POP/ROCK
Lhasa, "Lhasa" (Nettwerk)
This third album by the Mexican-American from Montreal, who died of breast cancer Friday at age 37, is her only CD with all English songs. It's also her most understated -- and best. Buoyed by spare guitar-picking and harp-plucking, with minimal bass and drums and glimpses of piano and violin, it's a stately, acoustic, nocturnal album of roiling emotions. It's gorgeous.
"Rising" is a waltz-time ballad of stormy sentiment; "Love Came Here" clatters and thumps, but softly; "Where Do You Go" floats on a shimmering harp figure. Throughout, Lhasa sings in an aching, pure alto, with a poetic gravitas that never slips into melodrama. The songs move slowly and deliberately, taking their time. Fans of Sam Phillips, Keren Ann, Marianne Faithfull and/or the Cowboy Junkies, take note.
STEVE KLINGE, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
COUNTRY
Phil Vassar, "Traveling Circus" (Universal South)
Vassar, empathetic and tender, is among the best soft-rock singer/songwriters working. That doesn't count for much in Nashville, though, where his male peers like to flaunt virility, rural values or an outlaw streak. Vassar has played those games, but after a decade, he has learned his strengths. "Traveling Circus" is his fifth studio album, the least mindful of the competition and one of his best: It's enthusiastically unfashionable. He has long preferred piano to guitar, and his songs largely eschew country signifiers in favor of emotional specificity and directness. In spite of Vassar's modest voice, this album's great moments are uncommonly poignant, especially on a pair of songs about the ghosts of relationships past. "Everywhere I Go" is affecting, and "A Year From Now," the album's highlight, is dignified and beautiful, like a vintage Richard Marx ballad with Southern flourishes. This is Vassar at his best, which makes "Bobbi With an I," a rambunctious, sloppy number about a male friend who cross-dresses on weekends, even dimmer.
JON CARAMANICA, NEW YORK TIMES
