In Brief

* * * John Lee Hooker, “Boom Boom,” Point Blank/Virgin. “The Healer” and “Mr. Lucky” reintroduced Hooker to a large record-buying audience, but “Boom Boom” tops those recent celebrity-studded albums by presenting the 75-year-old blues hero at his most elemental. The feel is raw and off-handed, which lets the still-powerful Hooker cut deep to the core of nervous desperation or heighten the comic swagger in these surging boogies and slow, tortured blues.