New Recordings

Pop

Music supervisor Randall Poster reeled in a whale of a lineup for Rave on Buddy Holly, an uncommonly good tribute album to the Lubbock, Texas, wonder who left behind a songbook of staggering quality when he died in a plane crash in 1959 at age 22. The Black Keys, Cee Lo Green, Patti Smith, John Doe, Justin Towne Earle, My Morning Jacket, Nick Lowe, Florence and the Machine - the list goes on. More to the point, pretty much every interpretation - from Fiona Apple and Jon Brion's "Everyday" to Kid Rock's "Well All Right" - tweaks the original arrangement just enough while retaining Holly's essential innocence. The only real misstep is Paul McCartney's take on "It's So Easy," which kicks up an impressive "Why Don't We Do It in the Road"-style ruckus before losing focus on a strangely unhinged spoken interlude.

- Dan DeLuca

Black Up
(Sub Pop ***)

Ishmael Butler has several names, among which is Palaceer Lazaro. He also used to play Butterfly in the groovy '90s crew Digable Planets. I'm at a loss with Butler/Lazaro's music as Shabazz Palaces. I like Black Up for the very thing that keeps me from loving it: His moaning, time-stretched beats and chorus-free rapping are hip-hop soaked in bleach, battery acid and vinegar. Black Up's uncommercial quality recalls Company Flow and Antipop Consortium but from a more Afrocentric place (see title), and his prolix song titles and mystical album art echo Digable peers P.M. Dawn. You can use the word dubstep in the same sentence. Butler's agile rapping is full of axioms like "deception is the truest act," and occasionally a squelchy melody resolves. But I wish I loved it.

- Dan Weiss

Pint of Blood
(Anti ***1/2)

Jolie Holland slurs and slides through her songs. She retains the drawl from her Texas youth, and she sounds like an old soul. Her first albums drew on early 20th-century styles - parlor songs, blues, country - but Pint of Blood, her fifth, is less specifically time- and genre-bound than her past work.

Holland has said Neil Young's Zuma was an inspiration for this one, and that's evident in the loose, electric grooves of "Gold and Yellow" and "All Those Girls," and the dark, conflicted themes throughout the CD. "Only an angel sent from up above / can tell me if you're the devil or the one I should love," she sings in "The Devil's Sake," one of several songs with a jazzy, Billie Holiday-like subtlety. Pint of Blood is spooky and haunted - and spellbinding.

- Steve Klinge