VARIOUS ARTISTS
Songcatcher: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture
(Vanguard Records)
***

With bluegrass showing up on Billboard charts via the soundtrack to Joel and Ethan Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and country stars like Dolly Parton making critically acclaimed forays into it, the genre is having a renaissance. Songcatcher offers songs from the movie about a musicologist in the early 1900s traveling the mountain country of Appalachia collecting songs. The soundtrack is a collection of mostly traditional songs performed by some of bluegrass and country's finest female performers. It opens with a beautiful song arranged by Rosanne Cash, who turns in a great, ruefully understated performance. Iris DeMent's "Pretty Saro" sounds like an actual field recording. Her high, lonesome voice bends and aches, suffusing the song with yearning. The best performances tap that vein, accessing the dark pain that underlies the mortality-obsessed old-time music. Gillian Welch delivers "Wind and Rain" with her usual caliber of authenticity and grit. Emmylou Harris and Julie Miller offer songs with more modern touches and phrasing, which are beautiful but not as emotionally resonant as the more tradition-bound tunes. Emmy Rossum's duet with Dolly Parton and her own snippet of "Barbara Allen" that prefaces Harris' version are standouts. The real treasures here are the a cappella "Conversation with Death," featuring national treasure Hazel Dickens, whose 1987 album It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song is a benchmark of contemporary bluegrass, and Pat Carroll's "Single Girl." In a country almost entirely severed from its rural heritage, these songs remind the listener of the downhome spirituality and hard-bitten survival of a vanished way of life. NATE LIPPENS

TRANS-GLOBAL UNDERGROUND
Yes Boss Food Corner
(Ark21)
***

This multicultural collective burst onto London's acid-house scene in the early 1990s with Dream of 100 Nations, an eclectic fusion of world beat and techno that reflected and accelerated Brit-pop's ongoing obsession with ethnic music. The gorgeous Middle Eastern chants of Natascha Atlas made TGU a sensation and eventually launched her international solo career. But her departure has freed the group to explore new directions on this album and abandon some of the electronic elements that made its tracks essential for U.K. club play. The newly energized organic pieces dance perfectly together, especially on "Spellbound," where the sultry Doreen Thobekile performs a flirtatious call-and-response with rapper Coleridge over a throbbing dub bass line. Even the disjointed collision between a syncopated conga and a funky wah-wah guitar on "Bhimpalas' Warriors" shares a pulsating undercurrent with blazing sitar riffs and tamboura. Unlike Loop Guru, a contemporary of TGU's that frenetically splices traditional influences with progressive electronics to liberate the music from its own ethnicity, TGU embarks on a more anthropological journey. By bringing together these Old World styles, the group performs a kind of communal alchemy, celebrating the many voices of the aboriginal sound by revealing their playful chemistry. DAVID SLATTON

THE WEBB BROTHERS
Maroon
(Mews 5/Atlantic)
**1/2

At times overabundant and grandiose, Maroon is powered by horns, keyboards, and strings, and swells to some impressive heights--though ultimately this is just two brothers writing fairly simple songs. The predominant subject matter is over-privileged, adolescent social and sex-istential angst. This "retro" posturing is not a death knell (the Webbs are competent tunesmiths), but their straight-faced pleadings ring false, and the writing is not as clever or ironic as it wants to be. A healthy suspicion should accompany any young, overproduced band that shows up on a major label with slick packaging. Maroon is a good album, yet it just feels wrong despite all the honest efforts (musical, promotional, production). Melodic arena rock worked for bands like Chicago and the Moody Blues, but it also produced the abomination that is Peter Cetera. Careful, careful.... PETER BUCHBERGER

ROSCO
Hostile Environment
(Copasetik Recordings)
***

I think Los Angeles' Rosco is better known in Europe than in America, because he has made a number of guest appearances on CDs by Europeans like Paris' DJ Cam and Berlin's producer/DJ crew Terranova. But wherever his fame is located, one thing is for sure: Rosco's internationalism corresponds directly with his professionalism. Meaning Rosco is a hiphop professional, not only in the sense that he makes a living from the medium by touring around the globe, but also in the way he approaches and handles his art. His new CD, Hostile Environment, is a great example of his competency: His rhymes are thought through, the themes are well developed, and the production is flawless. In fact, Rosco is professional to a fault. He doesn't fail enough, and so there aren't any of the interesting errors that one finds on, say, Silent Lamb Project's brilliant Soul Liquor. The only song on Hostile Environment that rises above the general excellence of the other tracks is "Message from the Bottle," which is marked by its odd theme. At first the song seems to be about the risks of unprotected sex or even gun violence, but it's actually about the dangers of drinking and driving. This is a hiphop first! No MC has ever addressed the problem of drinking and driving as an average ghetto danger--indeed, hiphop has celebrated the pleasures of drunken driving, as in Snoop Dogg's smash 1993 hit "Gin and Juice." The very bizarreness of "Message from the Bottle" makes this whole CD worthwhile. CHARLES MUDEDE