5 Voices You Need To Hear

By Josh Tyrangiel

RYAN ADAMS 29 Renowned for writing songs faster than most people have life experiences, Adams, 31, fills his third album in the past 12 months with nine lengthy tracks, each of which summarizes a year in his 20s. It's a conceit that at times elevates his self-pity to epic proportions (on The Sadness he wails, "The sadness is mine," over a flamenco guitar lick--!que melodramatico!), but it also creates moments of immense tenderness as Adams says a reluctant goodbye to youth (Carolina Rain, Starlite Diner) and contemplates a commitment to something other than himself. "If you want any flowers," he sings with dawning wisdom on the standout Strawberry Wine, "you gotta get your seeds into the ground."

CAT POWER THE GREATEST Typically, Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, creates a few bars of something gorgeous and then lets her songs descend into frustrating torpor. But here music's reigning masochist drifts into Memphis and finds some much needed structure. The title track opens with a fleeting musical quote of Moon River and proceeds to tell the riveting--and neatly resolved--tale of a boxer. Empty Shell, a title that once might have been descriptive of her style, has a jaunty, optimistic streak. And it doesn't hurt that the album is full of great playing from River City legends Teenie and Leroy Hodges, the guitarist and bassist on Al Green's early albums.

SARAH HARMER I'M A MOUNTAIN Songs about the environment are rarely as good as their singers' intentions, but Escarpment Blues, like much of Harmer's third album, is exceptional. The lyrics are oblique ("If they blow a hole in the backbone/ The one that runs cross the muscles of the land"), but the singing is direct. Blessed with a precise alto, Harmer never adds filigree to her vocals or arrangements. She just lets natural beauty speak for itself.

RAY DAVIES OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES The voice of the ex-Kinks front man, 61, isn't what it used to be, but his pen is still sharp. Davies writes a bit about New Orleans, the city where he has lived (and was shot after chasing a mugger in 2004) for most of the past five years. Songs like The Tourist ("I'm just another tourist, checking out the slums"), written pre-Katrina, are well observed, but his strength is less as a broad social critic than as the creator of mini domestic dramas. Creatures of Little Faith is a barbed story of domestic misery, while Next Door Neighbour is reminiscent of the Kinks' Well Respected Man.

JENNY LEWIS WITH THE WATSON TWINS RABBIT FUR COAT On a brief vacation from the rock band Rilo Kiley, Lewis takes exuberant steps in lots of musical directions. From the gospel rhythm and secular doubt of The Big Guns ("I've won hundreds at the track but I'm not betting on the afterlife") to the blue-eyed soul of You Are What You Love, each song has a sense of narrative motion, largely because Lewis knows which moments call for delicacy and which demand emotive belting. She can also interpret others' songs, as proved when she nips Handle with Care from the mouths of the Traveling Wilburys and turns it into a female anthem.