It’s conceivable that Sheryl Crow was listening to the likes of Lady Antebellum, The Band Perry, and even The Superstar Swift until she said to herself, “I can do that.” Which is to say, “I can make sharp, catchy country music.”

You can buy Janelle Monáe’s “The electric lady” below

She can indeed, judging from the evidence on Feels Like Home, her first album for Warner Bros. — make that Warner Music Nashville — after seven studio efforts for A&M. Her last one for that label, the soul-inspired 100 Miles from Memphis, wasn’t recorded in the titular town. But Crow did make her new album in Nashville, which is actually her current home. She enlisted Justin Niebank as co-producer and got help throughout from various co-writers, led by Brad Paisley collaborator Chris DuBois (with Paisley himself credited on one track).

In her press materials, Crow explains the benefit of both living and working in Nashville: Before she moved there, she hadn’t realized “what an amazing community it is. It’s the thing I’ve been missing my whole career — the feeling of being able to sit around with a guitar and have people know each other’s songs and know songs from people who’ve influenced all of us. When I moved here, pretty early on Vince Gill started calling me to do guitar pulls, and I thought, ‘Gosh, this is just like heaven on earth down here.’ ”

Often, the results are truly divine, as in the crisp electric-guitar riffs on “Shotgun” and the breezy chorus hook of “Easy” — not to mention “Best of Times,” which takes those guitars and that kind of chorus and puts them together in the same song. There’s also plenty of power in the ballad “Give It to Me.” Still, some of the finest moments here aren’t the biggest gestures but the ones that stay within themselves. They include “We Oughta Be Drinkin’,” sly instead of sloshed, and “Stay at Home Mother,” almost a prayer. It’s telling, too, that “Crazy Ain’t Original” dismisses our reality-TV culture not with an over-the-top rocker but with a cozy hand-clapper.

In other words, whereas Taylor-made music these days pushes the pop into the Red, Crow’s idea of Home — whether “Stay at Home Mother,” “Homecoming Queen,” or “Homesick” — still feels like country.

New release (Wondaland Arts Society/Bad Boy/Atlantic; tour dates)
Photo by Marc Baptiste

Looking for a musical update of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis? Janelle Monáe has been describing the adventures of her alter ego, the android Cindi Mayweather, since her debut EP, Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase. That was released in 2007, the 80th anniversary of Lang’s epic, and it was followed in 2010 by The ArchAndroid, a full-length album that contained the next two parts of Monáe’s sci-fi saga. Now come Suites IV and V (forming a prequel to the first one) in The Electric Lady.

Given the subject matter, you may be afraid of getting subjected to a techno tizzy. Don’t worry: Monáe is a throwback to the glory days of R&B, and her expansive ease with that sound is obvious all over this album. You can hear it in the riff-driven pulse of “Givin Em What They Love,” the aromatic smoldering of “PrimeTime,” the naturally bopping bass of “We Were Rock n’ Roll,” the tropical torchiness of “Look Into My Eyes,” the billowy groove of “It’s Code,” the light-on-their-feet beats of “Dance Apocalyptic,” and much, much more.

As Monáe referenced Lang in Time magazine: “Looking at something from 1927 but set in the future really connected with me. I wanted to do the same through music.” If it’s sometimes difficult to get the concept from this album (and which concept album doesn’t have that problem?), never mind; focus on that music. I won’t even bother to name the guests here; focus on Monáe’s music. And from track to track, take delight in her sweet voice. Indubitably, she sings the lady electric.

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