Here's a look at five recently released CDs that caught the eye of Spectator music editor Graham Rockingham (grockingham@thespec.com, 905-526-3331)

Steve Poltz

Album: Traveling

Label: 98 Pounder

* * * *

You can sit back and enjoy the melody and the music or listen a little bit harder to the lyrics and find yourself laughing out loud. Poltz, a Nova Scotian resettled in San Diego, is a remarkably gifted songwriter who knows better than to second-guess himself. For all friends of the Padres, the Beatles' Rain, Gandhi, The Rugburns, fat Elvis, Mojo Nixon, runny noses, Liberace, Austin, Texas, the Adriatic and more.

Ry Cooder

Album: I, Flathead

Label: Nonesuch/Warner

* * * 1/2

Listening to this is like hearing an episode of NPR's Prairie Home Companion -- which is not necessarily a bad thing. With his storytelling voice and archivist's sense of the American heartland, Cooder has evolved into the musical equivalent of Garrison Keillor. On I, Flathead, Cooder explores the wonders of the internal combustion engine on a beautiful backdrop of guitar strings. There is a place in steel guitar heaven for Ry Cooder.

John Mellencamp

Album: Life, Death, Love And Freedom

Label: Hear Music

* * * *

John Mellencamp takes on the persona of a cranky old man sitting in a rocking chair with a shotgun across his lap. He's doing battle with the Grim Reaper in a voice that's raspy, raw, bitter and angry. This is not for John Cougar fans, but for lovers of Steve Earle and Springsteen's Nebraska. Mellencamp and roots uber-producer T-Bone Burnett have cut a masterful country-blues album.

Dirty Pretty Things

Album: Romance At Short Notice

Label: Mercury/ Universal

* * * 1/2

Sorry, Pete Doherty fans, but Dirty Pretty Things is the only good thing that came out of the breakup of the Libertines. A thoroughly English-sounding rock band with the balls of the Stranglers and the wit of the Kinks. Kids everywhere should be singing Hippy's Son to their dads. This album only occasionally veers off track into silly Beatlesque psychedelia.

O.A.R

Album: All Sides

Label: Atlantic/ Warner

* *

Palatable pop-rock from a band that dares to call itself "of a revolution." The best you can say about this album is that it won't really offend anyone. This is music for TV reality shows and between-inning filler at baseball games. These guys should go back to college and take a course in Revolution 101.