New and noteworthy

Against the Grain

Lance Cowan

Last year, Lance Cowan proved that a veteran Americana PR man could make an album on par with those of his clients. This year, he proves that he can beat the sophomore slump. Whatever you liked about Cowan’s debut, he’s doing it even better now, whether it’s singing, tersely expressing profound emotions, or finding melodies that bear those emotions aloft. The mid-’70s country-rock instrumentation and vocal harmonies remain, but they’re at the service of even sharper hooks, hooks that would’ve embedded themselves in the Top 40 back when millions were checking into the Hotel California.

Arcadia

Alison Krauss & Union Station

For those who’ve come of age since the last time Alison Krauss recorded with Union Station, here’s how these things work: Krauss sings the first song (often something plaintive), hooking listeners with her lissome, spell-bindingly pure soprano. Then Dan Tyminski, whose voice sounds more conventionally bluegrass, sings the next one. Krauss sings No. 3, Tyminski No. 4, Krauss No. 5, and so on. This time, Russell Moore (of IIIrd Tyme Out fame) takes the Tyminski role. That mini-shakeup aside, there’s not much difference between this album and the six pretty good to pretty great ones that they recorded between 1989 and 2011.

Dark Country

Gary Louris

It’s hard to believe that Gary Louris was nearly 70 when he recorded these lovely songs. True, they draw upon sounds that have been in the air since Graham Nash’s “Our House,” the acoustic parts of the Beatles’ White Album, and Harry Nilsson’s “Perfect Day” (a shimmer-for-shimmer re-creation of which closes the album out). But fresh breezes blow through the textures, and Louris hardly sounds a day over whatever age he was when he last recorded with the Jayhawks. Most interesting romantic lyric: “You made me believe in God.”

Heaven on My Mind

TobyMac

With help from his six co-producers and 16 co-writers, Toby McKeehan reaches deep inside himself and comes out with one effervescent pop-gospel-soul tune after another, a few bearing traces of the hip-hop that first put him on the map. “Been Through It” and “Campfire” are spiritual pep talks that one needn’t be overcoming grief to appreciate (though it helps). To appreciate “Oh My Soul (Psalm 103),” one need only be a fan of Andraé Crouch.

Nina Hagen Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Encore

In some sectors, Personal Jesus, the album that Nina Hagen released 15 years ago to blazon her conversion to Christianity, made as big a splash in 2010 as Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming had in 1979. Hitherto, Hagen had cultivated a following among connoisseurs of the bizarre with a combination of performance art, punk, and shock rock that took Marlene Dietrich and Yoko Ono as starting points and then went from there. Hearing her sing traditional gospel songs—and sing them well—beggared belief. Hagen and Grönland Records have now released a 15th-anniversary, Record Store Day edition that adds one song to the original baker’s dozen: Washington Phillips’ “I Am Born To Preach the Gospel.” If on the title cut Hagen unplugged Depeche Mode and modified a few lyrics to show that she meant business, the new track finds her leaving the lyrics alone and plugging Phillips in, turning what used to be a delicate blues into an ominously throbbing stomp and Personal Jesus into a gift that keeps on giving. —A.O.