Four CDs may end up ‘neath the tree

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Editor’s Note: In Sound Advice, veteran BDN entertainment writer Dale McGarrigle, rock columnist Emily Burnham and a revolving stable of BDN writers review new albums from across the musical spectrum.

“The Crane Wife” – The Decemberists (Capitol)

It’s not very cool to like The Decemberists. The Oregon five-piece, led by the verbose, charming Colin Meloy, write songs about ghosts, fair maidens, sea captains and Celtic mythology. They play intricate, earnest, theatrical folk music, peppered with trappings of prog-rock and sea chanteys. And now, after leaving Kill Rock Stars records for major label Capitol, they’ve lost some of their indie cred too.

But who needs cool? The Decem-berists don’t exist in a world of irony and existential angst. They live in a world where a song like “Yankee Bayonet,” off their latest album “The Crane Wife,” is par for the course – a sweet Civil War love ballad, sung as a duet between a dead Union soldier and his widow. Cool doesn’t really enter into it.

On the 12-minute epic, “The Crane Wife, 1 and 2,” Meloy retells the Japanese folk tale of the same name, with lots of keyboard flourishes and power chords that bring to mind both The Who and Jethro Tull. Elsewhere, the song “O Valencia!” boasts a melody that rivals the Smiths or XTC, as bright and memorable as anything Morrissey and Marr or Andy Partridge ever recorded.

The whole album glitters, thanks to clean, stripped-down production, and it bears the mark of a group of musicians that have come into their own as both a songwriting team and a performing band. It’s not hip, and it’s not groundbreaking – it’s imaginative, it’s intelligent, and it’s lots of fun.

– EMILY BURNHAM

“From This Moment On” (Verve) – Diana Krall

Diana Krall has a voice that can be smooth, raspy, dreamy – and that’s all in the same line of a lyric. It can be somewhat disconcerting, especially when most celebrated performers have just one style and we listeners are trained to expect that.

What Krall does is use her voice much as a trumpeter or saxophonist uses the instrument to make those notes zing.

She does it stunningly well on this latest jazz album.

One, maybe two, of the songs in this collection would have been considered jazz in their heyday; most of them were show tunes, some were Sinatra standards. Krall takes songs from Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer and makes them over with terrific horns and expressive piano, claiming them as her own.

It all works. My favorite is the title track, “From This Moment On,” with an infectious, raucous beat that gets your toes tapping and leaves you with a song, if not in your heart, then definitely in your head.

The wry “I Was Doing Alright” and “Day In Day Out” are jazz straight up. “It Could Happen to You” and “Isn’t This a Lovely Day” are dreamy renditions, while “Little Girl Blue” is sweetly sad in its yearning.

One of my favorite standards, but one rarely remade, is “Willow Weep for Me.” Krall’s rendition is, in a word, fantastic.

“Come Dance With Me,” she sings – and how. If you do, you won’t be sorry.

– JANINE PINEO

“Once Again” (G.O.O.D. Music/Sony Urban Music/Columbia) – John Legend

There’s no place for John Legend to go but down.

After all, the formerly in-demand studio musician’s 2004 debut album “Get Lifted” had 3 million in sales worldwide and earned him three Grammy Awards. Oh, yeah, he also has critical darling Kanye West as his co-producer.

So his follow-up album, “Once Again,” faces impossibly high expectations.

But the nice thing about early success is that Legend can, to a large degree, thumb his nose at expectations and do his own thing, hoping that his fans will come along for the ride.

Does “Once Again” deliver? That depends on what the listener is seeking. If it’s urban music that’s beat- and rap-heavy, this isn’t it. But if it’s well-written, piano-laced soul from the Norah Jones-Alicia Keys school, this is the right place.

Sure, “Once Again” is nothing but silly love songs, all penned by Legend. But what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know? We’ve needed a new Smokey Robinson since the 1970s, and Legend is admirably suited to fill that role.

“Once Again” is exquisite, stripped-down R&B, and it goes down oh so smoothly.

– DALE MCGARRIGLE

“Romantic Classics” (Columbia/Burgundy Records) – Julio Iglesias

I like Julio Iglesias. It’s that whole Latin-lover thing and the fact that he sings romantic, sappy songs in that Latin-lover way.

When “Romantic Classics” came my way, I was delighted, thinking he’d discovered the treasure-trove of standards being mined by everyone from Rod Stewart to Michael Feinstein.

Then I read the back cover of the CD and went, “Huh?”

Remember “Careless Whisper” by the ’80s duo Wham!, with lead singer George Michael? Do you recall “Drive” by The Cars? “Always on My Mind” by Willie Nelson or “Right Here Waiting” by Richard Marx?

“Romantic Classics” is, according to Iglesias’ comments in the liner notes, a compilation of songs from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s that he feels are the new classics, songs that depict the different stages of romance.

The next jarring reality is that the orchestration – especially if you haven’t heard the originals for a while – is eerily familiar, right down to the synthesized sound so popular in the ’80s. And when your brain is expecting to hear Foreigner or Charlie Rich or Perry Como, you hear Iglesias kick in with his dulcet Latin-lover crooning.

Despite it all, I got a hoot out of the album, and if you like Iglesias, then you will, too.

– JANINE PINEO