Landfall

Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet

Anderson has never made a boring album, but with these Hurricane Sandy–inspired pieces, she comes close. Program music, which is what a good deal of this music amounts to, has never been her strong suit. And both in their subject matter and in their methods of delivery, her too-few-and-too-far-between monologues find her trotting out by-now familiar effects and coming off more style than substance. Never before has her voice-deepening filter made her sound so much like Emo Philips imitating Ken Nordine.

Kennedy Meets Gershwin

Nigel Kennedy

Hearing a classically trained violinist and his sympathetic combo have fun with Gershwin’s melodies, especially after that violinist has loved them for over 40 years (after being introduced to them as a teenager by Stéphane Grapelli), is to discover as much about loving and fun as it is about Gershwin and the aforementioned classically trained violinist. And speaking of Kennedy, he contributes two semi-originals. In them he explores the inner lives of “Summertime” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Bonus takeaway: He plays piano too.

The Old Guys

Amy Rigby

Subtract any one of its components—Rigby’s modulated empathy, her partially pulled punchlines, her husband’s just-reckless-enough production—and this album might fall flat. But their presence and the fact that most of the songs aren’t about Rigby herself but about people and places that enliven her imagination guarantee a meaningful time for many if not all. Critics have focused on her impersonation of Philip Roth begrudging Dylan his Nobel, but the Bob songs about a famous director and an old flame are pretty interesting too.

Last Man Standing

Willie Nelson

The “respiratory issues” that had Nelson canceling shows earlier this year also had obituary writers warming up. But if the feistiness of these sharp new songs is any indication, they can cool back down. Death’s on his mind, but from the serious reincarnation song to the unorthodox heaven-hell song to the title cut to the halitosis song that goes “Bad breath is better than no breath at all,” he’s chuckling in its face. The other seven songs prove that he also has not dying on his mind.

ENCORE

The most succinct way of explaining why the Kronos Quartet’s May release, Michael Gordon: Clouded Yellow (Cantaloupe), is a better album than their February-released Laurie Anderson project Landfall is that the latter sounds like a warmup for the former. While both draw upon the heightened emotions of high-profile catastrophes—the 9/11 attacks in the case of Clouded Yellow’s 28-minute centerpiece, The Sad Park—the Quartet’s renderings of Gordon’s aggressive minimalism recreates the visceral impact of such shattering events more affectingly than their renderings of Anderson’s recollections in tranquility.

The Sad Park takes sentences spoken by 3- and 4-year-olds (e.g.,“There was a big boom and then there was teeny fiery coming out”) and alters them electronically into ghostly ciphers. The resulting eeriness is heightened not only by the uncomprehending innocence of the children themselves but also by the no-less-haunted choir that sings the Kaddish in the piece that immediately follows: “Exalted.” —A.O.