In Brief

* * * Loudon Wainwright III, “Career Moves,” Virgin. This live album finds Wainwright at his best: flailing away on acoustic guitar, vocally squirming through his sometimes hilarious, sometimes painful tales of life and love gone awry. He goes overboard with the shtick only rarely, making this a thoroughly representative and lively record of his razor-sharp recent material and a handful of zingy new songs.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).