Various Artists: Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of The Situation

Three years ago, a group of tribute-album staples (Matthew Sweet, Soul Asylum, et al) recorded a bunch of Victoria Williams covers to help out musicians with failing health and no insurance. The album ended up helping Williams (who has MS) pay her bills and jumpstart her career, and organizers hope a new album will do the same for paraplegic singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt. Like Williams, Chesnutt is an impressively distinctive lyricist with a voice that takes a lot of getting used to, and the songs on Sweet Relief II benefit from the star treatment. The new album is impressive: It's packed with stars—R.E.M., Indigo Girls, Live, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins, Madonna, Hootie and the Blowfish—but they reinterpret Chesnutt's songs with understated subtlety and a reverence that doesn't translate into the note-for-note karaoke that plagues many such recordings. Like its predecessor, it's one of the finest tribute albums in the genre.