s. Mac Bride

Jennie is a twelve-year-old girl living with her parents in extremely rural mountain country. Her schoolteacher, Miss Carol, though a mountain girl herself, has gone off to be educated and returned in hopes of stopping the tradition of child marriage which permeates the culture. Jennie's father Ira is a good man who tries to protect Miss Carol from the men who threaten her if she doesn't call off her crusade. One of these men, Jake Bolby, has his eye on little Jennie and plots to make her his bride.

A seventeen-song set documenting The Decemberists' lead singer/songwriter's 2006 solo tour. Meloy was heralded by Rolling Stone as "a master of improbable juxtaposition: arcane, detailed fictions of star-crossed passion and avenging bloodshed dressed up in indie rock jangle, la-de-da choruses, and vintage prog-rock bombast" in a review of The Decemberists' show in NY's Central Park last spring. By contrast, the live solo album presents him in a stripped down, acoustic setting. Of the thirteen Meloy originals, two are previously unreleased compositions, "Dracula's Daughter" and "Wonder". Along the way, he employs snippets of songs from The Smiths, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, and REM. The collection also captures ample between-song banter.

Rhino's five-disc box set Respect: A Century of Women in Music was surely assembled with the best of intentions, but it doesn't quite work. First of all, any collection that focuses solely on "the female contribution" comes off as a little condescending, no matter how good the intentions are. Still, the concept has enough weight to make for at least an interesting listen. However, any compilation that spans nearly 100 years and every conceivable popular musical genre is bound not only to be incomplete, but too sweeping to be totally effective. The scope is impressive, as are the featured artists – think of any major female musician and they're likely to be here, unless it's Joni Mitchell (Kim Gordon and Kim Deal are also missing, as are several other similarly minded post-punk rockers and various pop and folk singer/songwriters, but no omission is as shocking as Mitchell's) – but the overall effect is somewhat bewildering.

The Goldebriars' second album is not folk-rock, but there's an expansiveness to the production that is definitely leading the music in the pop and even rock direction. You can hear a little drums (albeit of the sort where it sounds like someone's placed a towel over the kit), keyboards, and pop/rock rhythm. Unfortunately, the ambition of the arrangements is not matched by the material, which can digress into kind of corny folk-ethnic numbers along the lines of "Zum Gale Gale" (a song-chant familiar to anyone who attended Jewish summer camps) and "Joy, Joy, Joy." The non-traditional material, too, can be stultifyingly awkward.