Pop, Rock, Country, Gospel

A "Love May Take the Long Road Home"

Mark Jackson Band

Long Road Records

Hailing from the (usually) sun-soaked hills of San Diego, the Mark Jackson Band is about as far as you can get from Nashville and still be in the continental United States.

And yet, MJB's newest album (set for a record release party Saturday at Acoustic Expressions in San Diego) is more deeply steeped in country traditions than most anything coming out of Music City these days.

In its straight-ahead approach to country music minus the frills and window dressing, the Mark Jackson Band reminds of old-school musicians like Waylon Jennings and George Strait. With Jackson's smooth singing voice and a sound built around traditional acoustic instruments, the band is somewhere between traditionalists such as Ricky Skaggs and the more modern newgrass acts such as Nickel Creek.

But what is going to keep "Love May Take the Long Road Home" in your CD player spin after spin is the collection of great songs found on it. From the opening cover of "Two Hearts" (written by Fallbrook's Bruce FitzSimmons) through Jackson's own songs like "I'm Sorry (For Making You Feel Like I Do)," "I Wanna Listen to a Love Song" and the title track, this album is full of little gems you won't be able to get out of your head.

Mark Jackson Band performs with the Shadowdogs; 7 p.m. Saturday; Acoustic Expressions, 2852 University Ave., San Diego; $15; (619) 280-9035.

—— Jim Trageser

Staff Writer

B+ "Halfway to Someday"

Shadowdogs

Shadowdogs Music

North County's Shadowdogs have a great new collection of songs on their upcoming CD, they play those songs with virtuosity and a sense of fun, and the band has some of the warmest vocal harmonies you'll ever hear.

The challenge?

Finding a niche for their music in today's radio formats.

Broadly classifying themselves as Americana, the Shadowdogs (opening for the Mark Jackson Band on Saturday) are more country than most bands found under that banner. But they're too rock for a country station.

Like Poco, the Shadowdogs inhabit the mellow side of country-rock. Not quite as mellow as Pure Prairie League, the Shadowdogs can bring a bit of muscle to their music. And on some songs, like "Best of Me," they even sport an updated alt-country-rock sound not so far from, say, Widespread Panic.

Fallbrook's Bruce FitzSimmons (lead vocals, guitar) is a wonderfully melodic songwriter. If we still had Top 40 and/or AOR FM radio stations like we did when Poco was popular, "Abilene" would be all over the radio. But FitzSimmons (who had his song "Two Hearts" covered by San Diego's Mark Jackson Band on its new CD) is only part of what makes the Shadowdogs so alluring. Franklin Jenkins also knows how to turn out hook-laden tunes ("Open Road" is every bit as radio-friendly as "Abilene"), provides the lush vocal harmonies to FitzSimmons, and can also take on lead vocals.

The entire band plays with confidence but not arrogance. Tasty guitar solos, a rock-solid backbeat and intriguing interplay lend a touch of the Allman Bros. to this release.

—— JT

POP

C- "Rebirth"

Jennifer Lopez

Sony

Considering the series of unfortunate events that has kept Jennifer Lopez in the public eye in recent years —— among them Bennifer, "Gigli," and her third marriage in eight years —— who can blame the struggling starlet for naming her new album "Rebirth," or for that matter wanting to dream up a whole new earthly incarnation? No one wants to be famous for getting (or not getting) married, starring in dreadful films, and demanding 10 dressing rooms for a 100-person entourage while visiting Top of the Pops in England to perform "Jenny From the Block," a song about her humble nature.

Unless the artist's grasp of high farce is stronger than appearances suggest, the J.Lo show was indeed in need of some serious rejiggering.

Sony Music spared no expense on Lopez's transfiguration, which arrives in stores Tuesday. Top-flight hirelings Rodney Jerkins and Timbaland, Usher and Rich Harrison, Big Boi and Fabolous and co-executive producer Cory Rooney ply their finest songwriting and most ingenious studio wares.

