CD reviews

Alan Jackson, "Good Time" (Arista Nashville)

Jackson remains the most relevant alumnus of the Class of 1989, which also brought Garth Brooks and Clint Black into the country market. Jackson's 13th studio album finds him still pushing himself and reaching radio with his reliable, traditional, yet accessible country songs. The 17-track, 71-minute "Good Time" marks the first time Jackson has written every cut on an album. "Good Time" is too long -- hasn't he gotten the memo that we're in a singles world again? -- but seven or eight numbers here would make excellent singles. Highlights include the fondly reflective "1976," which recounts Jackson meeting his high school sweetheart and future wife. The spry "Long Long Way" showcases serious guitar pickin' and musicianship. For lighter fare, Jackson gets his Bo Duke mojo working on "Country Boy" and imagines Jesus walking the world today as a hillbilly driving a Chevrolet. Can't get more down to Earth than that. 5311

HOWARD COHEN, MIAMI HERALD

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks,

"Real Emotional Trash" (Matador)

For almost 20 years, back to his beginnings in the band Pavement, Malkmus has been famous for writing lyrics that carried no trace of rock-'n'-roll sentiment. High on their own internal music, juggling vocabularies and voices, they gave no warning when their stories or rants or descriptions were going to lapse into nonsense. They were powerfully, haughtily non-sequiturial, and sung in a nonsinger's voice. "Real Emotional Trash," his fourth album since the disbanding of Pavement, still has all that glibly indirect lyric writing. But it's a record that builds serious, musical and very direct jamming into nearly every song. Its peaks ("Hopscotch Willie," "Real Emotional Trash," "Elmo Delmo") are multipart bonanzas with long minor-key guitar solos over vamps and steady, patient, midtempo grooves. The album is a generous, transparent body pleasure and a flinty, oblique mind pleasure. It's like being hit over the head with a deadpan. It's also well-rehearsed, with dynamic hills and dales. His band the Jicks, with a strong new drummer -- Janet Weiss, once of Sleater-Kinney -- helps bring the large-canvas energy of a concert, specifically one that might have been played many years ago by the Doors, the Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers.

The Jicks perform March 19 at First Avenue. 5312

BEN RATLIFF, NEW YORK TIMES

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