Billboard CD reviews: Lionel Richie, Dave Matthews Band

NEW YORK (Billboard) - A quick look at the writing and production credits for Lionel Richie's latest reveals his obvious desire to connect with an audience too young to remember mid-'80s hits like "Dancing on the Ceiling" and "Hello." Akon, Ne-Yo, Stargate, "Tricky" Stewart and the-Dream all contribute to an album with an up-to-the-minute digital sheen. Yet thanks to Richie's confidently grown-up vocals and his consistently mature subject matter -- here's a guy whose romantic timeline stretches past tonight to "Forever and a Day," as one track puts it --"Just Go" never sounds calculated or desperate. In fact, highlights like "I'm in Love" and "I'm Not Okay" showcase a cultivated cool -- perhaps a first for this longtime champion of tenderness and devotion.

ARTIST: DAVE MATTHEWS BAND

ALBUM: BIG WHISKEY AND THE GROOGRUX KING (RCA Records)

"Big Whiskey" is a big moment for the Dave Matthews Band -- it's the act's first album in four years and first since the sudden August death of founding saxophonist (and titular king) LeRoi Moore. But this eulogy is a celebration, and "Big Whiskey" is a dense, humid album that, befitting its New Orleans origins, shrewdly cuts its melancholy with exuberance and vice versa. "Shake Me Like a Monkey" is classic DMB stutter-stepping funk, "Squirm" is an Eastern-flavored epic, "Why I Am" is a radio-directed bottle rocket with a sneaky little time shift, and "Time Bomb" unfolds into a full-blast rocker with Matthews doing his best Eddie Vedder. Moore's ghost haunts throughout -- the saxman's fluttery work appears sporadically, most clearly on the sweet, sad "Lying in the Hands of God" -- and the band clearly poured grief into the swelling carpe diem tune "Dive In." Matthews' lyrics can be of the make-love-shine variety, and there are a few meandering detours as usual, but "Big Whiskey" finds the band at its most pointed and purposeful in years.

ARTIST: TORI AMOS

ALBUM: ABNORMALLY ATTRACTED TO SIN (Universal Republic)

Tori Amos will forever be best known as the fiery redhead straddling a piano bench with the same rock 'n' roll ferocity as a guitarist wielding a Strat. But since her electric '92 breakthrough "Little Earthquakes," her style has gone beyond the black-and-white of the grand piano to include a full range of colors and instruments. Her 12th studio release, "Abnormally Attracted to Sin," finds her in full command of her expanded arsenal, creating a sound that's as psychedelic as it is classic. "Strong Black Vine" channels her affection for Led Zeppelin; "Ophelia" uses mandolins, percussion and solo piano to great effect; and album standout "That Guy" is cosmic cabaret, complete with strings. The sounds coupled with the usual Amos lyrical content -- metaphors rendered through literary heroines, religious imagery, exotic food, cities as characters, triple entendres -- make for a singular tapestry that, as the artist matures, requires less and less knowledge of her catalog to enjoy.

ARTIST: BUSTA RHYMES

ALBUM: BACK ON MY B.S. (Universal Motown)