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It’s a good thing Loudon Wainwright’s Older Than My Old Man Now is so funny, because otherwise it would be unbearably sad. Older Than My Old Man Now is a concept album about death and decay that posits the inexorable march of time and the inevitable embrace of the grave as two-thirds raucous comedy and one-third tragedy. It’s an album about endings: of sex, of life, of hope, of families, and most mercifully, old grudges and grievances so powerful they can outlast life if given a chance.

Wainwright is the patriarch of one of pop music’s most brilliant and troubled dynasties, a sort of real-life version of Wes Anderson’s Tenenbaums or J.D. Salinger’s Glass family. The album’s most achingly sad moments delve—with clear-eyed, unblinking candor—into lingering, age-old pain of an unmistakably familial variety. Part of what makes Older so resonant and poignantly voyeuristic is the pervasive sense, real or not, that Wainwright can reach his children through music in a way that he can’t any other way. When he sings with son Rufus on the haunting “The Days That We Die” or Lucy on the funny-sad “All In A Family” (whose contention “What family is not insane?” may be the key line on the album), he’s connecting with them as artists in a way he never could as a terribly flawed father. It’s an exquisitely bittersweet meander through Wainwright’s cobweb-strewn psyche liable to leave listeners laughing through tears and crying through laughter. — A.V. Club

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It’s been seven years since Bonnie Raitt released Souls Alike, and a lot of life has happened. Losing her parents, brother and a best friend has left the veteran blues/soul rocker with plenty to think about—and that pensiveness colors Slipstream with knowing acceptance, nuanced takes on loss and a grace that finds splendor in the raw places.

Raitt knows about making things work. The quintuple-platinum, triple Grammy-winning Nick of Time arrived after she separated from Warner Brothers Records, her longtime home. With Slipstream, the acolyte of Sippie Wallace and John Lee Hooker takes her music to even more introspective places—and her assessments make this even more adult. “Marriage Made in Hollywood” tackles the hook ’em nature of the sensationalism and tragedy for profit mentality that sacrifices dignity and the indulged on an altar of hubris and entertainment.

Not that Slipstream is somber. There’s “Take My Love With You,” a silken affirmation of the heart that suggests “Nick of Time.” Even in recognizing life and love’s difficulties, there is the desire for abiding love. The same can be said for the staunch raver “Ain’t Gonna Let You Go,” which celebrates romance with an unlikely paramour.

The gaps and margins are the marks of grown-up life. How you weather those changes makes living fulfilling. In the end, there is blind faith: in self, in love, in perhaps God Almighty as witnessed on “You Can’t Fail Me Now,” a meditation on truly unconditional love in even our most busted places. For Raitt, it seems what’s broken only gets stronger—and wiser. — Paste

OTHER NEW RX CD RECOMMENDATIONS:

Trampled By Turtles Stars & Satellites
M. Ward A Wasteland Companion
Bassnectar Vava Voom
Counting Crows Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation)
Municipal Waste Fatal Feast (deluxe edition also available)
Nanci Griffith Intersection
Job for a Cowboy Demonocracy
The Mastersons Birds Fly South
Accept Stalingrad
Steep Canyon Rangers Nobody Knows You

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