For rock and roll energy, look no further than the cannonball blast opening and title track. Then explore the rhythm underneath "Hard Work, which flows from the same pool as Fats Domino's classic New Orleans rocker "Blueberry Hill, and the slow rolling "I'll Pray for You which sounds like gospel, blues and country, THEN tosses barrelhouse piano boogie onto its collection plate!

Saydak proves an earnest and spirited blues songwriter (composing eleven of these thirteen cuts) and musician with a rich and robust voice that sounds ready-made to sing the blues. In fact, his strong voice sometimes overpowers less substantial material ("Two of Everything, "Road and the Weather ). But given more solid songs Saydak's voice rings more true. It nurtures "Half-Assed Love into a slow-rolling blues piano tidal wave, then spanks "Hanging by a Thread and "Rearrange, both of which feature guitar and vocal patterns that sound like Clapton deeply steeped in the blues.

Marcia Ball
Live! Down the Road
Alligator
2005

Ball here showcases one great slow-rolling blues, "Louisiana 1927, Randy Newman's dust-bowl tale about a historic flood, into which she wholeheartedly dives and immerses herself. Perhaps her best singing of this entire set, she recoils from its last line as if in horror from nature's awesome devastation of person and property.

But throughout the rest of this set, this composer, pianist and singer - and current owner of the W.C. Handy Awards for Contemporary Blues Female Artist and for Contemporary Blues Album of the Year (So Many Rivers, also nominated for a Grammy Award) - throws a Crescent City party that shakes the house of rock down to its seminal roots.

Ball's party mixes and cooks up the spicy sounds of Texas and Louisiana, from Ball originals and several well-chosen covers, into potent jambalaya. In "That's Enough of That Stuff, her snapshot of the joys of a New Orleans party, in living color and illuminated by white-hot Crescent City piano, she displays a reporter's eye for nuanced detail: "We got 'Fess down on the jukebox/ Fats on the radio/ Got Toots on the piano in the living room/ And the Nevilles singing 'Iko Iko'...

Ball kicks in several other well-placed covers: With a great vocal and Pat Boyack's incendiary electric solo on Duke Robillard's "Just Kiss Me ; sharing with vocalist Angela Strehli "It Hurts to Be In Love (once a hit for Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers) across the border between New Orleans R&B and rock n' roll; jumpin' like Louis Jordan fronting the Chuck Berry band at Mardi Gras in "Crawfishin' ; and ending the set by shredding the bawdy blues "Let Me Play with Your Poodle, favored in previous generations by Lightnin' Hopkins, Tampa Red, and Memphis Slim.

Celso Fonseca
Rive Gauche Rio
Six Degrees
2005

There's something especially unique about the way a Brazilian strums an acoustic guitar. Perhaps their rhythms play from a memory, instinctive not thought, inherited through generations of moonlight strolls on the beach, of soft cool breezes caressing warm soft tanned skin, memories of romance and passion.

The heart of Fonseca's second international release beats from his acoustic guitar and vocals - incredibly light, deceptively rhythmic, irresistibly romantic - supported by bassist Luiz Alvez and drummer Alexandre Foncesa (no relation). But he also uses the cool jazz sounds of flute, flugelhorn and Fender Rhodes to expand upon the instrumentation of his masterful, understated debut Natural. Written in Portuguese, Spanish and English, Fonseca admits, "All these songs are love songs of one kind or another.

If you can write such beautiful love songs, why write anything else?

Attempting to analyze or describe the intuitive genius of music this romantic seems to only serve to destroy it. Fonseca's solo "My Broken Heart and Damien Rice's "Delicate - a melancholy blue dance between percussion, vocals and guitar - are no less rich from such bare instrumentation. With a wink and grin, Fonseca duets guitar and vocals on the charming "Don De Dluir with Jorge Drexler, who won the 2005 Oscar for Best Song ("Al otro lado del Rio, Motorcycle Diaries).

"Feriado and "Pousada merrily chirp and sparkle like mountain streams, bubbling with percussion then adorned with flute ("Feriado ) and flugelhorn ("Pousada ), each soaring overhead softly, just out of reach, graceful and beautiful birds in flight. Fonseca's "Bela is simply gorgeous Brazilian jazz-pop - subtle, soft, supple - that dances with the gracious and gentlemanly spirit of Jobim.

Fonseca is surely Jobum's heir apparent. Gorgeous music from his hands, like "Bela, sounds so advanced that it seems simple. Almost EVERY song on Rive Gauche Rio begins and ends in the hands of this Brazilian singer strumming his shimmering acoustic guitar.

Lizz Wright
Dreaming Wide Awake
Verve Forecast
2005

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