I've stayed close to Michael Franti's music over the years, defending him against reactionary assholes who've used him for target practice even as I've set impossibly high standards (comparing each cut to "Don't Believe the Hype," "Change Is Gonna Come," or "Winter in America"). I don't have a lot of distance on a musician who I once believed was going to put revolution in tight rotation on KMEL.

He still may do that, but in the meantime he's a flesh-and-blood person who has put his ass where his politically outspoken music is. The best moment on Everybody Deserves Music is the "Armageddon Version" of "Bomb the World," an infectious reggae-fied rocker that Franti produced with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare: it's pure revolutionary pop that in an even half-perfect world would be all over the radio and the charts. The original is colored by a weary resignation that pushes the other version's outrage into the background.

Perhaps age brings wisdom, or perhaps Franti's just trying to figure out where he fits in. If that takes him out of the megastore's hip-hop sections and slots him closer to the edgy side of what you'd find on the WAVE (with the Caribbean lilt that sneaks in from time to time), then so be it. On tunes like "We Don't Stop," "What I Be," or "Feelin' Free," Franti sounds as comfortable with the material as anything he's recorded in years. (J.H. Tompkins)

Grown
Raven Thoughts (self-released)

Raven Thoughts' title and cover photo – a wind-blown, nude siren posing on a lightning-split oak – made me approach Grown's CD with trepidation. "Oh shit," I thought, "bubblegum Goth for weepy-eyed preteens." Boy, did I feel like an asshole when I finally threw it on. "Sanctify oh sanctify, this is more than just heavy breathing," vocalist Jeff Senatra intones in an evil whisper on "Pull Down," over an eerie, drawn-out didgeridoo.

The instrumentation on Raven Thoughts is extensive, and Grown aren't the types to sample a sound when they can give you the real thing. The sultry lines of a bass clarinet curl around the twilight-time vocals on "Sunset" like smoke in a threadbare piano bar after last call: "Now all I have is the sunset, burning at the end of my cigarette," Senatra sings, insistent Hammond bleats underscoring his words. The Hammond is played by David Sullivan, who also takes on the guitar, bass, piano, and "metal shelf" on the same track. A viola appears elsewhere, as does some exotic percussion – sandpaper, a pan of water, and an Indonesian frog caller.