In Brief

* * * Wendy James, “Now Ain’t the Time for Your Tears,” DGC. What if Elvis Costello wrote an entire album from the point of view of “this year’s model”? That’s exactly what he’s done for the former Transvision Vamp singer whose fleeting English success gives Costello an excuse to pen a typically cutting critique on the vagaries of pop culture, sung by the erstwhile “Puppet Girl” herself. James isn’t tremendously gifted as an interpreter, making “Tears” superior in concept to execution, but this remains self-reflexiveness of a particularly trenchant sort.

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