DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

"Narrow Stairs"

(Atlantic)

Making the jump from an indie label to a major one can spell disaster, and many a fan heralded the demise of Death Cab For Cutie after their unfairly criticized Atlantic debut, 2005's "Plans."

Again boasting slick production and a new direction for their sound, Death Cab's follow-up, "Narrow Stairs," will shatter any expectations about this band -- and here it's a compliment.

Typically grounded in warm and bright flavors, Death Cab have widened their scope dramatically on "Narrow Stairs," with synth providing dark tones and biting atmosphere -- the disc floats and echoes.

Death Cab still cover the same heartfelt territory -- love and happiness, rejection and regret -- just with a lot more aplomb.

Disc opener "Bixby Canyon Bridge" provides a jolt, with a soft intro and frontman Ben Gibbard's emotive vocals lulling you in before a hard riff hits you over the head.

Impressive lead single "I Will Possess Your Heart" boasts an ambitious intro -- maybe too much so -- propelled by bass and piano before Gibbard flashes his typical eloquence: "How I wish you could see the potential/The potential of you and me/It's like a book elegantly bound/But in a language you can't read just yet."

The disc is nicely balanced between driving rock -- the poppy "No Sunlight," anthemic "Cath," and joyous retro vibe of "Long Division" and "Pity and Fear" -- and moody mid-tempo ballads -- a poetic "Grapevine Fires" and the self-deprecating oddity of "You Can Do Better Than Me."

"Narrow Stairs" is a knockout, and will make you throw out everything you've come to know about Death Cab For Cutie.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: Equally sad and romantic, "Your New Twin Sized Bed" is a sweet lament to heartbreak, and Gibbard's longing vocal will touch anyone who's spent a rainy day crying in bed.

T BONE BURNETT

"Tooth of Crime"

(Nonesuch)

Producer T Bone Burnett is the Midas of music. Everything he touches is golden.

From the Grammy-winning "O, Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack in 2000 to last year's unlikely but unforgettable pairing of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Burnett hasn't missed.

His latest, however, is off the mark -- though not by much. "Tooth of Crime," a solo CD, is the result of more than a decade's worth of tinkering with songs he initially wrote for the 1996 restaging of the Sam Shepard play "Tooth of Crime (Second Dance)."

The songs, which Burnett reworked with the help of players like guitarist Marc Ribot, are haunting and drip menace. Yet the album doesn't hold together without its accompanying narrative, lost and abandoned in a dark, dark place.

There are some strong pieces here. "The Rat Age" is downright mean, and "Sweet Lullaby" is as melancholy as a sorrowful goodbye.

But while sharing many of the same attributes with work he produced and arranged over the years, including his own release, the angular "True False Identity," in 2006, "Tooth of Crime" isn't able to reach the same transcendence as, say, "Raising Sand," the Krauss-Plant album, or Gillian Welch's "Hell Among the Yearlings."

CHECK THIS OUT: Opener "Anything I Say Can and Will Be Used Against You" is worth the price of admission alone. Cast in the tradition of the rock 'n' roll musician as bad, bad dude, the song is all attitude and menace. Burnett sings: "This is a story based on a true story based on a lie."

DUFFY

"Rockferry"

(Mercury)

Duffy's debut album could slip in between Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield on a collector's shelf, but the 23-year-old pop-soul ingenue says she developed her sound without hearing either artist.

Still, the singer-songwriter, who grew up in a remote Welsh village where top-40 music ruled, embodies the style and substance of a classic '60s soul diva.

She co-wrote each of the ten tracks on "Rockferry," an album all about old-fashioned heartbreak. On the title track, Duffy has "a bag of songs and a heavy heart." She tells a lover they're finished in the sparsely arranged "Warwick Avenue," bemoans his lack of attention in "Hanging On Too Long" and tries to keep herself from the arms of a cheater in "Stepping Stone."

She knows she's a fool in love and pleads for compassion on the super-catchy single, "Mercy." Duffy taps into her inner Aretha Franklin on the electro-tinged tune, begging for mercy over a bouncy chorus of yeah, yeah, yeahs.

