COUNTRY
A Place Called Love Johnny Reid (EMI)
3 stars (out of 4)
If the phrase "Canadian country singer" evokes Stetsons and steel guitars, perhaps we need a new descriptor for Johnny Reid. His singing leans more toward soulful exhortation than twangy declamation, while the punchy, horn-spiked arrangements on Love Thing and Doesn't Get Better Than You are more Memphis than Nashville. He does break out the fiddles for the jaunty This Is Not Goodbye, and slathers on the sentimentality with Hands of a Working Man, so it's not as if he entirely abandons country conventions. But from the reggae-tinged That Man Is Me to the Springsteenian splendour of You Gave My Heart a Home, Reid makes it clear that he's nobody's cowboy crooner.
FOLK
Familial Philip Selway (Nonesuch)
3 stars (out of 4)
Rock stars are different than you and I, but not altogether. Philip Selway, the drummer for Radiohead, has suffered the loss of his mother and is otherwise taking stock of his own life. His quiet, private, lucid and reflective solo debut is the response. The Ties That Bind Us gently addresses the bond of family; depression is the issue of By Some Miracle. If Selway has undergone therapy, it wasn't likely the primal kind: The record's material is delivered as whispers in the dark. There is occasionally light orchestration, but mostly things keep to a simple, haunting Nick Drake-style of contemporary folk. "There's a place we can go," Selway sings comfortingly. "There's a place where we both can hide." Familial is that place.
ROCK
Something for the Rest of Us Goo Goo Dolls (Warner Bros.)
2½ stars (out of 4)
If power pop is a mix of catchy, Top-40 melodies and fizzy, new wave guitars, what do you call it when the guitars are cranked to arena-rock levels? Overpowered pop? That would make a pretty good pigeonhole for what Buffalo's Goo Goo Dolls serve up on their 10th studio album. Although the songs are catchy enough on their own, it's often difficult to make out the hooks through the din of power chords and massed backing vocals, and even the ballads seem stuck on overdrive. Fortunately, all that muscle does pay off at points, particularly Sweetest Lie and the slow-building Hey Ya (which is definitely not an Outkast cover).
Brad Wheeler