POP/ROCK

Daughtry, "Leave This Town" (19/RCA)

"American Idol" favorite Chris Daughtry recently released a video of himself performing an acoustic cover of "Poker Face" at a German radio station. Lady Gaga's original has always sounded like a commentary on gender and power relations, but Daughtry sings it as the statement of brute affection it always threatened to be. What "Poker Face" does have over several of the songs on "Leave This Town," the second album by Daughtry, the band that carries Daughtry's name and his unmistakable Neanderthal-chic scent, is economy. Wordiness is an unusual turn for a band for which ruthless simplicity has been a calling card.

The 2006 Daughtry debut was a robust celebration of stoicism. And Daughtry is often a tremendous singer, matching the triumphalist impulses of Jon Bon Jovi with the persistent tonal misery of Staind's Aaron Lewis. In the late 1990s not only would Daughtry have been one of the era's best-selling acts but also one of its most emotionally resonant.

A decade later Daughtry is an anachronism and plenty content with his blinders. At best, "Leave This Town" inches beyond its predecessor, deeply tunneled into the hard-rock mainstream but a touch more confident and eclectic. On "Call Your Name," Daughtry shelves his growl in favor of unexpectedly warm soul inflections. The band sticks with the sullen, where it excels. It's a surprise to hear "Tennessee Line," a country song in lyric and, nominally, in style, with Vince Gill recruited to sing tepid harmonies. This is one of the least committed songs on the album.

Daughtry performs Aug. 9 at the Cabooze.

JON CARAMANICA, New York Times

Son Volt, "American Central Dust" (Rounder)

Movement and stasis face off in bitter opposition throughout this stoic but sympathetic album. For lead singer/songwriter Jay Farrar, stillness equals sickness, and locomotion means release. He has been mining this particular rustic and square-jawed terrain more or less steadily since his tenure with the influential alt-country Uncle Tupelo more than 15 years ago.

It's all a clear throwback, but the starkly countrified vibe underscores the plaintive cast of Farrar's lyrics. His concerns are often contemporary, as when he depicts the blight of Midwestern industrial towns or rampant fossil-fuel consumption. One of his stronger indictments, "When the Wheels Don't Move," adopts the tone of a Depression-era rabble-rouser, with arresting results. His writing gets more pedestrian on "Cocaine and Ashes," a reverie inspired by Keith Richards. But he does extremely well by "Dust of Daylight," a country two-step in which love is compared to a dangerous fog.

NATE CHINEN, NEW YORK TIMES