Fun as an Art Brut strength

Art Brut

“It’s a Bit Complicated” (Downtown)

* * * 1/2

LISTENING to the second album from these London cutups (due Tuesday) is like spending a draining day with a most eccentric friend. This fellow is needy and exasperating, witty and intense, paranoid and charming.

He can be manipulative, but usually he’s simply hapless, constitutionally incapable of coping with adulthood. Despite his self-inflicted humiliations, he never loses his appetite for more experiences, even if they’re likely to bring further humiliation.

This is the grand character created by Art Brut’s singer Eddie Argos, who shapes him as a Dickensian deadbeat with a bratty street inflection. He could be related to the chap we remember lazing on a sunny afternoon, and in fact there is a lot of Ray Davies in Argos’ satirical scenarios and a lot of Kinks in Art Brut’s hooky rock.

There’s also some of the neurotic insecurity of “Modern Romance”-vintage Albert Brooks. “It’s a Bit Complicated” begins where Art Brut’s debut, “Bang Bang Rock and Roll,” often dwelt, with an awkward sexual encounter, this one finding the man torn between the business at hand and turning up the volume on the stereo. Later, he’s tormented by curiosity about the prowess of his lover’s old boyfriends.

On top of all that he’s a music geek, quoting the Temptations and Ike and Tina, escaping from the world into his headphones. The album’s one sincere, heartfelt moment is his beautifully detailed memory of exchanging homemade cassettes with a friend, and trying to decode the messages in the selection of songs.

But mostly it’s slapstick and social sketches, perfectly complemented by Art Brut’s music -- a spiky, guitar-centric sound that’s bright and catchy (especially on the giddy chorus of “Direct Hit”) but never out to upstage the star.

As good as much of the new British rock can be, it is experiencing a creeping seriousness these days. “It’s a Bit Complicated” is a welcome corrective.

-- Richard Cromelin

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He’s comfortable with the territory

Bryan Ferry

“Dylanesque” (Virgin)

* * *

THE term “Dylanesque” is one of the biggest cliches in music criticism, an overused analogy lazily used to compare a singer-songwriter to Bob Dylan. So at first, the title doesn’t seem to bode well for Bryan Ferry’s new disc of Dylan covers. Thankfully, the Roxy Music frontman reinvents these 11 tunes with an electronic sensibility that works surprisingly well. (Ferry gets negligible production help from his Roxy Music cohort Brian Eno on one track.) While Ferry plays harmonica and acoustic guitar, to be sure, those touches are tastefully enveloped within the overall sonic architecture.

Ferry has expressed how comfortable he feels with Dylan’s tunes, and this isn’t the first time he’s covered the bard’s songs: He’s previously recorded “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” So you’d think such an ardent Dylanite would choose less obvious cuts. Alas, the usual suspects appear. “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” one of the most covered songs in pop, sounds downright canned, especially those backup soul vocals and Ferry’s phoned-in croon. And who can do justice to “All Along the Watchtower” when Jimi Hendrix’s version remains unparalleled?

Still, there are a few winsome tracks. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” swing plenty. But the best cover is the most obscure -- and the most imaginative. On “Gates of Eden” Ferry turns Dylan’s acoustic version into an ambient ballad that is heartbreaking and majestic.

-- Kevin O’Donnell

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Turf and his team bring the energy

Turf Talk

“West Coast Vaccine: The Cure” (Sick Wid It)

* * * 1/2

FOR many years, Turf Talk has dwelt in the shadow of his imposing cousin -- E-40. On Turf’s third release, however, this Vallejo rapper not only pulls off a career best but delivers one of the year’s first genuinely enthralling rap albums. For his part, Turf chews his lines with his adroit mash-up of sharply clipped rhymes and his distinctive drawl. But he sometimes sounds like a guest on his own album with more than half the songs featuring a dizzying call sheet of cameos, including the Bay Area’s E-40, B-Legit and Too $hort as well as a drop-in from Philly’s Freeway.

It falls to the production team, led by Rick Rock and Droop-E, to make those disparate elements coalesce. Vallejo’s regional “mob sound” -- a compelling, counterintuitive blend of slurring bass lines and minimalist drum programming -- pervades “Vaccine,” especially on the frenetic “Bring the Base Back” and “Doe Boy.”

All this combines into an exhilarating dose of sonic adrenaline, brimming with a brisk, propulsive energy that its crowded, 73-minute track listing wouldn’t initially suggest. Especially given the lethargy of both the Bay’s much-vaunted hyphy movement and the general, national slump in hip-hop sales, “Vaccine” couldn’t be better titled.

-- Oliver Wang

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Not only ‘Rising’ but cleansing

Neurosis

“Given to the Rising” (Neurot)

* * *

ISIS, High on Fire, Pelican and others have acknowledged Neurosis as a founder of the slow-and-heavy rock academy. But the Bay Area depressives clearly felt, after 22 years, that they still had something to prove.

“Given to the Rising” weaves a luxurious shroud of orchestration, pace and sound coloration that will be tough for any emulator to match. The grinds and gushes get all the room they need to frappe a listener’s head.

Never content with repetition, “Rising” always wants to take you somewhere. The title track’s hissing, squirming sound effects build a bridge between a suicidal Scott Kelly guitar riff and a bloodied Noah Landis keyboard passage that sounds like amputee Bach; Jason Roeder’s drums blast into sluggish spasms as the other instruments battle for turf.

The agonized crawl of “Fear and Sickness” lives up to its title, scoring art points for the feedback that smears across the stereo image and for the scary wind-up mechanisms that lurk in the background.

The album caters repeatedly to the growing market in execution and funeral music; muttered interludes of vocal rasper Steve Von Till’s poetry (“tension/animal response/blind eyes dawning”) recall Doors and Stooges dirges of a wartime past.

It’s like a bath in dirt. Somehow, though, it cleanses.

-- Greg Burk

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Albums are rated on a scale of four stars (excellent), three stars (good), two stars (fair) and one star (poor). Albums reviewed have been released unless otherwise noted.