Lou Donaldson playfully skids into a few bars of David Rose’s “Holiday For Strings” mid-solo during a cover of the Kelmar/Ruby standard “Three Little Words,” indulging himself in a bit of shtick popular back when jazz could be lighthearted, studious and physical. Sonny Rollins was and is a deft practitioner of the off-handed musical quote as are and were many of the other jazz greats of a bygone era. It’s rarely done today. Jazz is more serious and cerebral, unless it gets goofy as the drummer Matt Wilson sometimes can get.

Speaking personally, I never much cared for this corny West Coast band, particularly this incarnation, featuring lead singer Tom Johnston’s high-pitched, quivering and bleating.

Just look at the lame cover art and you know you’re into some packaged dreck. The guys dressed in old west outfits atop a horse drawn stage coach below an unfinished freeway ramp. Heavy!. Open the gatefold and there they are atop the ramp still dressed in silliness getting ready for a formal meal. Heavier heavyiness!

On the opener, “Dragonfly Pie,” Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks want to lay a heavy trip on you, man. Dualing fuzz toned and wah-wah’d guitars, Mitch Mitchell (or Ed Cassidy)-like skin pounding (by Janet Weiss late of Sleater-Kinney), a plodding rhythm and a lysergic vibe produce an acid flashback swirl. Until the chorus, that is, where it becomes positively skip- on-stone jaunty.

The second tune, “Hopscotch Willy” keeps the fuzz/wah-wah thing going, but with a jammy, Santana-like feel set to nonsensical lyrics seemingly culled from something The Sweet might have thrown away.

Ryan Adams is a song-writing machine. With over 206 tracks recorded, the 33-year-old singer/songwriter has amassed a deep and thorough song library. In 2007, he released two albums, an LP and an EP. His 2007 LP, Easy Tiger , received rave reviews and debuted at #7 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. While Easy Tiger was recorded during a time when Adams was going through Valium therapy to beat his heroin addiction, the EP Follow The Lights was written during a rare time of sobriety. Adams’ clear (er) mind state really shows.

The Canadian folk/rocker’s vital third album opens with an ambitious, though somewhat out of character tune featuring a melodic line and driving rhythmic pulse reminiscent of something that might have been penned by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, though the vocal is unmistakably Edwards’: a feathery, vulnerable-yet-stoic tone fitted to unadorned, precise phrasing that can comfortably draw out a one syllable word the length of a football field.

To live as the non-English speaking world experiences our pop music, you might try this record of familiar Leonard Cohen songs sung in Swedish by Jan Erik Lundqvist. So popular are Mr. Lundqvist’s interpretations that he’s put out two volumes. This first one dates from 2002, which Meyer records reissuing it on 180 gram vinyl more recently. Leonard Cohen apparently approves.

Before the folk revival of the 1950’s and ‘60’s fomented by the likes of The Weavers and later The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, there were the originals like Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. He was born in the 1880’s (exact date unknown) and he died in New York City, December 6th, 1949 of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as “Lou Gehrigs Disease.”

This record makes Scott Walker’s last two bleak outings sound positively festive. Harvey has never been an easy listen throughout her decade plus career. She could be dark, abusive, angry, pained, vulnerable, strong and raw-edged, but she could never be easy and she’s not here, as ghostly and pained a musical figure as you’re likely to encounter on record.

She walks the white chalk hills of her hometown Dorset that will “rot my bones,” and, she sings in a somber, disconnected voice, “Scratch my palms/There’s blood on my hands.”