"Get Right," from the same folks who brought you Beyonce's "Crazy in Love," is a brilliantly surgical party anthem built around a squawking saxophone line from Maceo & the Macks' sample of James Brown's "Soul Power '74"; it's a high-wattage entry in the nascent sampled samples era. Ethereal flutes and Spanish guitars infuse "Step Into My World" with exotic essences. Funk-flecked "Cherry Pie" pays tribute to vintage Prince. "Still Around" couldn't be sweeter. The songs and the sounds are, for the most part, terrific. The problem is the singer.

Never before in the history of pop pinups —— and that includes such vocally challenged bombshells as Janet Jackson and Britney Spears —— has a woman who looks so luscious sounded so unattractive. This isn't about wobbly pitch or thin tone. Lopez is something far worse: a blank. Her voice is barren, vacant, devoid of either sincerity or sex. Lopez is as persuasive as a seductress on "Step Into My World" as she was as a wedding planner.

Even "(Can't Believe) This Is Me," the disc's most emotional and horrible song, penned by Lopez and her latest husband, Marc Anthony, evokes nothing more than a few yelps from the wounded protagonist, who ruminates on a romantic loss not with a 35-year-old woman's hard-won wisdom but with a self-serving whine: "I'm lost in a dream/between what is and what seems/How could you do this to me?"

Mistakes have been made. Public profiles have suffered. Lopez, however, isn't experiencing a creative rebirth; that would involve folk music or primal-scream therapy or some semblance of revelation and humanity, and this album contains nothing of the sort.

She's orchestrating a resurrection —— of thick black eyeliner, of marital bliss, of duets with rappers (here it's Fat Joe), of the midtempo mix of infectious pop and retro-R&B from 2002's "This is Me … Then."

Lopez might have titled this one "This is Me … Again." Hers is not an evolving skill set, merely an endlessly repackageable one. It's no crime to be lovely and limited —— if only Jennifer Lopez would stop pretending to be anything else.

—— Joan Anderman

The Boston Globe

ROCK

B- "Seventeen Days"

3 Doors Down

Universal

When 3 Doors Down released its debut album, "The Better Life," in 2000, they were just one of dozens of bands following the success of so-called emotional rockers with their hard rocking riffs and sensitive lyrics. The band distinguished itself with its second album, 2002's "Away From the Sun," which spawned the megahits "When I'm Gone" and "Here Without You." Now as 3 Doors Down prepares to release its third album, "Seventeen Days," the band has blown away most of its competition.

On the new disc, the Mississippi-based band appears to mostly subscribe to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to songwriting. It would probably be easy to dismiss the band were it not for the phenomenal sales of its first two albums (more than 12 million albums sold worldwide); critically acclaimed or not (and trust me, they are not), somebody is listening to 3 Doors Down.

So what's the key to their success? The answer can be heard on their latest album, "Seventeen Days" —— a title taken from the 17 days the band had after it came off tour to pull together the album before going in the studio to record it. And the result? Well, there's more to "Seventeen Days" than the band gets credit for. The lyrics are straightforward, deceptively simple, and the arrangements are melodic. For example, the album's first single "Let Me Go" opens with guitar strumming along to the lines "One more kiss could be the best thing / One more lie could be the worst." The song builds musically as well as with the lyrics: "I dream ahead to what I hope for / And I turn my back on loving you."

The song "Landing in London" is a story of a lonely life on the road. But the song can be embraced by anyone who has ever experienced separation: "And all these days I spend away / I'll make up for this I swear / I need your love to hold me up / When it's all too much to bear." The hidden gem of the song, though, is a vocal appearance by Bob Seger, whose easily identifiable voice gives the song a richer vocal texture.

In "Right Where I Belong" and "Father's Son," 3 Doors Down tells the story of loss —— one of innocence, one of love.

So maybe 3 Doors Down is on to something here —— heartfelt songs that touch the hearts of those listening. Since when was that a bad thing?

—— Chelsea J. Carter

Associated Press

B+ "Worlds Apart"

And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead

Interscope

And You Will Know Them By The Seriousness of Their Tone.

And You Will Know Them By The Largeness of Their Sound.

