Scotty McCreery

“Clear as Day”

Interscope Records

In five years, Scotty McCreery is going to be a huge country star. He has the right voice for it and the right temperament.

Right now, though, the 17-year-old “American Idol” winner still sounds like he’s trying to catch up, like he’s trying to grow into his role — which he probably is.

His debut, “Clear as Day,” is well crafted and well written by some of Nashville’s best and brightest. The weak link in these songs is McCreery, which, to be fair, isn’t unusual for the get-it-done-quick debuts of many “Idol” grads.

In “Water Tower Town” — which, at slightly above midtempo, is the fastest of the album’s 12 tracks — McCreery sounds like he’s rushing to keep up with the tempo as he declares, “Nobody eats till you say, ‘Amen,’ and everybody knows your mom and them.”

He handles Keith Urban’s “Walk in the Country” a bit better, though he’s clearly more at home with the ballads.

“Dirty Dishes” is a great song in the vein of Garth Brooks’ “Unanswered Prayers” that McCreery hammers home in a way that’s sweet, if not entirely believable, something that becomes clear when he tackles “The Trouble With Girls,” where he sounds genuinely befuddled by the opposite sex.

“Clear as Day,” which is oddly named after his ballad where two teenagers die in a car accident, is a decent start for McCreery, but could’ve been so much more in more accomplished hands.

Merle Haggard

“Working in Tennessee”

Vanguard Records

Leave it to Merle Haggard to pull no punches. “Hey that stuff they’re playing on the radio/ Oughta be down at the bottom of the abyss/ There’s too much boogie woogie/ And not enough Hank and Kris.”

Or Merle Haggard, for that matter. Call him an old crank, but the 74-year-old country giant still has more to say, and says it more soulfully, than all the Justin Moores, Jake Owenses and Jason Aldeans who are getting on the radio by boasting about how country they are and indulging in every good-ole-boy cliche.

So, step up for some quintessential Hag. He again displays his empathy for the common man with “Under the Bridge,” “Truck Driver’s Blues,” and a reworking of his classic “Workin’ Man Blues” with Willie Nelson and his son Ben. “What I Hate” offers more of his pointed social commentary. It’s not all somber and dark, however. The frisky “Working in Tennessee” indulges Haggard’s love of Western swing, “Down on the Houseboat” is a tender domestic tale, and “Laugh It Off” offers some mischievous wisdom (“If you find yourself in a lockup/ Write a song about a jail”).

Curiously, Haggard includes two numbers more associated with his late pal Johnny Cash: “Cocaine Blues” and “Jackson,” the latter a duet with his wife, Theresa. Of course the versions are terrific. Ultimately it’s all part of Haggard being Haggard — not a cookie-cutter hit-maker but a national treasure.

Feist

“Metals”

Interscope Records

Give Leslie Feist credit for not focusing solely on the coffee-shop folk-pop that she’s so good at. On “Metals,” the long-awaited follow-up to 2007’s “The Reminder,” Feist pushes at the edges of her sweet melancholy. She eschews perky pop — there’s no “1234” or “Mushaboom” here, although “Bittersweet Melodies” comes close — in favor of quiet, focused ballads and drum-pounding, work-song-like chants.

Several tracks, such as “Undiscovered First,” begin as the former and end as the latter, and they’re emblematic of “Metals’” conflicted personality, lyrically and musically.

Opener “The Bad in Each Other” sets the stage for an album about difficult love affairs. It begins with a thudding drumbeat, gets sweetened with strings, and ends with horns and electric guitars blaring.

A coffee shop would have to be awfully noisy for this song to pass peaceably in the background. By contrast, near-solo acoustic songs such as the closer, “Get It Wrong, Get It Right,” sound all the more intimate, tender and pretty.

But still conflicted.

Various Artists

“The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams”

Columbia Records

Hank Williams has been the subject of much historical excavation over the last few years. Boxed sets presented pristinely restored live segments from his 1951 syndicated radio show, and just last month came “The Legend Begins,” a three-CD set that contains Williams’ earliest recordings, as a 15-year-old, and selections from his radio show of 1949.

One thing this single-CD set makes clear is that when he died at 29 on New Year’s Day 1953, Williams left behind lyrics that were as powerful as any he had recorded, and the all-star cast here by and large does them justice in setting them to music.

There are some moments of light — numbers sung by Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow. But mostly this is the darker Hank, plumbing the depths of heartache, despair, and recrimination, as on “How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart” by Norah Jones and “The Love That Faded” by Bob Dylan.

Alan Jackson leads it all off with “You’ve Been Lonesome Too,” and sets the tone in the sense that none of these performances offer radical departures from Williams’ spare, hard-country style.

One performer here is far less well-known that the others, but her presence is understandable. And Holly Williams, Hank’s granddaughter, acquits herself well on “Blue Is My Heart,” with harmonizing by her father, Hank Jr. (No sign of Hank III.)

Jane’s Addiction

“The Great Escape Artist”

Capitol Records

When Jane’s Addiction stormed onto the alt-rock scene in 1988 with its wild debut “Nothing’s Shocking,” it was unpredictable and unique on every front.

Singer Perry Farrell offered unexpected vocals and lyrics over Dave Navarro’s ever-changing guitar work and Stephen Perkins’ wide range of drum rhythms. They easily shifted from the adrenaline rush of “Mountain Song” to the laid-back “Jane Says.”

Much of that freshness is missing on “The Great Escape Artist,” only the fourth album in the band’s stormy, breakup-filled history. What’s left is kind of a clotted mush of previous successes mixed with radio-friendly evenness that just seems to lack a creative spark.

The first single, “Irresistible Force,” shows the biggest problem. Though Navarro sounds good with his attacking guitar work, and Perkins offers a mellow vibe, Ferrell is spouting clunky lines — the chorus is “The irresistible force meets the immovable object” — and sounding bored.

What makes “The Great Escape Artist” so maddening is how it seems to sand off all its edges on purpose. They sound like they actually need some help escaping.