A welcome return to that down-home sound

Bo Bice

"See The Light (Sugar Money/StratArt)

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Shooter Jennings

"The Wolf" (Universal South)

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Beyond a laissez-faire attitude toward personal grooming, Bo Bice and Shooter Jennings don't appear to share much in common. Bice is best known as the scruffy longhaired guy who lost to Carrie Underwood on the fourth season of "American Idol." And Jennings is the son of outlaw-country singers Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter. Yet on their new albums (due Tuesday), each man sounds determined to leave behind the showbiz excesses of his past in an attempt to tap into a humble well of roots-music honesty.

Bice's post-"Idol" major-label debut, 2005's "The Real Thing," smothered his unvarnished bar-band appeal with over-the-top radio anthems designed to attract fans of Nickelback. Now that fellow "Idol" alum Chris Daughtry is ably serving that constituency, Bice spends "See the Light" concentrating on what he does best, which is the kind of soulful, vaguely funky Southern rock the Black Crowes used to churn out by the bucket load.

Bice's re-imaging campaign here is not a subtle one.

"I grew up on Merle Haggard, ZZ Top and [the Charlie Daniels Band]," he announces in "Take the Country Outta Me," which warns potential handlers that trips to L.A. are no threat to the "sweet Dixieland" in Bice's bones. But it is efficient; even a sax-equipped ballad, "Only Words," shores up Bice's down-home persona.

Jennings works a similar (and similarly effective) regular-guy shtick on "The Wolf," his third studio disc and the first on which he hasn't seemed to try too hard to live up to his dad's legacy as a boundary-busting iconoclast.

Despite its menacing title and the inclusion of a cover of Dire Straits' "Walk of Life," there's more country than rock here, and that suits Jennings' handsome baritone just fine.

Free of both bark and bite, "The Wolf" is an unexpected charmer.

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Mikael Wood

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Otep

"The Ascension" (Koch)

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You gotta burn in purgatory before you can rise. After both her band and her former label (Capitol) underwent conflagrations, L.A.'s Otep Shamaya had to scrape off some char, but the long-delayed "The Ascension" (in stores Oct. 30) finds the metal throatwoman fully fired for the beatific vision.