SOUNDS

Marc Anthony makes a welcome return to salsa

Singer Marc Anthony performs on NBC's 'Today' show July 23 in New York.

CHARLES SYKES/INVISION/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Singer Marc Anthony performs on NBC's 'Today' show July 23 in New York.

When Marc Anthony signed with Sony and started performing English-language pop songs in 1999, wheeling toward the world market, it was easy to root for him. Anthony could seem like the ideal New York striver-hero, more grandiose in ambition than in personality; tenacious, full-throated, romantic in his sound and in his service to music

His new album, “3.0,” with George back on board, returns to salsa, and though its title implies another new start, he didn’t really leave anything behind. He’s moved among salsa, Latin pop, English pop, recording less frequently over last decade, during his marriage to Jennifer Lopez. But the thing worth relearning about Anthony is that he’s not an either/​or guy: it’s never a choice between purity and preservation, or gloss and expansion. He’s reacting to and engaging with pop modernity, and he’s also a landmark of Puerto Rican-American culture, part of the cultural survival process.

It’s a preservation record with expansion at both ends. The first track, “Vivir Mi Vida,” written by the producer RedOne and others — Anthony’s biggest hit in nine years — is a you-only-live-once stadium chant, anchored by a repeating piano ostinato and a salsa rhythm section but recognizably global from the first notes, strong and simple, with a gusting vocal. It’s simple and armored, one solid chunk of song. And it’s reprised at the album’s end, of course, at a faster tempo, with electronic rhythm.

But the rest of “3.0” reminds you of how most Anthony-George productions are so much more complex and nourishing than that. They grow up and out, with soft openings, changes in rhythm and key, and then the emergence of brass counterlines and new melodic strains. Typically, they intensify toward a release of energy halfway through, with rocking montunos, repeated choruses and vocal improvising. The best of this kind on “3.0”—“Flor Pálida,” “Espera,” “Cautivo de Tu Amor”—aren’t quite up to “Todo a Su Tiempo,” but they’ve got momentum; they give the sense of songs within songs.

Anthony doesn’t make records without serious sentimentality, live and wriggling. Here it’s packed into those beginnings of songs before they detonate, but musical sentimentality — as opposed to the merely emotional kind — runs thick in a couple of smart tracks.

One is a cover of the bolero standard “La Copa Rota,” which has been performed by José Feliciano and others, a story of jealous rages and open wounds both real and metaphorical. The other is the hyper-dramatic “Hipocresía.” It’s an old song first done by Peruvian pop group Los Pasteles Verdes in the mid-70s, and Anthony’s hard-salsa version could pass for something from that long ago. But it’s played and sung as seriously as the album’s hit; different style, same intensity.