Archive for December 13th, 2011|Daily archive page
2011 Albums
Adele – 21
There is no question Adele Adkins has an amazing voice, and it wisely plays front and center on her sophomore album, anchored by the inescapable (and rightly so) 2011 anthem Rolling In The Deep. But Adele also shows a growth in lyricism here, capturing an elusive characteristic of ideal pop songs to be both accessible in meaning on first or second listen (don’t deny that the driving Fleetwood Mac vibe on Rumour Has It isn’t instantly evocative of gossipy dancefloor whispers) but also filled with additional layers that rewards repeat listeners (the breakdown and then closing lyric in “Rumour”). 21 slips just slightly when it retreats to the safety of the Adele’s blaring voice on mid-tempo ballads like Don’t You Remember and Take It All, but this is a very solid album. Additional attention is deserved for the inclusion of a cover of The Cure‘s Lovesong, which is so good it almost makes up for 311‘s miserable 2004 rendition.
Recommended for: Wannabe priests who want to practice taking confessions; cockney devotees; confused blackjack players.
The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
Capturing everything the literary-minded band does best, The Decemberists recover after the odd hard rock/rock opera experiment that was Hazards Of Love with this earthy, swaggering, harmonica-heavy collection of heartbreak and tragicomic irony. Sometimes the album reiterates REM‘s back catalog a little too closely, but highlights like The Calamity Song and the painfully beautiful June Hymn carry it through.
Recommended for: REM fans in mourning; people who like pop songs about the apocalypse; vocabulary nerds.
Cold War Kids – Mine Is Yours
Cold War Kids seem a little like lesser Arcade Fire, angsty and dynamic. Unlike the Canadian winge-rockers, though, TCWK shift from heavily-produced techno rock to minimalistic punk folk without pausing very long in the indie pop-rock middle. These meanderings aren’t done without some seams showing, but that’s not really to their detriment. Mine Is Yours never quite reaches the majestic heights its contemporaries do, but it’s quietly powerful.
Recommended for: Fans of Arcade Fire who really hate that they won an Oscar; indie rockers trying to break an electronica addiction.
The Dears – Degeneration Street
This album is incredible, although if you’re like me you won’t fully appreciate it on the first listen, or even the tenth. Like so many of my all-time favorites Degeneration Street gets better each and every time I listen to it, from the incomparable seat-kick of Omega Dog that begins the album through the devastating Lamentation and the deceptively perky Yesteryear and finally into the haunting, discordant title track it’s just so solid and endlessly surprising.
Best of Year Candidate
Recommended for: Humans with ears; fans of “grower” albums; guys who like bands named after endearments.
Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
The last time I listened to Iron & Wine it was basically just a guy and an acoustic guitar singing sweetly sad songs about dying and falling in love, often at the same time. Kiss Each Other Clean is a highly produced version of those same kinds of songs, dipping into weird effects and electric guitar wanking. It’s reminiscent not in sound but in ambition to Radiohead‘s Kid A and like that divisive album I’m sure there are people who hear KEOC who long for the stripped down sensibility in older tracks. I think this album is at least more interesting than the older stuff, which I liked but always seemed to be difficult to find the right circumstance for, but there is still something missing from these songs. I think in part there is a casualness to the music that suits neither low moods nor high ones and instead the album is just kind of there.
Recommended for: People staring out the window at an overcast day; beard lovers; Sangria-drinkers.
The Get Up Kids – There Are Rules
For some reason I keep checking out The Get Up Kids, thinking I’m going to really like them and possibly for that same reason I just end up thinking they’re sort-of-not-quite okay. There’s nothing terribly offensive or unpleasant about the band or this album, but it just doesn’t have any real resonance. There Are Rules meanders through a dozen songs, occasionally catching a germ of an idea that could become something good but typically it takes a different turn either lyrically or musically and the result is a shrug-worthy album of pseudo-experimental alt-pop.
Recommended for: Insomniacs; fans of Gin Blossoms biding their time until the bland-rock revival; those who describe themselves as “avid fans of tea.”
Radiohead – The King of Limbs
Admittedly, I’m a huge fan of Radiohead. But that’s the only reason I’ve listened to The King Of Limbs as many times as I have, because frankly it’s just really disappointing. I wasn’t a huge fan of Kid A (although I felt that between it and Amnesiac there was a single really good album there) but when they took the electronica stylings incubated in those sessions and began to blend in their masterful command of pop rock in Hail to the Thief and then In Rainbows, they were on to something special and unique. Sadly, TKOL drifts back into Kid A territory with too much disposable noise and not enough to evoke a mood. There are a couple of worthy tracks but overall it’s probably the least impressive offering from the band since their misguided (but promising) debut, Pablo Honey.