While none of the album's other songs are as punchy or uptempo and this toe-tapping track, Duffy delivers a solid, soulful debut with the same retro appeal and promise Amy Winehouse generated with 2006's "Back to Black."

"Rockferry" only lags on its final tune -- ironically the album's most positive. A soaring anthem about life's possibilities laid over an orchestral backdrop, "Distant Dreamer" sounds like the theme song for a cheesy children's film.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: A lone guitar provides the melody and Duffy lets loose with a lovesick wail as she implores her baby to "spend your time on me" in the soulful and spare "Syrup & Honey."

LANGHORNE SLIM

"Langhorne Slim"

(Kemado)

On "Spinning Compass," the opening track of Langhorne Slim's new self-titled release, he offers the lines, "Don't wanna be a drag ... Don't wanna be sad" and "it's too bad you find fault with me."

He finds fault with himself, too, but he embraces his flaws and runs with them.

The 27-year-old singer/guitarist -- a/k/a Sean Scolnick, originally from Langhorne, Pa. -- is a big-hearted, hyperactive type who plows through the frenetic folk-rock of "Langhorne Slim" with the core support of Malachi DeLorenzo (drummer and producer), Sam Kassirer (keyboardist and producer) and Paul Defiglia (standup bass).

The sound is raw, often distorted and sometimes so crazed (as on "Restless" and "She's Gone") that it emphasizes the imperfections in his too-edgy voice.

What's more, "Langhorne Slim" peters out toward the end -- coincidentally starting with the track "The Honeymoon," in which he sings, "The honeymoon is over, I suppose." There's something earnestly pedestrian about Slim, too, as when he preaches to the choir that we've all just got to be happy on "Diamonds and Gold" and when his unnerving voice creates unnecessary tension on "Hello Sunshine" as he offers such platitudes as, "I feel all right by your side."

Still, Langhorne Slim transcends his flaws with genuine charisma, emanating soul in "Sometimes."

By the time he settles his trembling voice into the acoustic-guitar framework of closer "Hummingbird" and sings, "I'm dreaming of leaving my demons/And the first one I'm leaving is you," listeners will be hoping the energetic guy isn't talking about them.

CONSTANTINES

"Kensington Heights"

(Arts & Crafts)

There's an informality to the Constantines' earthy "Kensington Heights" that intrigues and compels.

Throaty vocalist Bryan Webb, who sounds like a roughed-up Bruce Springsteen, leads the Ontario band down a road of angst and distortion. The air is thick with restless, yet indistinct, dissatisfaction, amplified by spontaneous-feeling high-voltage rock accented with shades of blues and offbeat rhythms.

The Constantines' vocals, which occasionally feature guitarist Steve Lambke as well as Webb, are the focal point, whether they're stubbly against the careening neo-grunge of "Hard Feelings" ("Some people's love isn't strong enough"), erupting in the menacing flutter of "Trans Canada" or disarmingly accessible in the calm intimacy of "New King." The downside to the vocal dominance comes when they're affected and don't ring as true as they ought to, as on "Time Can Be Overcome" ("Yesterday will break your heart/Tomorrow kill you dead").

The band is also handicapped by casual arrangements that seem to reflect a lack of investment on the part of the group, tracks such as the stuck-in-neutral "Our Age," the bland (though nicely titled) "I Will Not Sing a Hateful Song" and the half-baked and spacey "Life or Death."

Yet it's easy to overlook the Constantines' fleeting focus, because when their bracing, three-guitar fury brings down the house on "Shower of Stones," when their heart-racing rhythm paces "Credit River" and when their erratic thrashing punctuates the simmering starkness of "Million Star Hotel," there's no question this group is pounding out distinction.

YOUR VEGAS

"A Town and Two Cities"

(Universal Republic)

Music fans who fall for Your Vegas could develop an attachment akin to those in committed, uncomplicated relationships.

The New York-based band spawned from a suburb of Leeds, U.K., unapologetically hammers out one type of song repeatedly on its new "A Town and Two Cities," and generally does it well.

