Musicality

After 2005's Blame the Vain, Dwight Yoakam was mostly involved in screen roles while dabbling in the recording studio, other than his Buck Owens tribute album in 2007. Whether the hiatus fueled a burst of musical creativity or whether he just still had it in him, 3 Pears is a concentrated burst of the kind of imagination that's shown up here and there in releases throughout his career.

Although certainly a country artist, Yoakam has never been content to just mine that field in either songwriting, music to cover or the styles that influence him. In 3 Pears, he blends many of them for an album that on paper wouldn't seem to work nearly as well as it does. "Take Hold of My Hand" opens with a funky bass groove that keeps its soul while being the foundation for Yoakam's unmistakably honky-tonk voice and a traditional steel guitar. "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke" layers many of those same elements over a cowpunk center that will probably be a concert favorite. "Nothing But Love" is a rocker tailor-made for a duet with Social Distortion's Mike Ness.

None of these stylistic unions sounds forced, produced by Yoakam (and Jack White on couple of tunes) to blend their common elements well enough that the distinctions work like spices in a sweet dessert -- they add instead of detract. Apparently Yoakam decided that if he was going to wait seven years between original releases, he'd put in a substantial amount of work into the product of the hiatus, and it paid off well.

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Singer Dee Dee Penny (Kirstin Gundred) released her first Dum Dum Girls singles, EPs and album as the leader of a frequently-rotating cast of backup musicians. For her second full-length album, 2011's Only in Dreams, she enlisted a more permanent band and worked with a number of outside producers. The change didn't reduce any of the Dum Dum's earworm appeal, only added a much stronger sound of Penny's own vocals into the mix. The sound still relies heavily on 1960s low-fi jangle pop, the key element for Dum Dum fans.

The addition of clearer vocals to the mix allows Penny's Chrissie-Hynde inflected voice to give some depth and dimension to the songs that some of the earlier all-buzz numbers didn't have. That's appropriate for some of the heavier subject matter Dreams, tackles, influenced by Penny's mother dying in 2010 and the heavy touring schedule's stress on her family. But it also makes kiss-off rockers like "Just a Creep" more fun -- she's not a great operatic or Broadway singer, but she has the ideal instrument for this kind of album and it makes In Dreams a good step forward from the Dum Dum's earlier work.

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The Informants' second album, Crime Scene Queen, is the musical equivalent of a Hard Case Crime paperback. That publishing house has been printing new and reprinting old hard-boiled stories of tough guys, killer dames and the often seedy world they inhabit. Informants' singer Kerry Pastine leads a retro-jump blues/rockabilly combo that is just as much a part of that noirish world of cigarette smoke, whiskey from the bottle and shadowy deeds done in shadowier alleys.

In fact, the title track would be a great soundtrack opener should anyone ever decide to try to film one of Hard Case's stories, right down to the echo vocal done over a PA microphone. The Informants' don't hang out exclusively on the mean streets, offering some peppy tunes for the dancing folks, like "Get Twisted" and the zydeco-influenced "Marilon." "Salvation" has a gospel feel even if the subject matter is an unreliable lover.

But the hard-edged world of the has-beens and never-quite-was's always beckons, both in the sound and the seen-it-all tones of Pastine's vocals. The Marvelettes might have asked "Please, Mr. Postman" for a letter, but the Informants follow Sister Wynonna Carr in asking "Please, Mr. Jailer" to let her man go free.