Recommended for: Blindly devoted fans of Thom Yorke and company; disappointment junkies; dance-pop lyricists.
Dropkick Murphys – Going Out in Style
Raucous, stereotype-affirming Irish post-punk outfit Dropkick Murphys write pub music, plain and simple. They write drinking songs about drinking, drinking songs to be sung while drunk and heartbreak songs to be sung while drowning sorrows. Their one-note approach makes their longevity kind of a mystery but there are definitely some case studies in Going Out In Style to support the justification of it, such as Cruel and 1953. It’s a fun album if not exactly mold-breaking.
Recommended for: White dudes with traces of Irish ancestry looking for a racial identity; fraternity DJs looking to round out St. Patrick’s Day party playlists; bagpipe seekers.
The Strokes – Angles
When The Strokes stick to their strength, i.e. retro-tinged lo-fi noise rock, they’re as solid and all around listenable as any of the more media-darling acts out there. Check out Taken For A Fool as a case study. But on Angles, The Strokes feel compelled to either push the envelope or they’re getting bored or something because a lot of it is gritty electronic bloop infused or bounces from their 70s revival roots into some 80s synth punk flourishes or failed 90s DIY wankery and the songs, often bearing moments of brilliance, end up feeling messy and unfocused. Angles isn’t a terrible album by any means, but it has no cohesion and is therefore too hit or miss to be truly inspiring.
Recommended for: Folks who love their iPod’s Skip button; Amazon MP3 pick-and-choosers; kids who would have been Steely Dan fans if they’d been born a few decades earlier.
TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light
Unlike many bands, TV On The Radio doesn’t really have a consistent sound nor an easy classification. More than anything, TotR are pure musicians, drawing from what seems to be a bottomless well of influences to create interesting and genre-busting songs that, at times, are transcendent and make one wonder, “Why can’t more modern music have this sense of culmination?” For reference, see New Cannonball Blues. Then again, like so much music made by people who are technically brilliant and have an expert-level grasp of their field, sometimes TotR gets carried away and miss emotional connection. Nine Types of Light does better at resonating on that visceral level than earlier albums though there are some misses here and there. Still, this is a very, very good album by a very, very good band.
Recommended for: TV On The Radio fans waiting for that “breakthrough” album; music theory majors; people looking for references on how to craft a song.
Gorillaz – The Fall
I’m not a true Gorillaz fan in that I don’t follow the fictional exploits of the cartoon-character band members nor do I care about the canonical detail developed to go along with the albums, preferring instead to just listen to the music produced by Damon Albarn et al. Perhaps that creates a bit of a disconnect since the entire purpose of the project seems to be to create a commentary about fandom and interest in the lives of the people behind the music we enjoy, perhaps dissecting the cult of personality supposedly necessary in modern society. I still say “whatever” and focus on the musical output and on The Fall, Gorillaz kind of drift away from the radio-friendly alt-electronica that made their debut and Demon Days so deliriously listenable. The Fall isn’t bad by any stretch, but it doesn’t grab your attention and even though most of the tracks are fairly short the album itself feels long with stretches of uninspiring beats and bland samples between the interesting parts. More often than not The Fall feels like a movie score and soundtrack which, for someone not interested in the movie, doesn’t really work.
Recommended for: Die-hard Gorillaz devotees; people reading Ernest Cline; cartoon characters.
Okkervil River – I Am Very Far
Having fairly recently discovered Okkervil River I was pretty excited for this album prior to its release. Then when it first hit I listened to it and thought it was kind of disappointing, not fully living up to the brilliance of The Stage Names and The Stand-Ins. But this is another grower album where the brilliance is hidden until you can devote a number of listens and pick out the more complex hooks that aren’t always readily apparent. I Am Very Far does have a couple of tracks that are “merely” good, but much of it is downright uncanny and special attention is deserved for one of the year’s very best tracks, Your Past Life as a Blast. Other highlights include Piratess, Wake and Be Fine, and We Need a Myth.
Best of Year Candidate
Recommended for: Discerning stoners; songwriting enthusiasts; everyone.
Lady Gaga – Born This Way
Pop’s reigning proponent of weird drops an album of surprising mastery with Born This Way. At its heart, BTW is a rock record filled with teenage rebellion, hook-heavy dance beats and catchy riffs collated underneath Gaga’s journeyman’s pop delivery (she is actually a quite capable vocalist, as she showcases on You And I though she frequently hides it beneath un-pretentious stylings, to her credit). A few of the tracks here don’t work like Government Hooker, Bloody Mary and the self-plagarising Highway Unicorn (Road to Love). Still, much of the album is pure, dance-ready fun and while it doesn’t exactly break new ground, even the most jaded critic listening with an open mind would have to admit there is infectious magic happening through much of BTW.