A descendent of Coldplay and U2, Your Vegas refines its melancholy edge, crafting one anthem after another by anchoring a melodic chorus -- plaintively sung by Coyle Girelli -- in a maelstrom of wailing guitars and driving rhythms. The lyrics don't have much depth, what with Girelli merely drawing out the line "We live in troubled times" for the chorus of "Troubled Times" and going no deeper than "It makes my heart break to see your state of mind" on "It Makes My Heart Break," but the hooks have a wallop thanks to his deft use of emotion and range, particularly his higher end.

The grandiose, pretty refrains are supported by a shimmering, full sound, resulting in such a soaring mix that it doesn't much matter that so many tracks are strikingly similar, including "Aurora," "In My Head," "It Makes My Heart Break" and "Troubled Times." A couple of tracks -- "Birds of Paradise" and "Until the Lights Go Out" -- fall victim to clunky arrangements, but they, too, conform to the Your Vegas shtick.

The group even has a formulaic way to break up the formula, employing two slow tracks, "The Way the War Was Won" in the middle of the release and "Salvadore" at the end.

Yet despite the sheer predictability of Your Vegas on "A Town and Two Cities," it works.

"INDIANA JONES: THE ADVENTURE COLLECTION"

(1984, 3 discs)

Dir.: Steven Spielberg

Professor Henry Jones Jr. is offering a refresher course on his past achievements before you join the throng to see his latest, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which hits theaters May 22. The first three flicks starring Harrison Ford as the archaeologist with the outlaw attitude -- "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" -- arrive in new DVD versions separately and in a three-disc "Adventure Collection." Each film comes with an introduction by director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas (Spielberg confides that he wasn't too enthusiastic over Lucas' Holy Grail idea for "Last Crusade," while both discuss Spielberg's notion of making it a father-son reconciliation between Harrison Ford's Indy and Sean Connery's Henry Jones Sr. They also address the critical drubbing received by "Temple of Doom." ). Other extras include segments on the melting-face effects in "Raiders" and the snakes, rats and bugs that gave the films their "ick" factor, plus a session with the women in Indy's life, Karen Allen, Kate Capshaw and Alison Doody. "Adventure Collection" DVD set, $49.99; single DVDs, $26.99 each. (Paramount)

"THE GREAT DEBATERS"

(2007, 124 min.)

Dir.: Denzel Washington

Denzel Washington directs and stars in an upbeat tale about a 1930s professor at a small Texas college for black students who challenges racial divides by assembling a world-class debate team that winds up in a showdown with the golden-tongued squad from Harvard. The movie comes in a single-disc or two-disc edition, with extras that include deleted scenes, commentary by Washington, a background featurette and two music videos. Among extras exclusive to the two-disc set are segments on the film's music, costumes and design, plus an interview with co-star Forest Whitaker. Two-disc set, $32.95; single DVD, $29.95. (Genius)

"FRANK SINATRA"

(Various)

Marking the 10th anniversary of Sinatra's death, a huge batch of his films arrive in four DVD boxed sets, along with a 1992 miniseries about his life. "The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition" features four Sinatra romps with such regular cronies as Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford in the original "Ocean's 11," plus "4 for Texas," "Robin and the Seven Hoods" and "Sergeant's 3." "The Golden Years" set has Sinatra's "The Man With the Golden Arm," "None but the Brave," "Some Came Running," "The Tender Trap" and "Marriage on the Rocks," while "The Early Years" package has "Double Dynamite," "Higher and Higher," "Step Lively," "It Happened in Brooklyn" and "The Kissing Bandit." "The Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly Collection" features "On the Town," "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "Anchors Aweigh." Philip Casnoff stars as the singer in the miniseries "Sinatra," which features Sinatra's own vocals on dozens of songs. "Rat Pack" set, $59.92; "Golden Years" and "Early Years" sets, $39.92 each; "Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly" set, $24.98; "Sinatra" miniseries, $19.98. (Warner Bros.)