What does a shrug sound like? On "Don't Know Why,” the opening track of her debut effort, Norah Jones suggests a few possibilities. The first time she sings the title phrase, she gives it a touch of indifference, the classic tossed-off movie-star shrug. Her tone shifts slightly when she hits the chorus, to convey twinges of sadness; here the casual phrasing could be an attempt to shake off a sharp memory. Later, she shrugs in a way that conveys resignation, possibly regret—she's replaying a scene, trying to understand what happened. Those shrugs and shadings, tools deployed by every jazz vocalist of the 1950s, are inescapable throughout Come Away With Me—in part because everything surrounding Jones' voice is so chill. There's room for her to emote, and room for gently cresting piano and organ chords. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, Jones knows instinctively how much (or how little!) singer the song needs. The secret of this record, which came out when Jones was 22, is its almost defiant approachability: It is calm, and open, and gentle, music for a lazy afternoon in a porch swing. As transfixing covers of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart” and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You” make clear, Jones thinks about contours and shadows when she sings; her storytelling depends as much on the scene and the atmosphere as the narrative. And Jones applies the same understatement to the original songs here, which weave together elements of country, pop, jazz and torch balladry in inventive ways. It's one thing to render an old tune with modern cleverness, a skill Jones had honed as a solo pianist/singer before she was discovered. It's quite another to transform an original tune, like Jesse Harris' "Don't Know Why,” into something that sounds ageless and eternal, like a standard. Jones does that, over and over, using just shrugs and implications, rarely raising her voice much above a whisper. © Tom Moon/Qobuz

Proving that she's both fearless and capable of almost anything musically, Dolly Parton has taken her induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame seriously and made a rock album built from a slew of favorite mainstream covers and several originals she wrote for the occasion. The respect she commands as a worldwide celebrity is reflected by the massive guest list whose vocal tracks were recorded elsewhere and mixed together in Nashville by producer Kent Wells and a veritable horde of engineers. Vocalists who make an appearance on the songs that they originally made famous include Sting ("Every Breath You Take"), Steve Perry ("Open Arms"), Elton John ("Don't Let the Sun Go Down"), Debbie Harry ("Heart of Glass"), and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr ("Let It Be"). The voice of Lynyrd Skynyrd lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant returns from the grave to sing a verse and duet on the choruses in the epic and appropriate closer, "Free Bird."  While Parton could have allowed a smile to peak out here or there on this massive undertaking, she plays it straight throughout.  Not surprisingly, women receive commendable attention as songwriters and guest players with performances by Ann Wilson, Parton's goddaughter Miley Cyrus, Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, Lizzo and others. There are also flashes where Parton stops playing rock star. Her original "World on Fire" is a plea for unity and common sense to will out: "Now tell me what is truth/ Have we all lost sight/ Of common decency/ Of the wrong and right/ How do we heal this great divide/ Do we care enough to try?" What makes these 30 tracks work is that no one can sell it quite like Parton. While her voice strains on some  numbers—she's always been more of a careful interpreter than a furious belter—she's full of old pro wiles and is the soul of authenticity throughout; she gives her all to every number. In the rousing "(I Can't Get No) "Satisfaction" with P!nk and Brandy Carlile, Parton's between-line exhortations are heartfelt and spot on. Rather than arty re-interpretations or an empty marketing concept, this is an abundance of what Parton does best: feel the songs she's singing.  © Robert Baird/Qobuz

On Can't Slow Down, his second solo album, Lionel Richie ran with the sound and success of his eponymous debut, creating an album that was designed to be bigger and better. It's entirely possible that he took a cue from Michael Jackson's Thriller, which set out to win over listeners of every corner of the mainstream pop audience, because Richie does a similar thing with Can't Slow Down -- he plays to the MOR adult contemporary audience, to be sure, but he ups the ante on his dance numbers, creating grooves that are funkier, and he even adds a bit of rock with the sleek nocturnal menace of "Running With the Night," one of the best songs here. He doesn't swing for the fences like Michael did in 1982; he makes safe bets, which is more in his character. But safe bets do pay off, and with Can't Slow Down Richie reaped enormous dividends, earning not just his biggest hit, but his best