Quick Spins: Reviews of CDs by Depeche Mode, Allen Toussaint and Wussy

Produced by singer-songwriter Joe Henry, the record features clarinetist Don Byron, trumpeter Nicholas Payton and guitarist Marc Ribot teaming up with Toussaint on re-imagined versions of standards written by the heady likes of King Oliver, Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton. The playfulness in the call-and-response on "Singin' the Blues" is palpable, especially toward the end, when the pianist answers the trumpeter's stomp and swagger with thrilling trills and glissandos.

A more gutbucket, but equally satisfying, back-and-forth takes place between Toussaint's vocals and piano and Ribot's bottleneck slide guitar on "Long, Long Journey." Pianist Brad Mehldau and saxophonist Joshua Redman make cameos on one track apiece, Redman with a gloriously languid performance on "Day Dream," a Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn original sweetened by some of Toussaint's most elegant playing here.

-- Bill Friskics-Warren

DOWNLOAD THESE: "Singin' the Blues," "Long, Long Journey," "Day Dream"

WUSSY

Wussy

"We could row against the undertow," muses guitarist Lisa Walker during the lurching second stanza of "Muscle Cars," only to think better of it as she plunges headlong into the song's chorus. There, surrendering to the rhythm, she submits, "It's okay . . . pull me under . . . all the way."

Walker's impulse could double as Wussy's artistic statement of purpose: Few bands since the Velvet Underground-steeped heyday of the Feelies, Yo La Tengo and R.E.M. have abandoned themselves so completely to the ebbing, flowing currents of keening, droning guitars.

The Cincinnati quartet's third full-length album might be more subdued than their previous efforts, but much like the Velvets' crepuscular third LP, what it sacrifices in noisy grandeur it makes up for in sumptuous melodies and grooves. The album-opening "Little Paper Birds" might even be a tremulous, lo-fi homage to "Pale Blue Eyes."

The ominously titled "Gone Missing" and "This Will Not End Well," meanwhile, are re-imagined folk-rock. As with everything on the record, both convey more than a hint of dissonance, not just in their pregnant chord changes but also in the staggered vocals of Walker and fellow bandleader Chuck Cleaver. Bassist Mark Messerly adds sublime pop touches on bells, various keyboards and stringed things on "Magic Words" and "Maglite."

Lyrically, Cleaver's outsider point of view on the likes of "Dreadful Sorry" and "Happiness Bleeds" tends to predominate, but Walker's outpourings of desperation and desire are no less captivating -- as seductive, in their way, as the irresistible undertow of the music.

-- Bill Friskics-Warren

DOWNLOAD THESE: "Muscle Cars," "Magic Words," "Maglite"