KD Lang

k.d. lang's first major-label album (and debut American release) was a bit of a switch from the polished retro-country of her best-known work; with Dave Edmunds in the producer's chair, Angel with a Lariat often sounds more like rockabilly or roots rock than classic C&W, with a big, snappy drum sound, plenty of guitars mixed upfront, and lots of slapback of lang's vocals (a production decision lang mentioned with little enthusiasm several years after the album came out). "Turn Me Around" and "High Time for a Detour" rock significantly harder than most of lang's body of work, and "Watch Your Step Polka," "Diet of Strange Places," and "Tune Into My Wave" find lang and her band (who are in fine form throughout) indulging her sly sense of humor, which tended to get lost in the shuffle on later albums such as Ingénue.

On her first two albums, k.d. lang took a witty and playful approach to the sounds and traditions of classic country music, and while it was obvious she truly loved the music, she also seemed to be having a bit of fun at its expense at the same time. But in 1988, lang proved beyond a doubt that she was serious about country (as well as her own talent) with Shadowland, an homage to the polished countrypolitan sounds of the 1950s and '60s that was produced by Owen Bradley, the iconic Nashville producer who was behind the controls for many of Patsy Cline's most memorable recordings. lang herself sought out Bradley to work on the album, and luring him out of retirement proved to be a masterstroke; rather than try to re-create the lush textures and deep atmosphere of Bradley's sides for Cline or Brenda Lee herself, lang went to the source, and Bradley gave her studio settings that referenced his work during Nashville's golden era while adding an ever-so-slight contemporary sheen.

Smokey-voiced chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux's third CD is a lovely collection of after-hours ruminations and should confirm her rise to fame. Credit producer Larry Klein for doing a bang-up job with the album's sound: the elegant, pared-down arrangements are all brushed drums, acoustic guitars, and cool organ licks. But of course it's Peyroux's voice that brings it all home–preferably one where the shades are drawn, embers are smoldering in the fireplace, and the white wine is kept dry. Two-thirds of the songs are well-chosen covers, including a duet with k.d. lang on Joni Mitchell's "River"; a relaxed version of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," from Midnight Cowboy; a delicately lilting samba take on Leonard Cohen and Anjani Thomas's title track; Serge Gainsbourg's "La Javanaise," performed in the original French; and Charlie Chaplin's "Smile," from Modern Times. The four originals, all coauthored by Peyroux, easily keep up with such august company, especially "I'm All Right"–written with Klein and Walter Becker, it captures the easy sophistication of Becker's regular band, Steely Dan. Fans of Norah Jones (whose collaborator Jesse Harris cowrote three of the songs) should gobble up this album, but Peyroux is no mere imitator: She's her own, very real thing.

Two minutes into The Lookout, a couple of related parallels bubble up when the David Crosby of If I Could Only Remember my Name and Gene Clark at his most sparse spring to mind. It’s not that the album’s opening cut “Margaret Sands” sounds like either but that the creative outlook is similar: a country-ish singer-songwriter setting their composition in a baroque musical frame.

Tony Bennett has so many adoring celebrity fans it should come as no surprise that when a major duets album is planned, he's able to draw a roster of the biggest recording stars from the rock and vocal worlds, plus a pair of country music wildcards. (This despite the fact that he recorded an album with several duets in 2001, and a full-album collaboration one year later with k.d. lang.) One surprise is how well producer Phil Ramone paired Bennett with both duet partners and fitting standards – among them Barbra Streisand on the optimist's anthem "Smile," Dixie Chicks for the flapper standard "Lullaby of Broadway," Bono on the wickedly spiteful "I Wanna Be Around," Tim McGraw on "Cold, Cold Heart" (the Hank Williams song that was Bennett's biggest country crossover hit), Stevie Wonder on his own "For Once in My Life," Juanes for "The Shadow of Your Smile" (which was a hit first for the Brazilian Astrud Gilberto), and Sting on the torch song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."