album. He has less compunction about appearing as a pop singer this time around, which gives the preponderance of smooth ballads -- particularly "Penny Lover," "Hello," and the country-ish "Stuck on You" -- conviction, and the dance songs roll smooth and easy, never pushing the beats too hard and relying more on Richie's melodic hooks than the grooves, which is what helped make "All Night Long (All Night)" a massive hit. Indeed, five of these songs (all the aforementioned tunes) were huge hits, and since the record ran only eight songs, that's an astonishing ration. The short running time does suggest the record's main weakness, one that it shares with many early-'80s LPs -- the songs themselves run on a bit too long, padding out the running length of the entire album. This is only a problem on album tracks like "Love Will Find a Way," which are pleasant but a little tedious at their length, but since there are only three songs that aren't hits, it's a minor problem. All the hits showcase Lionel Richie at his best, as does Can't Slow Down as a whole.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The Black Keys—childhood friends Dan Auerbach on vocals, guitar, bass and keyboards, and Patrick Carney on drums—found success after forming in Akron, Ohio, and moved to Nashville a decade ago. But geography seemingly has never had much bearing on this duo, who started out playing Mississippi hill country blues and who, now, 10 albums in, have recorded a collection of covers by legends including Junior Kimbrough, John Lee Hooker and R.L. Burnside. Delta Kream was recorded over just two days with the duo joined by Mississippi hill country guitar specialists Eric Deaton, who backed up Kimbrough until his 1998 death, and Kenny Brown, who Burnside considered his "adopted white son." (The album's name comes from the cover photo, a classic shot by photographer William Eggleston of a car parked in front of a run-down drive-in, the Delta Kream.) It's easy to revert to cynicism when listening to a new Black Keys record: Here's the beer commercial song, the truck commercial song, the sports league song. This time, the game is: Who did this one inspire? You can detect the low-key Hendrix vibe in Kimbrough's "Stay All Night," with its slow-psych guitar and Carney's hard-working but never showy fills, riffs and tambourine punches. Big Joe Williams' "Mellow Peaches"—woozy organ, loose-limbed rhythm, and a slow build into a (mellow) frenzy—has clear through-lines to the Allman Brothers. The sweltering stomp and serpentine guitar of Kimbrough's "Walk With Me" surely had an effect on ZZ Top. And, of course, there are plenty of "sounds like Creem" moments: Kimbrough's "Come On and Go with Me" and a terrific, slinky take on Kimbrough's cover of John Lee Hooker's "Crawling Kingsnake," complete with what Auerbach calls "almost a disco riff." But, more than anything, you hear exactly where the Black Keys' own style has its roots. Burnside's country blues "Poor Boy a Long Way From Home" exemplifies it with wild, possessed moments when the guitars completely erase the need for vocals. A cover of Rainie Burnette's "Coal Black Mattie" chugs and nods and struts like a rooster, the guitars sliding all over the place, and would've been right at home on the Keys' great El Camino. (Same goes for Burnside's "Going Down South," gussied up with Auerbach's falsetto.) And in fact, Kimbrough's "Do the Romp" showed up on their 2008 debut The Big Come Up as the delightfully nasty "Do the Rump"; this time around, it gets a spit-shine makeover that sounds like sexy confidence. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

There isn't a second of Bruce Hornsby & the Range's The Way It Is that suggests it's a debut album. On the contrary, the record sounds like the culmination of a band's efforts over many years. The group has a distinct sound of its own, often led by Hornsby's bright piano chords and elastic tenor, with cohesive and evocative arrangements; there is new age music here, as well as jazz and country, and the mixture is presented naturally by musicians who seem to have been playing with each other for some time. Similarly, the songwriting has its own flavor. Hornsby wrote seven of the nine songs with his brother John Hornsby, and they create their own world, a working-class environment of longing and loneliness set against the background of the Virginia Tidewater area. (The album cover displays a sepia-toned photograph of the band set over another photograph of the long Chesapeake Bay Bridge.) The lyrics are lightly poetic and restrained, for the most part. The exception is the title song (written by Bruce Hornsby alone), a brave if somewhat clumsily written attack on the heartless right-wing politics of the mid-'80s, as the U.S. suffered through a second Reagan administration determined to roll back civil rights gains. The boldness of the statement and the lovely piano theme more than compensate for the awkward writing, however, making the song one of the album's most memorable. And that's saying a lot when the competition includes the engaging "Mandolin Rain" and the appealingly romantic "Every Little Kiss" (Hornsby's other sole writing credit). Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that the music is so accomplished. Hornsby was no teenage neophyte when he made it, having kicked around the music business and gotten into his thirties, and the band includes such veterans as David Mansfield, who may be remembered as a member of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder troupe and the Alpha Band, as well as being a film composer. Sometimes a debut album just happens to be the first music most people get to hear by a mature talent, and that's the case here on the debut album of the year. (Bruce Hornsby & the Range went on to win the 1986 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.)© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

At this stage of the game, any new Tom Waits record is an event. Listening through the music of his entire career is daunting, to say the least, but it's a journey no one else, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan, has taken before. If one listens to the official recordings, from 1973's Closing Time, featuring the songs of an itinerant Beat barroom singer (no lounges please), right on through to the frenetic mania of 2004's Real Gone, one becomes aware of not only the twists and turns of a songwriter wrestling and bellowing at and with his muse, but of a journeyman artist barely able to hold on to the lid of his creativity, let alone keep it on. True, there have been many stops along the way: in the seediest lounges (1977's Foreign Affairs, which could have been a twisted inspiration to novelist Phillip Kerr when he wrote the Berlin Noir trilogy); acid-drenched blues scree (1980's Heartattack and Vine); travelogues of the unseen and the unspeakable (1985's Rain Dogs); seething and murderous suburban nightmares (1987's Franks Wild Years); the frighteningly comic tales of plagues and carnivals (1993's Black Rider); the scrape, squeal, and hollowed-out metal crunch of urban junkyards and classically American paranoia (1999's Mule Variations); and through-the-mirror-darkly image nightmares and fairy tale variations (2002's Alice and Blood Money). All of it is contained in the man who takes delight in the bent, quarreling marriage of song and sound with dangerously comic imagery.Orphans is the most unwieldy Tom Waits collection yet. Packaged in a Cibachrome-tinted box are three discs containing 56 songs total. It claims 30 new tunes, but a mere 14 can be found on other records -- six others have to be hunted for while the remainder have shown up in various incarnations. This crazy thing began as a collection of outtakes, rarities, soundtrack tunes, and compilation-only cuts -- some of which survive here in new form, including tracks from the Ramblin' Jack Elliot tribute, the Bridge benefit, and two Ramones covers, to name a few. In other words, the first conception was as a hodgepodge collection of attic material. Waits checked out the tune selection as it was and said something like "nah, bad idea; this would suck." So, he did what any self-respecting artist with a head full of ideas, two stomping, shuffling feet, and itchy fingers -- and time on his hands -- would do: he recorded new songs and re-recorded others, so the thing would have some kind of elasticity yet hold its rickety bone and far-reaching sources together by means of cheap glue, chewed gum, solder, and a visionary recording engineer named Karl Derfler. The end result is this daunting triple disc divided by title and theme: disc one is "Brawlers," Waits' rock and blues record, evoking everyone from T. Rex and Johnny Burnette to Sonny Curtis and Howlin' Wolf. It's a grand thing, since he hasn't released one like this before -- the closest were Heartattack and Vine on one side and Mule Variations on the other. Travel, regret, murder, salvation, guttersnipe meditations on sorrow, and nefarious and broken-down innocent -- and nefarious -- amorous intentions are a few of the themes that run through these tunes like oil and sand. Disc two is "Bawlers," a collection of ballads, raw love songs, weepy wine tunes, wistful yet tentative hope -- in the form of floppy prayers -- and an under-the-table and wishing, bewildered, yet dead-on topical tome on the world's political situation. Disc three, entitled "Bastards," is even edgier; it's Waits hanging out there with his music and muse on the lunatic fringe of experimentation. Think Bone Machine's wilder moments and Waits' loopy standup comedy in the form of six spoken word pieces included here. Thank goodness he finally did this. If you've ever seen the man on a stage, you'll get why these are so important immediately."Brawler" digs deep into the American roots music that has obsessed Waits since the beginning of his long labyrinthine haul. There's the frenetic rockabilly swagger that probably makes Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent shake and shimmy in their graves. One of the movie tunes, a cover of "Sea of Love," recalls its place in the film for those who've seen it. If you haven't, it's a slanted, tarnished jewel freshly liberated from