COUNTRY
Keith Urban, "Get Closer" (Capitol)
Urban's sixth release gives lie to the idea that angst is the best fuel for songwriting. On this lean but enjoyable eight-song set, he and his fellow songwriters are mostly in high spirits. They locate the fizz in the giddy first blush of a crush ("Put You in a Song") to the shock and joy of finding a soul mate and building a family ("Without You"). That cheerfulness is infectious when wedded to the bouncy blend of pop-country and roots rock that has made the Aussie-raised artist a hot commodity. The ladies of Little Big Town liven up the destined-for-arenas jaunt "You Gonna Fly," and unsung hero Russell Terrell improves every song on which he provides rich harmony vocals. Even when the horizon clouds up, as it does on the churning, sonically dense "Georgia Woods" and the couples-in-crisis closer "Shut Out the Lights," Urban never lets the darkness fall fully.
SARAH RODMAN, BOSTON GLOBE
POP/HIP-HOP
Cee Lo Green, "The Lady Killer" (Elektra)
This sounds like something Don Draper would put on the hi-fi, if he'd been raised in Detroit on equal parts Motown and head-bobbing hip-hop. For every swanky old-school touch, there's a glassy modernity that makes the album a sexy sonic adventure of loving and leaving. Green, for all his heartbreaker bravado on the opening track, has also suffered some gut punches, as "(Forget) You" and its viral video can attest. Pitching his voice high and low, whiny and tough, he attacks the song with the kind of Broadway-style gusto that's fixed him as one of the best performers in the game. Perhaps his biggest flip-off should be reserved for the record industry, which for so long didn't give this vocal supernova due attention -- until "Crazy," his missile to the moon with collaborator Danger Mouse for Gnarls Barkley. But it's not Green's caddish ways that charm. Rather, as "Cry Baby" shows, it's his big heart underneath.
MARGARET WAPPLER, LOS ANGELES TIMES
Rihanna, "Loud" (Def Jam)
Rihanna probably wouldn't have made this album last year. She couldn't have. Back then she was addressing the fallout from her assault by former boyfriend Chris Brown and released "Rated R," a dark and unflinching work that rattled her fans while pushing her artistic limits. "Loud," her fifth release since 2006, is that album's antidote, an unabashed return to where Rihanna belongs: the dance floor. As if liberating herself from the depths, she's a force on these 11 songs, hop-scotching from the electro-pop of "Only Girl (in the World)" to Top 40 balladry fit for Taylor Swift ("California King Bed"). More than her previous records, "Loud" is all about Rihanna's fighting side. Over a reggae bounce, the Barbados-born singer plays an outlaw on "Man Down" (as in, she shot him). And "Raining Men," borrowing a digitized riff from Beyoncé's "Diva," features rising rapper Nicki Minaj on a typically manic guest rhyme. The song's message doubles as the album's mantra: Some cats really do have nine lives.
