Billboard CD reviews: Scarlett Johansson, Joe Cocker

ARTIST: SCARLETT JOHANSSON

ALBUM: ANYWHERE I LAY MY HEAD

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Trapped inside Scarlett Johansson's porcelain skin is the voice of a canary -- in a coal mine. A worldly alto pops out of those pouty lips, making her decision to release an album of Tom Waits covers a bit less odd than it might at first seem. Johansson's pipes are surprisingly deep but don't approach the dirt gargle of Waits himself. But she's an actress, and his songs are some of the best monologues ever set to music. Cuts like "Falling Down" come off like a Cambridge girl doing karaoke at the campus bar. But others achieve poignancy: See "Fannin Street," intrepidly plucked from Waits' 2006 three-CD outtakes collection, or album closer "Who Are You," which doubles Johansson's voice with producer David Sitek's bass, hinting at a Waits duet of acceptance. The whole set is heavily dosed with reverb and electro-swirls, perhaps to cloak Johansson's vocal limitations as much as to add psychedelia.

ARTIST: JOE COCKER

ALBUM: HYMN FOR MY SOUL (Fantasy Records)

He's got one of those voices that would make the tax code sound like music, so you'd think that making a good Joe Cocker record wouldn't be that hard. That hasn't always been the case, of course, but here, Ethan Johns, the well-credentialed son of one-time Cocker producer Glyn Johns, nails it with a potent formula of top-shelf material and ace players. Sympathetic song choices abound, from a restrained but forceful version of Stevie Wonder's "You Haven't Done Nothin"' and a rich take on the Meters' "Love Is for Me" to sublime renderings of lesser-known songs by Bob Dylan ("Ring Them Bells"), George Harrison ("Beware of Darkness") and John Fogerty ("Long As I Can See the Light"). His cover of the Beatles' "Come Together" from the "Across the Universe" soundtrack only strengthens a set that already shows Cocker in the best possible light.

ARTIST: BUN B

ALBUM: II TRILL (Rap-a-Lot/Asylum Records))

After the untimely death in 2007 of rapper Pimp C, Bun B gathers a long list of famous friends to celebrate the life of his UGK partner on his sophomore solo set. Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Lupe Fiasco, Sean Kingston, Young Buck, Chamillionaire, Juvenile, 8Ball & MJG, Webbie, David Banner and Pimp C himself, are among the collaborators on the drum-heavy, midtempo-laden album. On the Jodeci-sampled "You're Everything," Bun B rhymes about his love for his hometown of Houston, while poverty, politics and spirituality dominate the reflective "If It Was Up to Me." But the most heartfelt track on the album is the one dedicated to Pimp C, "Angel in the Sky." Appropriating elements of Stevie Wonder's "Ribbon in the Sky," the song finds Bun B taking solace in his grief: "I miss my brother every day, but I know he's watching from up above."   Continued...