And You Will Wonder What They're All About.

And You Will Get A Clue From Their Themes of Apocalypse.

And You Will Want To Judge Them Accordingly.

And You May Well Decide That They're Just a Bit Pretentious.

And You Might Think They're Trying Just Too Hard.

And You May Listen Again And Realize That Their Music Is Really Quite Cool.

And That It Is Excessively Large, And Draws You Mysteriously In.

And You May Be Put Off By the Odd Fit Of the Singer's Light Vocals In Such Grand Music.

And Then Again, You May Be OK With It After All.

And You May Say To Yourself, I've Never Heard An Austin Band Like This.

And You May Wonder About Such a Funny Name, But Get Over It. Trust Us. Wham.

—— Ron Rollins

Cox News Service

COUNTRY

B+ "Be As You Are"

Kenny Chesney

BNA

It's admittedly a stretch to compare Kenny Chesney to poets Dylan Thomas and Robert Frost. But like those two, Chesney's latest recording, "Be As You Are," draws its power from a sense of belonging.

It's no secret that Chesney — who's country music's best-selling artist right now — spends his downtime in the British Virgin Islands. What's shocking is how much this beach time has affected "Be As You Are," a leisurely, introspective record that defies Chesney's image as a quasi-hard-rocking country boy, best known for hits like "Young" and "The Good Stuff."

Comparisons to Jimmy Buffet aside, by bucking trends and confounding his record label, Chesney seems to be using his multiplatinum-selling power for good (at this point, his record label has no plan to market "Be As You Are," and is not releasing any singles from the album).

Songs like "Magic" may be lightweight stuff, but their mellow, light-handed arrangements are appealing, and Chesney is digging a little deeper lyrically: "It's in the music out in the street," he sings, accompanied by a steel drum, "I believe there is magic down here."

Chesney, it seems, is a songwriter-singer at heart.

—— Paul V. Griffith

Associated Press

B- "This Woman"

LeAnn Rimes

Asylum-Curb

After forays into pop and rock, LeAnn Rimes says she has come back to her country roots with "This Woman."

But fans who are hoping for a return to tunes like "One Way Ticket (Because I Can)" or even the crossover "How Do I Live" may be left looking for the roots.

Except for the single "Nothin' 'Bout Love Makes Sense," a toe-tapping little confection that has become a hit on the country charts, there's about as much pop or pop-rock on this Dann Huff-produced CD as there is country. "The Weight of Love" gets a country nod and "I Dare You" puts a little more country into the pop.

At the same time, Rimes does some listenable blues. The album leads off with "I Want to With You," and includes a Janis Joplin sound on "When This Woman Loves a Man" and "Some People." The latter may be the high point of the CD with its rich mixture of a little country, a little soul and a lot of blues.

She also does some serious rocking with "I Got It Bad," co-written with husband Dean Sheremet. It's big at NASCAR tracks.

If fans keep an open mind, they will appreciate that Rimes has branched out into new genres that underscore her widening musical interests and expanded vocal range.

If they still want to hear a 13-year-old singing "Blue," well, at 22, she doesn't yodel much any more.

—— Tom Gardner

Associated Press

GOSPEL

C+ "Dream"

BeBe Winans

Still Waters Recordings/TMG

Here's regrettable proof that loveliness alone can lull for only so long.

BeBe Winans has one of the most calming, beautiful voices in contemporary gospel music. He's calm and beautiful on the first single —— actually it's more like a long chorus —— titled "When We Pray." He's calm and beautiful on the next, fluttery "Love Thang." And he's calm and beautiful yet again on the more serious look inward, "Love Me Anyway."

By the time Winans gets to his unfortunate "I Have a Dream" —— yes, it uses the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech as a springboard —— you could understand if someone were actually snoozing. Just hope someone shakes them in time to hear the last two listed tracks —— "Miracle of Love," on which he and R&B singer Angie Stone trade spirited, church-honed power belts, and the beautiful, calming and finally compellingly written "Safe From Harm."

—— Sonia Murray

Cox News Service