Carousel corner.(music albums)(Sound Recording Review)

This ish we find rock'n'roll alive and breathing, but a different kind of air, shared freely with genres like country, blues, and jazz--one would think they all came from the same roots! Nah, can't be. If we have one highlight this month, it's Bill Frisell's Unspeakable, a remarkable journey through '60s and '70s soul, funk, and jazz, all whipped up in your friendly, neighborhood Osterizer for easy digestion. So dig in ...

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, Streetcore (Hellcat)

Released ten months after his death, Streetcore, Strummer's epitaph, is nothing less than a thundering, cymbal-crashing, gong-banging celebration of punk, rock, and reggae sprung from the life core of rock'n'roll. Streetcore is at the same time as accessible as Strummer ever was, on a par with The Clash's epic Sandanista!, chock full of choppy rock steady rhythm, colliding dynamics, raucous noise, and a fervent center anchored by Strummer's manic devotion to the verity of his craft. From the weary beauty of "Redemption Song" to the ironic whimsy of "Silver and Gold" ("Gonna take a trip around the world/Gonna kiss all the pretty girls/Do everything silver and gold/And I gotta hurry up before I grow too old"), Strummer dances gleefully amid the Babel of the street, the calamitous crossroads that is the world's marketplace.

There persists a myth among America's urban planners that if you have the right land use plan, the right zoning, you can carve out commercial and residential enclaves that coexist in serene harmony. The trouble with this is that America is Route 9 through Absecon, New Jersey, an almost accidental melange of storefront accountants, beauty shops, car dealerships, paint stores, biker bars, cut-rate motels, fast food joints, and a Moose lodge. This is a place, like Queens or Bombay, in which Strummer felt most at ease, where planning is forgotten and life burbles out from its seams with chaotic unpredictability, where the pursuit of living dwarfs the pursuit of wealth, where freedom ascends above order.

Streetcore is dedicated to Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart, the quintessential visionary and the model for sonic patchwork assemblages, the aural equivalent to Strummer's world view and what informed his own visual acuity. Where else would anthemic voices rise in unison to celebrate the "Ramshackle Day Parade"? There is no more Joe Strummer, and we are poorer.

Bill Frisell, Unspeakable (Nonesuch)

Bill Frisell, the once and future exponent of pan-American music--a library unto himself, again tackles a genre yet unexplored in his oeuvre with a set of compositions based on afro-funk and urban soul, turned on their ears, spun wildly, and fed back through the polyglottal vocabulary of his guitar. While "1968" recalls Wes Montgomery, "White Fang" as much conjures Sonny Sharrock or John McLaughlin's acidic solo work with Miles Davis--all of this hovering over an incessant, densely percussive backbeat and embraced by a either a string trio or horn section. Then "Del Close" blends the two with a Montgomery-ish octaved figure cutting through a speed-driven background, drummer Kenny Wollesen playing fast like Tony Williams's work on Bitches Brew.