Recommended for: Anthem-loving people; anyone who never watches TV, movies, film previews, online videos or listens to any radio or other broadcast medium where the entire album is and will be ubiquitous forever more as background music; fashion-forward people looking for sonic accompaniment to their non-conformity.
Flogging Molly – Speed of Darkness
Irish folk/punk outfit Flogging Molly, unlike commonly cited contemporaries Dropkick Murphys, are more standard class warfare/social equality punk-pop than their party-happy comparison group. The thing about Flogging Molly though is that they are able to rise above the gimmick of blending Irish flavor with their accessible punk sound by simply writing good songs. SOD does lag a bit toward the end, but all in all this is worth checking out.
Recommended for: People who liked Green Day in their heyday; Occupy Wall Street protesters, trying to keep the memory alive; brogue collectors.
Death Cab for Cutie – Codes and Keys
Death Cab are at their best when they branch out a bit from their low-tempo wrist-cutting strum formula and act like they aren’t allergic to rocking out. This is why Doors Unlocked and Open and similar tracks are among the best on Codes and Keys. DCFC have always had hit and miss albums, rarely putting together an unbroken string of excellence probably because Ben Gibbard is too busy basking in how awesome he thinks his own lyrics are to worry enough about the vehicle of the song. Still, Death Cab albums are usually worth checking out for the four or five good songs and, if nothing else, they’ve amassed enough of a back catalog now for a really killer Best Of playlist. Several of the songs from Codes And Keys should have a place on such a list.
Recommended for: Bi-polar sufferers; grad students writing dissertations on three-chord structure; retro mix tape hobyists.
Eddie Vedder – Ukelele Songs
Ukeleles seem to be everywhere in the last couple of years and Pearl Jam‘s frontman jumps on the bandwagon with a collection of songs, re-imaginings and covers featuring the small stringed instrument enjoying an interesting if not entirely deserved resurgence. It’s not that the ukelele is incapable, it’s more that it gives practically every song either a sort of sonic smirk of ironic self-awareness or it evokes a thin sense of pained melancholy. Those are perfectly fine moods to evoke in music, but entire catalogs or even entire albums that play off such a limited emotional repertoire can grow stale after three or four tracks. Ukelele Songs isn’t exempt and while Vedder’s familiar voice is allowed to shine here with the limited accompaniment, 15 songs feels like about ten too many.
Recommended for: Middle-aged flannel owners; ex-Seattle scenesters looking for lullabies; grad students writing theses on popularity swings in obscure instruments.
Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Justin Vernon’s voice is hypnotic and his quietly heartbreaking songwriting is unquestionably capable but there is still something about Bon Iver that I’m not quite sold on. Unlike fellow introspective, low-key alt-folksters Blind Pilot, Bon Iver lacks a sense of reconciliation, as if their somber moodiness were endemic as opposed to an obstacle needing to be overcome. This is a beautiful album to listen to, there’s no doubt, but unlike some of the other albums this year there has yet to be much to make me come back to this for more than a few listens, mostly because I end up feeling depressed in spite of being also impressed at the band’s skill.
Recommended for: Log cabin-bound recluses; the clinically depressed; Santa Claus, and other winter lovers.
Jill Scott – The Light Of The Sun
I was fully unfamiliar with Ms. Scott prior to picking up this album on a whim that was partially based on a recent discovery of soulful female vocalist/songwriters like Adele, Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse and older Fugees/Lauryn Hill (which I regret to admit mostly missed when they were modern). Unlike some of these other gossip-y (mostly English) artists, Scott is more Motown/soul/hip-hop than classic jazz which is okay but the focus on beats production and street cred kind of overshadows her vocal style. Some of the more experimental tracks are among the most successful like the vaudeville/beatbox/scat mashup in All Cried Out Redux and the cautiously optimistic girl-talk of Some Other Time. Other tracks simply don’t work, like Le BOOM Vent Suite and Missing You. The Light Of The Sun is a very uneven album, taken as a whole, and even several of the tracks are plagued by moments of brilliance nestled between awkward breakdowns and rap-lite diatribes. Jill Scott has talent and parts of the uneven feel of the album may be due to a kind of on-the-fly, improvisational approach to songwriting which is at least admirable if not always successful.
