punk and roots-rock and putting its stamp on a clarion sound that Springsteen and Bon Jovi broadcast. On "Handwritten," its fourth album, Gaslight Anthem is supremely confident. Singer Brian Fallon opens a romantic vein and lets it gush for 40 minutes. The tunes are a jumble of fidelity betrayed and fidelity pledged, with tough-sounding, country-tinged, blues-infused gutter rock providing a spine. With its fine craftsmanship, the band skirts cliché. "Mulholland Drive" is urgent, cinematic storytelling packed into three minutes of chiming guitars and chanted choruses. For variety, "Keepsake" yanks at twisted family roots, though with no less emotional toll. Fallon sings about screwing up and getting screwed over, but on "Mae," makes clear what he wants out of his eventual long-term partnership.

SCOTT MCLENNAN, BOSTON GLOBE

Laetitia Sadier, "Silencio" (Drag City)

On her second solo full-length since her old band, electro-pop stars Stereolab, went on indefinite hiatus, the French-born vocalist amps up the lusciously delivered political rhetoric she's made her trademark. The album title and spoken-word closer "Invitation Au Silence" nod to the power of stillness in a world awash in noise. On the endearingly earnest "Auscultation to the Nation," Sadier scolds unelected, "politically illegitimate" financial authorities, while the Jean Renoir-inspired "The Rule of the Game" skewers a fattened bourgeoisie. Things can get a bit heavy, but old bandmate Tim Gane helps on the peppy "Next Time You See Me," and the album's piece de resistance is "Fragment Pour le Future de l'Homme," a manic, hip-shaking treatise on the hubris of nations.

BRIAN HOWARD, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Maybach Music Group, "Self Made Vol. 2" (Maybach )

While Ross saves the ego for his own new CD, "God Forgives, I Don't" (on rival Def Jam), he's got plenty of boastful brio to go around on "Bury Me a G," his crackling duet with T.I., and guest bits littered throughout SMV2 like the crunching "Black Magic," with Meek Mill.

Some of the album's best moments focus on singsongy rapper/crooner Omarion and MC Wale. Their sweet-and-sour pairing on "M.I.A." is a surefire soul-hop hit if ever there was one. Still, Maybach is an exclusive gang, and hip-hop's mob mentality is made fluidly funky on the team effort "This Thing of Ours."