The Both, "The Both"

Sohn

“TREMORS”

4AD

There’s nothing as solitary as a man and his electronics in the music of Sohn, an English songwriter and producer now based in Vienna. “My love don’t love me,” he croons, bluntly and plaintively, in “Bloodflows,” a single from his debut album, “Tremors.”

That song links the album to the style Sohn delineated on a 2012 EP, “The Wheel,” and as a producer and remixer of electronic dirges for singers like Banks, Rhye and Lana Del Rey.

It’s a slow-motion world, where a doleful voice floats above sustained minor chords and, often, little else. Synthetic percussion might flicker for a while but shies away from coalescing into a substantial beat; stray synthesizer tones and backup voices appear almost mockingly, with their programmed indifference only underlining the isolation of the lead vocal. As a singer, Sohn is easily the equal of his production clients; his tenor rises to androgynous high notes that are lonely fragility incarnate.

But Sohn isn’t willing to be typecast so soon. He’s entering a crowded field alongside the brooding electronica of musicians like James Blake, Nicolas Jaar and Washed Out. Yet unlike many of his fellow keyboardist-programmer-producer studio creatures, Sohn doesn’t necessarily start with dance music or hip-hop; big bass lines and hefty drums are conspicuously absent from his productions. He’s also rooted in the cerebral patterns and conceptual rigor of British art-rock. “Veto” and “Tremors” hark back to Peter Gabriel’s plinking syncopations and inexorable buildups; “Ransom Notes” and “Lights” have some of Radiohead’s nervous, skeletal momentum and bittersweet crosscurrents.

ON TOUR: May 22 — Holocene, Portland; www.holocene.org or 503-239-7634.

— Jon Pareles, The New York Times

SoMo

“SOMO”

Republic Records

R&B stardom used to be so much simpler for guys.

You sing a sexy song about a pony or a little red Corvette, and you got yourself a career if you did it right. But in recent years, that wasn’t enough. For superstars like Justin Timberlake and Usher, sexy R&B songs weren’t enough when there were envelopes to push and artistic standing to consider, which made things far more uptight.

Maybe that’s why “SoMo” sounds so refreshing. SoMo, aka Joseph Somers-Morales, isn’t caught up in all the other issues of R&B stardom on his debut. He just wants to sing about sex and love — not necessarily in that order. And he does it really well.

His first single, “Ride,” feels like the new-millennium version of Ginuwine’s “Pony” — simple, effective and essentially timeless as a slow jam, destined for a prom near you. However, “Hush” shows SoMo is, well, no one-trick pony. A breezy bit of disco-flecked soul, like a lightweight “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” “Hush” is a clever, catchy good time that gives SoMo a chance to deliver some smooth vocals to create one of the best pop songs so far this year.

While “Crash” owes some to The Weeknd’s timely icy synthesizer soundscapes, the bulk of “SoMo” could have been released at any point in the past three decades. More important for SoMo, though, is that the bulk of his debut will likely work for the next three decades. You can never have too many soulful slow jams.

— Glenn Gamboa, Newsday

Luther Dickinson

“ROCK ‘N ROLL BLUES”

New West Records

Tennessee-born guitarist Luther Dickinson has a new album out, and he also is part of the all-star Southern Soul Assembly. Son of Memphis studio legend Jim Dickinson (on recordings by such as Dylan, the Stones and Aretha), Luther earned his own studio fame with R.L. Burnside and the Replacements before kicking out the jams with the Black Crowes, the North Mississippi Allstars, and his own blunt-force country-blues solo albums.

“Rock ‘n Roll Blues” is a slice of good-old-fashioned Americana soaked in spooky backwater harmonies (“Goin’ Country”) and Kentucky bluegrass openness (“Bar Band”). But, like those songs, the rest of Dickinson’s latest has its wild variations on familiar, even stark themes (as on “Vandalize”). That’s his thing. On acoustic tracks, Dickinson sounds as if he just happened onto a lawn party and stayed to boogie, soft and sweetly (“Mojo, Mojo”), hard (the country swing of “Yard Man”), and harder (his distorted acoustics on “Some Ol’ Day”). Most impressive is Dickinson’s storytelling: He fills this album with tall tales, silly asides, and seemingly personal moments, forlorn and loving, as on the record’s fingerpicked, waltzing closer, “Karmic Debt,” featuring winsome lyrics of deep romance and respect.

— A.D. Amorosi, The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Both

“THE BOTH”

Super Ego Records

Aimee Mann and Ted Leo forge an unlikely partnership as The Both. Mann specializes in well-crafted, melancholy pop laced with sardonic wit; Leo comes from a punk-rock background and writes bracing, emphatic songs with rousing choruses. They share a words-first songwriting sensibility, and a tour together led to shared stage time, which led to a long-distance songwriting collaboration. The two cowrote all 11 songs here, and the results are less a seamless whole than a fascinating, and usually successful, amalgamation.

Mann’s fans will be more surprised than Leo’s. These songs, mostly duets, bristle with electricity and rock harder than what Mann has done in the past, and it seems less alien to hear Leo join in on a midtempo ballad like “Hummingbirds” than it is to hear Mann rev up on a rocker like “Milwaukee.” But, once the defamiliarization fades, the skillful songcraft — and Mann and Leo’s obvious joy in the collaboration — remains.

— Steve Klinge,

The Philadelphia Inquirer