Listen Up: Battles, Owl City, Jackie Evancho, more

By Edna Gundersen, Brian Mansfield, Elysa Gardner and Jerry Shriver, USA TODAY

New albums from Battles and Owl City impress, while young prodigy Jackie Evancho and Marc Broussard are underwhelming.

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  By Charles Sykes, AP

  Jackie Evancho doesn't act her age on her new album.

By Charles Sykes, AP

Jackie Evancho doesn't act her age on her new album.

Battles, Gloss Drop

* * * (out of four) ART-ROCK

New York's experimental rock outfit handily copes with the departure of singer Tyondai Braxton by enlisting assorted vocalists from Gary Numan (on bleak Teutonic My Machines) to Blonde Redhead's Kazu Makino (the funk-throbbing Sweetie & Shag). Yet it's the eight earwormy instrumentals that steal the show, especially the sleek, pop-grooved, 16-minute Futura. This shrewd and vigorous follow-up to 2007 debut Mirrored finds Battles winning the war against convention. ? Edna Gundersen

>>Download:Sundome, Ice Cream, Futura, Inchworm

Owl City, All Things Bright and Beautiful

* * * POP

"Reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn't want to live there," sings Owl City's Adam Young, a man who once imagined hugs from 10,000 lightning bugs. As on 2009's Ocean Eyes, Young's songs conjure worlds of dreamy romance and other wondrous things, like kiwi-pineapple parasols and apple-raspberry river blues. But his synesthetic synth-pop offers more than mere ear candy: Young's eternally optimistic view of the world revels in paradox, embracing even tragedy as a path to happiness. ? Brian Mansfield

>>Download:Deer in the Headlights, The Real World, Hospital Flowers

Jackie Evancho, Dream With Me

* * � CLASSICAL CROSSOVER

America's Got Talent "prodigy" Jackie Evancho is an adorable 11-year-old whose sweet, unblemished vocal tone and slow, careful vibrato hardly betray her young age. Whether her soprano will mature into a true classical instrument or retain a pseudo-operatic affect, � la Sarah Brightman, remains to be seen. But Dream's predictable and often bombastic odes to love and faith can undermine the tween's most appealing quality: innocence. I'd have preferred a little less pomp and Puccini and more youthful wonder. ? Elysa Gardner

>>Download: title track, When You Wish Upon a Star

Marc Broussard, Marc Broussard

* * � SOULFUL POP-ROCK

The Louisiana-born singer/songwriter may tout his bayou roots, but his fifth solo outing sounds as though it has had most of the swamp drained out of it. Going for the mainstream is not a bad thing ? he escapes being labeled a regional act, and these well-crafted songs showcase an expressive, versatile baritone. It's just that there are plenty of other singers who can be faintly funky, somewhat soulful, quasi-country, mildly bluesy, etc. ? Jerry Shriver

>>Download:Only Everything, Lucky, Our Big Mistake, Eye on the Prize

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