antiquity. The hobo ballad "Bottom of the World" recalls old country gospel, and "Lucinda" can only be described as a gallows dance tune. The slippery hoodoo blues "Road to Peace" is the season's most timely and topical political song. "Bawlers" is the set's bridge, and it's easy to see why: it's the most accessible disc in the box. There are some of the movie tunes here, from flicks like Pollock, Big Bad Love, and Shrek 2. Other cuts, such as "Goodnight Irene," recall "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" from the Small Change album; the singing protagonist here is older and more desperate, almost suicidal. Resignation displaces hope; it's a long reach into the past and expresses the void of the present. The cover of the Ramones' "Danny Says" is completely reinvented; it's one of the loneliest, most sweetly desolate of Waits' many sides. It's not all darkness, however; there are gorgeous songs here too, such as "Never Let Go" and "You Can Never Hold Back Spring," where an indomitable human spirit reins and rings true. Finally, it comes down to "Bastards." The eerie, strange, cabaret-in-a-carnival music that is Weill and Brecht's "What Keeps Mankind Alive" enlists banjos, accordion, tuba, and big bass drum as simply the means to let these twisted words out of the box. Thankfully the cover of "Books of Moses," originally by Skip Spence, is here, as is Daniel Johnston's "King Kong." Neither of these cuts resembles their original version, and Waits brings out the dark underbelly inherent in each. "Bedtime Story" is the first of the Waits monologues here. It is the repressed wish of every parent (with a sense of humor) to have the temerity to tell this kind of tale to their children when they retire. Others include a reading of Charles Bukowski's "Nirvana," the hilarious monologue "The Pontiac," and the live routine "Dog Door." Perhaps the most inviting cut here is the piano-and-horn ballad "Altar Boy," a postmodern saloon song that would make Bobby Short turn red with rage. This disc is the true mixed bag in the set: unruly, uneven, and full of feints and free-for-alls.Ultimately, the epicenter of Orphans is Waits' voice. It's many expressions, nuances, bellows, barks, hollers, open wails, roughshod croons, and midnight whispers carry these songs and monologues to the listener with authority as an open invitation into his sound world, his view of tradition, and his manner of shaping that world as something not ephemeral, but as an extension of musical time itself. As a vocalist, Waits, like Bob Dylan, embodies the entire genealogical line of the blues, jazz, local barroom bards, and traveling minstrels in the very grain of his songs. That wily throat carries not only the songs he and his songwriting partner and wife, Kathleen Brennan, pen, but also the magnet for the sonic atmospheres that frame it. There is adventure, danger, and the sound of the previous, the forgotten, and the wished for in it. And it is that voice that links all three of these discs together and makes them partners. One cannot dismiss that even though some of these songs have appeared elsewhere, Orphans is a major work that goes beyond the origins of the material and drags everything past and present with sound and texture into a present to be presented as something utterly new, beyond anything he has previously issued. To paraphrase Ezra Pound in response to Allen Ginsberg's inquiry about what his poem "The Cantos" meant, these orphans speak for themselves.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

At crucial moments in his epic career, Paul McCartney has turned to a self-titled solo record as an emotional palette cleanser. In 1970 as the Beatles were in the throes of dissolution, he made the shambolic, rough-hewed McCartney (on the back cover was a shot of his infant daughter Mary nestled in his coat—her photography is now part of the McCartney III packaging). Ten years later as Wings was crashing back to earth, he made the synth-driven McCartney II. Both were initially savaged by press and fans alike but have since become much-beloved entries in his ever-lengthening discography, now seen as more personal and experimental efforts in a solo career that has often been commercially focused to a fault. While the scenario of a 78-year-old Paul McCartney locked up by the pandemic in his Sussex home with a computer, a plethora of musical instruments and a desire to do the one-man band thing screams incoming indulgence, McCartney III is certainly that, but in a good way. The stylistic freedom inherent in being isolated and alone is a welcome antidote to his legendary sense of what sells. Macca's best album since 2007's Memory Almost Full, the variety of McCartney III is its strongest point. For those still looking for wisps of Beatlesque genius, "Lavatory Lil"—whose title recalls "Polythene Pam"—is exuberance that very nearly tips from sass into offensive ire. And if it's the White Album you're missing, "The Kiss of Venus," sung in his fading yet still capable falsetto, recalls his former band's devotion to baroque pop as it makes its spidery way, eventually adding