THE REV. AL GREEN

'Everything's OK' (Blue Note)

If you saw the Reverend tear it up on Letterman the other night, taking his pleas to the crowd like the preacher he is while hitting notes so high you'd swear he hadn't aged a day since "Tired of Being Alone" hit the streets back in '71, you won't be disappointed if it made you want to buy into the comeback hype that's followed Green around since his reunion with producer Willie Mitchell for 2003's "I Can't Stop."

		Records are rated on a scale of one (poor) to five (excellent) stars

As refreshing as that first reunion album felt, it now seems tentative compared to this one. While the low-rent album art could fool you into thinking they're not even trying this time, trust me when I say they are. His smooth seduction of "You Are So Beautiful" may not erase the marks Joe Cocker left on that one back when Green was in what should have been his prime, but the originals, four of them written with Mitchell, are proud additions to the Al Green legacy, delivered with conviction and jaw-dropping flights of falsetto, from the lush, sophisticated dance-floor grooves of "Everything's OK" to the grittier, Redding-esque "Perfect to Me." And while the version here can't hope to touch the electricity he brought to Letterman in what I'm pretty sure will be remembered as the greatest live performance anyone has ever seen while seated on my couch, it's still a strong contender for the most exhilarating, most romantic, most essential soul ballad I've heard since ... I don't know, "Let's Stay Together"?

One could argue that it all begins to sound the same, but only if you put it on as background music, as some people will inevitably do (after dimming the lights).

He's backed here by a number of the session men who helped define the sound of his essential Hi recordings, and they certainly nail the richly textured grooves of tracks as timeless as the title cut, "I Can Make Music" and the album-closing "All the Time." But through it all, the focus never strays from Green's astonishing vocal performance. With all due respect to "Crossroads," my favorite of several Ralph Macchio movies, apparently, selling your soul to the Lord may be a better bargain in the long run.

-- Ed Masley, Post-Gazette

pop music critic

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JACK JOHNSON

'IN BETWEEN DREAMS' (BRUSHFIRE)

Jackson Johnson spent his teen years riding waves in his native Hawaii, the kind of pursuit that doesn't generally lead a person to, say, political punk or death metal.

Now, Johnson, whose talents extend from championship surfing to cinematography, is still bopping on waves, the nice smooth kind, as a singer-songwriter. His records are like the chill music for Dave Matthews fans.

Johnson is so easy-going, so laid-back -- singing about "Banana Pancakes" -- he could be groomed as the next Jimmy Buffett. Or people could get totally bored with him in a few years, and he could open a surf shop or play children's songs.

His third album, "In Between Dreams," doesn't depart from his formula of playfully poetic lyrics set to sleepy acoustic grooves. It's practically required that you not wear shoes while listening to Johnson softly toss off lines like "I got no time that I got to get/ to where I don't need to be."

Occasionally, it's funked-up enough, as on "Staple It Together," to get people up off their beach blankets. But that's not Johnson's real goal. After a decade of grunge and nu metal, this might be the chill pill people need.

-- Scott Mervis, Post-Gazette

Weekend Mag editor

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THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES

'ORIGIN VOL. 1' (UNIVERSAL)

Sure, they're singing "Welcome to the future," but this is exactly the kind of record all the "edgy" people would have touted as the future in the early '70s, dropping their name on the way to the Roxy Music show after spending the afternoon curled up with a big bag of weed and a Genesis record.

And I mean that in a good way.

By the time you hit the wham-bam-thank-you-Mr.-Townshend riff of "Transcendental Suicide," you'd swear Bob Ezrin was producing. But apparently, they've found a way to get that sound without him. There's an epic suite-like quality to songs like "Transcendental Suicide," but these Swedish rock classicists put it across with a hearty arena-rocking urgency -- which one could easily mistake for bluster -- that practically borders on Deep Purple by the time you get to "Bigtime." And they sound just as good when they turn their attention to mellower, folkier stuff, especially "Believe I've Found," the lead-off track.

A Kansas fan would so completely get this record. And I mean that in a good way, too. So why are the indie kids eating it up? Could be the lyrics, which border on brilliant, or the hooks, which don't let up no matter how long any given track goes on.

-- Ed Masley

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CURTIS MAYFIELD

'MAYFIELD REMIXED: THE CURTIS MAYFIELD COLLECTION' (RHINO)

This odd new spin on Curtis Mayfield's greatest hits is something of a sequel to the Isley Brothers' "Taken to the Next Phase" or that Kool & the Gang "The Hits: Reloaded" record, doing what it can to put a legendary artist over on the kids by re-imagining his music in a modern light. If this one holds up better, it's in part because they wisely keep the focus on Mayfield's original vocals, juicing the percussion here and there.

The bad news is, the tracks that take the biggest chances are a mess, from Grandmaster Flash's annoying old-school -- make that dated -- hip-hop deconstruction of the once-proud "We're a Winner" that throws out a perfectly danceable groove and any semblance of the song's accessibility to a club-ready clubbing of "People Get Ready" that makes it feel like Mayfield's singing about getting dressed for a night on the town instead of, for instance, eternal salvation. Foolishly enough, they even run the vocals through what sounds like the vocoder setting Cher used on "Believe." And it's followed by Mixmaster Mike, who ends the album victimizing "Pusherman."

The good news is, the other seven tracks are pretty good and sometimes even great, from Louie Vega's thumping re-recording of the backing tracks to "Superfly" and Eric Kupper's old-school disco groove on "Move on Up" to King Britt's funkadelic, claustro-phonic "stumbling through the darkness in search of more cough syrup" version of "Little Child Runnin' Wild." It's so much more the cautionary tale than Mayfield's own "Superfly" version. Little Child's not runnin' anywhere in that condition.

-- Ed Masley

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THE GENA ROWLANDS BAND

'LA MERDE ET LES ETOILES' (LUJO RECORDS)

Thirty seconds in, you may think you can see where this album is headed, with Bob Massey crooning "I finally found what love is/ Love is only in the movies" like Mark Eitzel after finding out his puppy died over the saddest guitar chords known to man. But then, you hit the string-fueled chorus and the twisted comic genius of The Gena Rowlands Band emerges. "Ahh, Garofalo," he sighs. "Ahh, sweet Janeane/ Surely, you must be the only one/ Oh, how I crave you/ How I think of you all day/ How I can't wait to rush home to your charms." And with that, he returns to the opening verse, only now it's a song of redemption and healing. For a moment, anyhow, until he starts resenting Spielberg and profanely crying out for Hollywood to burn.

You might expect a band that namechecks "St. John Cassavetes" in song while taking its name from his wife to be a bunch of dorky film geeks.

And they are. As luck would have it.

In "Kong Meets His Maker (A Parable About Dating)," Patton places The King of the Jews at the site of another King's death, where a bystander notes "It was beauty that killed him" and Kong himself tells his Maker, "The Empire State was not too high to climb for love." And what would Jesus do? He tells his fallen ape, "If you'd known she is not the only blonde girl on the planet/ I know you'd still do the same thing that you've done."

It's tragic, hilarious, brilliant writing, and there's plenty more where that came from before he signs off crying at his own damn party (if he wants to) on "The Last Words of Lesley Gore," unbothered by the fact that Gore is still alive.

"Hell, I was an optimist," he sighs at one point. "Now, I'm a third-rate lyricist." But as you know, no third-rate lyricist would write that line. And the music? Melancholy chamber cabaret with crooning vocals and plenty of atmosphere.

-- Ed Masley