Anathema

“DISTANT SATELLITES

Kscope

Despite a broad pool of candidates, no one has been making grandiose, stadium-ready rock in the vein of Coldplay better than Anathema. Beginning with 2008’s intimate acoustic album “Hindsight,” the Liverpool band, who began their career in the chilly environs of early ’90’s English doom metal, took on a sonic aesthetic that had all the same emotional intensity as their early work without its darkness.

“Distant Satellites” doesn’t at all divert from the path Anathema has set itself on. The emotional highs hit with the thrust of a great symphony. The vocal interplay between Vincent Cavanagh and Lee Douglas remains enchanting. The lyrics, though vague, bring all the urgency that has come to be expected of Anathema’s music. “Distant Satellites” even opens with a cathartic mini-epic that begins with a crescendo-centric first half and a tranquil second half, with the latter being anchored by Douglas’ ethereal, gorgeous vocals (“The Lost Song”). However, while it’s true that there is beauty in the familiar, on “Distant Satellites” the music feels a little too familiar. For better and for worse, Anathema have set a high bar for themselves, and though on the whole they remain as impressive as ever, it sounds a little too comfortable with its own sonic repertoire.

“Distant Satellites” is not the sound of a band failing, but rather of one who has honed a particular sound so well that it’s difficult to figure out where it can go next.

— Brize Ezell,

PopMatters.com

Dolly Parton

“BLUE SMOKE”

Dolly Records

“I had a lot of ambitious dreams/ Seen a lot of those dreams come true,” Dolly Parton sings on “Home.” Did she ever. And for this superstar, home seems to be a place not just to “restore my weary soul” but also to rediscover her artistic inspiration.

Beginning with the chugging quasi-bluegrass of the title song, Parton again finds gold doing what she has of late: favoring the rootsy, organic sounds of her rural Tennessee upbringing over the pop gloss of her crossover years. It’s an approach that enhances her irrepressible charm and her still considerable songwriting powers.

Parton’s gospelized take on Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands on Me” is a bit heavy-handed (as opposed to her spare, devastating version of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice”). When she does drift toward pop, though, she does it mostly with taste and restraint. Her duets with Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson are elegant, emotionally stirring ballads that feature strings but absolutely no syrup.

— Nick Cristiano,

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Passenger

“WHISPERS”

Nettwerk Music Group

There is, fundamentally, no way to follow “Let Her Go,” the whispered folk ballad that catapulted Passenger, the British singer-songwriter Mike Rosenberg, from mild renown and a yen for busking to a global phenom who still thinks busking is pretty cool.

That’s the tension, such as it is — pop’s vital demand for can-do nature and folk’s natural reluctance — on “Whispers,” Rosenberg’s first album since “Let Her Go.”

Rosenberg has a reedy, scratched voice that makes him sound forever jittery and unsettled, as if he’s just been in a rainstorm wearing only a T-shirt. Unadorned, it can be striking, even if its arsenal is limited, like during the spare first half of the moving “Heart’s on Fire,” or even on the pastoral “Coins in a Fountain.”

But while Rosenberg can be affecting, the narrowness of his vision can be suffocating. Most of the time his lyrics are like a teenager’s scribbled poems: “I’m just rust to a handle/ I’m breeze to a candle.” And his natural reserve can bleed into listlessness, as on “Start a Fire.”

Rosenberg’s intense rush of success is a victory that’s at least partly connected to the rise of Ed Sheeran, the much more pop-minded folkie whom he has opened for, and also, paradoxically, to the success of Mumford & Sons, who proved that music built from few parts can fill huge spaces.

Mumford appears to be on Rosenberg’s mind on the album closer, “Scare Away the Dark,” which, like “27,” captures the agita of his new life, and is something like what passes for protest folk in the digital age.

“We want something real, not just hashtags and Twitter,” he sings, as if social media had played no role in his sudden ascent. He continues, “It’s the meaning of life and it’s streamed live on YouTube/ But I bet ‘Gangnam Style’ would still get more views,” as if “Let Her Go,” in its modesty and unlikeliness, weren’t its own form of novelty hit.

ON TOUR: Sept. 9 — McMenamins Crystal Ballroom, Portland; www.cascadetickets.com or 800-514-3849.

— Jon Caramanica,

The New York Times