harpsichord accents. For the sound of Sir Paul cutting loose and rocking out with abandon, the ponderous proto-metal sendup of "Slidin'" is the sound of the shrieker of "Helter Skelter" again getting his ya-yas out with, "I know there must be other ways of feeling free, but this what I want to do, who I want to be." As for intimacy, the unprocessed sound of McCartney's now weathered voice, sounds wise and ruminative in "Pretty Boys," singing lines about "bicycles for hire" and "working for the squire." The crisp, mostly uncompressed sonics here prove that Sir Paul's ears have lost none of their acuity as the slow, careful home recording process challenged him to limit excessive layering and to capture his voice, warts and all, in a natural way. On the looped beat and repetitive lyrics of the oddly attractive R&Bish groove of "Deep Down," he even goes hoarse and talky. Finally, the album's sleek and rolling centerpiece, "Deep Deep Feeling," which wrestles with the sweet and sour aspects of love, is built on acoustic piano and an impressive fusion of lead and background vocals. While the album's opener "Long Tailed Winter Bird" and closer "Winter Bird / When Winter Comes" could be taken as signs that McCartney intends to flutter off the scene, the vital energies audible in McCartney III say otherwise. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had come out of Woodstock as the hottest new music act on the planet, and followed it up with Deja Vu, recorded across almost six months in the second half of 1969 and released in March of 1970, supported by a tour in the summer of that year. As it happened, despite some phenomenal music-making on-stage that summer, the tour was fraught with personal conflicts, and the quartet split up upon its completion. And as it happened, even Deja Vu was something of an illusion created by the foursome -- Neil Young was only on five of the album's ten tracks -- which meant that an actual, tangible legacy for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was as elusive and ephemeral to listeners as Ahab's Moby Dick. But then came 4 Way Street, released in April of 1971: a live double-LP set, chock-full of superb music distilled down from a bunch of nights on that tour that more than fulfilled the promise of the group. Indeed, contained on those original four LP sides was the embodiment of everything great that the unique ethos behind this group -- which was not a "group" but four individuals working together -- might have yielded. Each of the participants got to show off a significant chunk of his best work, whether presented alone or in tandem with the others, and the shared repertory -- "Long Time Gone," "Ohio" etc. -- binding it all together as more than a documentary of some joint appearances. Conceptually, it was all as diffuse as the concept behind the group, but musically, 4 Way Street was one of the great live rock documents of its time, a status that the original vinyl retains along with such touchstones as the Allman Brothers' At Fillmore East, the live half of the Cream's Wheels of Fire, and the Grateful Dead's Live/Dead; some of the extended guitar jams between Stills and Young ("Southern Man") go on longer than strict musical sense would dictate, but it seemed right at the time, and they capture a form that was far more abused in other hands after this group broke up. Although Neil Young and Stephen Stills had the advantage of the highest wattage on their songs and their jams together, David Crosby and Graham Nash more than manage to hold their own, not only with some strong and distinctive songs, but also with a strong case that less could be more: they reached the more introspective members of their audience, mostly individually, while Stills and Young wowed the crowds collectively. In many respects, this was the greatest part of the legacy that the foursome left behind, though it is also a bit unfair to stack it up next to, say, Deja Vu, as 4 Way Street had the advantage of all four participants ranging freely across a combined 20 years of repertory.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

What does a shrug sound like? On "Don't Know Why,” the opening track of her debut effort, Norah Jones suggests a few possibilities. The first time she sings the title phrase, she gives it a touch of indifference, the classic tossed-off movie-star shrug. Her tone shifts slightly when she hits the chorus, to convey twinges of sadness; here the casual phrasing could be an attempt to shake off a sharp memory. Later, she shrugs in a way that conveys resignation, possibly regret—she's replaying a scene, trying to understand what happened. Those shrugs and shadings, tools deployed by every jazz vocalist of the 1950s, are inescapable throughout Come Away With Me—in part because everything surrounding Jones' voice is so chill. There's room for her to emote, and room for gently cresting piano and organ chords. