Billboard CD reviews: Lil' Mo, Patti Scialfa

NEW YORK (Billboard) - On her indie debut, much like her previous albums, Long Island, N.Y.-bred Lil' Mo emotively relates around-the-way tales of love and lust, heartache and heartbreak. On the Donny Roc-assisted "Heartbeat," she regretfully chants over the thud of a heart monitor about not saying goodbye to a lover killed during a club brawl. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed godmother of R&B seeks the help of a love doctor on the aptly titled "Broken Heart," requesting everything from an ambulance and medical intervention to therapy and surgery to mend her shambled heart. Even when she's belting about simple-minded matters like dating a much younger man on "Youngin" and sending naughty flicks of herself to a mate on the flirty "Sexy Pictures," Mo's vocals and creative arrangements soar, overshadowing the ho-hum topics.

ARTIST: PATTI SCIALFA

ALBUM: PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (Columbia Records)

It's to Patti Scialfa's considerable credit that she's launched a potent solo career in the shadow of husband Bruce Springsteen, and in doing so has not tried to chase after anything but the mature kind of music she naturally makes. The Garden State native is at heart a Greenwich Village troubadour with a soul of ... well, soul, the classic variety from Memphis as distilled by scores of Jersey shore joints. "Play It As It Lays" is Scialfa's third and most accomplished solo album. She makes her sources clear on the Chiffons-referencing "Like Any Woman Would," the "Sally Go Round the Roses" snippet in "The Word" and the Janis Ian "Society's Child" nod in "Town Called Heartbreak." "Play Around" sounds like a lost Lieber & Stoller tune for the Drifters.

ARTIST: CALVIN HARRIS

ALBUM: I CREATED DISCO (Almost Gold Records)

So far, this 23-year-old Scot has cut a public figure antithetical to the usual scrappy populists who hit the big time via MySpace. He's disaffected and snide, the kind of guy who would take credit for starting a genre that expired before his birth or make a track eschewing the entire record biz ("This Is Industry") before the release of his debut album. "I Created Disco" feels renegade, and that's what makes it more than irresistibly fun synth-pop. Harris favors analog synths over software, giving "Disco" a unique sonic heft. But where next-big-things like overly arty Fischerspooner and sampling trickster Mylo failed, Harris succeeds. This is an accessible album that post-grunge millennials -- kids still in the single digits when Kurt Cobain died -- can claim as their own.

ARTIST: PINBACK

ALBUM: AUTUMN OF THE SERAPHS (Touch & Go Records)