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, Jones knows instinctively how much (or how little!) singer the song needs. The secret of this record, which came out when Jones was 22, is its almost defiant approachability: It is calm, and open, and gentle, music for a lazy afternoon in a porch swing. As transfixing covers of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart” and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You” make clear, Jones thinks about contours and shadows when she sings; her storytelling depends as much on the scene and the atmosphere as the narrative. And Jones applies the same understatement to the original songs here, which weave together elements of country, pop, jazz and torch balladry in inventive ways. It's one thing to render an old tune with modern cleverness, a skill Jones had honed as a solo pianist/singer before she was discovered. It's quite another to transform an original tune, like Jesse Harris' "Don't Know Why,” into something that sounds ageless and eternal, like a standard. Jones does that, over and over, using just shrugs and implications, rarely raising her voice much above a whisper. © Tom Moon/Qobuz

When Sam Fender made his full-length debut in 2019, it was in impressive fashion with Hypersonic Missiles, a set of compassionate, politically charged anthems that split the difference between atmospheric rock and singer/songwriter traditions (he opened for Bob Dylan and Neil Young at Hyde Park that year). Less than two years later, his follow-up, Seventeen Going Under, finds him looking back on his childhood in North Shields, outside of Newcastle, England. While the subject matter here is more personal, it sticks to a palette of lush, guitar-based band arrangements and doesn't shed any sociopolitical awareness. Most notably, rant-sung rocker "Aye" catalogs violent and abusive historical events, acknowledging complicit witnesses. The song's frustrations culminate in a derisive, repeated, "I don't have time for the very few/They never had time for me and you," in reference to the 1%. Later, the far more measured, melodic "Mantra" revisits similar sentiments with lines like "Please stop trying to find comfort in these sociopaths/Their beauty is exclusively on the surface." Among the more common autobiographical material is "Spit of You," which instead examines his relationship with his father. Its calmer tone and agile, picked guitar line back lyrics steeped in regret. Fender still makes room for soaring anthems like the skittering "Paradigms," the driving "Get You Down," and the title track, a saxophone-bolstered chant-along that recalls suppressing anger as a teen. He closes Seventeen Going Under with "The Dying Light," a ballad that looks for help getting through the nights, when distractions are more elusive. A piano ballad to begin, it ends a sentimental set with what seems like a fitting rush of crashing cymbals, throbbing bass, clanking piano, horns, and an emphatic resolved chord.© Marcy Donelson /TiVo

4 stars out of 5 -- "For Burton, using the past to shape DEAR DEPARTED insists we pay attention in the present, and that’s the least these songs deserve."© TiVo

The fifth album from the prolific Thom Rylance-fronted indie pop act is their fourth in four years and follows 2021's Something to Leave the House For. It was their first to top the U.K. album chart and features guest appearances from Shaun Ryder, Frank Turner, and Boy George, as well as segments narrated by Stephen Fry. © James Wilkinson /TiVo

When Sam Fender made his full-length debut in 2019, it was in impressive fashion with Hypersonic Missiles, a set of compassionate, politically charged anthems that split the difference between atmospheric rock and singer/songwriter traditions (he opened for Bob Dylan and Neil Young at Hyde Park that year). Less than two years later, his follow-up, Seventeen Going Under, finds him looking back on his childhood in North Shields, outside of Newcastle, England. While the subject matter here is more personal, it sticks to a palette of lush, guitar-based band arrangements and doesn't shed any sociopolitical awareness. Most notably, rant-sung rocker "Aye" catalogs violent and abusive historical events, acknowledging complicit witnesses. The song's frustrations culminate in a derisive, repeated, "I don't have time for the very few/They never had time for me and you," in reference to the 1%. Later, the far more measured, melodic "Mantra" revisits similar sentiments with lines like "Please stop trying to find comfort in these sociopaths/Their beauty is exclusively on the surface." Among the more common autobiographical material is "Spit of You," which instead examines his relationship with his father. Its calmer tone and agile, picked guitar line back lyrics steeped in regret. Fender still makes room for soaring anthems like the skittering "Paradigms," the driving "Get You Down," and the title track, a saxophone-bolstered chant-along that recalls suppressing anger as a teen. He closes Seventeen Going Under with "The Dying Light," a ballad that looks for help getting through the nights, when distractions are more elusive. A piano ballad to begin, it ends a sentimental set with what seems like a fitting rush of crashing cymbals, throbbing bass, clanking piano, horns, and an emphatic resolved chord.© Marcy Donelson /TiVo