Recommended for: Hook singers looking for the courage to branch out; compulsive diary readers; music critics wondering what Leona Lewis would sound like if she ever stopped singing Bleeding Love over and over.
They Might Be Giants – Join Us
TMBG’s peppy, smarmy brand of power alt pop really ought to appeal to a larger audience. In a way they do what OK Go seem to be trying to do but while OK Go skimp on songwriting prowess in favor of clever visual arts (would you even know who they were without their music videos?) TMBG nails the sonic formula. They seem content with that and unwilling to focus their attention elsewhere lest it distract from what they excel at. Maybe a supergroup could be formed if TMBG let Ok Go do their videos? Anyway, Join Us may not necessarily have the same top-to-bottom brilliance as, say, 2007’s The Else, but the persistent clever/insightful lyrics and toe-tapping melodies certainly resists critique. Notable tracks include Judy Is Your Viet Nam and 2082.
Recommended for: “Weird Al” Yankovic fans looking to branch out from pop culture references and food gags; those who think the musical duo is underutilized; people with subversive senses of humor.
Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne
Admittedly, rap isn’t my genre of choice, although I can recognize talent within the execution of the style from a sort of general appreciation of musical expression perspective. I guess this collaborative album was highly anticipated and received a lot of buzz that reached even my digital ears so I felt compelled to investigate. To be fair, Watch The Throne starts off with a bold slap of a track in No Church in the Wild, driven by a rock-sensibility hook and featuring blistering rhymes by the performers which led me to expect that perhaps this was among the rare modern rap albums I’d actually end up giving a lot of listens. Unfortunately, later tracks have a frequent problem of feeling terribly over-produced and messy although there are some gems scattered around beyond just the opener: Otis embraces simplicity with a highlighted Otis Redding sample, the surprisingly emotional achievements of New Day and Made In America, and the defiant urgency of Who Gon Stop Me.
Recommended for: Rare souls who love “wall of sound” production; fans of the word “bitch” and all its variants; self-aggrandizement appraisers.
Lenny Kravitz – Black And White America
I haven’t really paid much attention to Lenny Kravitz since his breakout album bearing the remarkable throwback rock riff of the title track, Are You Gonna Go My Way. I was disappointed at the time to find that the rest of the album lacked that same retro-revival sentiment and was full of more mid-tempo soul/rock ballads which, being a high schooler deeply interested in blistering guitar licks, didn’t hold my interest. Checking back in with Mr. Kravitz, I was surprised to find that while he still drifts back into the ballad too often for my preference, Black And White America is a pretty good album. It’s not spectacular, but the first third is pretty great and even if it starts to peter off a bit toward the end, The Faith Of A Child is on the latter half and is one of the best tracks.
Recommended for: Conjoined twins looking to split the difference between Stevie Wonder and Led Zeppelin; people confused about the definitions of the terms “hippie” and “hipster”; ballad purists.
Blind Pilot – We Are The Tide
It took a long time for Blind Pilot’s previous LP, 3 Rounds and a Sound to grow on me, but eventually it became one of my favorite albums of indie folk-pop. With We Are The Tide, Blind Pilot may have crafted one of my favorite albums of the last five years. I seriously adore nearly every corner of this album. The increased production values and expanded instrumentation don’t undo the sense of intimate urgency the band uses as its stock and trade but rather give the whole thing a new level of depth and texture, elevating it above top-tier coffeehouse backdrop and into top-teir musicianship. From the there’s-just-something-in-my-eye sweetness of Half Moon through the earwormy, toe-tapping title track, We Are the Tide and through the fading notes of the thoughtful New York, it’s just sublime.
Best of Year Candidate
Recommended for: Denizens of Earth; lovers of beauty; Death Cab for Cutie fans wondering when Ben Gibbard dropped the pretense and started sounding so darn good.
Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn of Events
The title of this album is pretty amusingly apt: Dream Theater’s sense of drama is pretty heightened. Everything on A Dramatic Turn Of Events has a kind of over-the-top earnestness that reminds me curiously of something much schmaltzier like, say, Celine Dion. In a way Dream Theater really are like prog-rock pop divas, simply replacing overly sentimental, saccharine ballads and sappy pseudo-dance warbling with overly technical, sentimental ballads and sappy pseudo-metal chugging. In essence, Dream Theater either works for the individual listener or it doesn’t: No one can argue that the band lacks genuine talent and skill, the only question is whether you can stomach what they’ve chosen to do with it.
Recommended for: Guys who get really hyped about off-time signatures and key changes; ladies who can’t resist a good falsetto; anyone who hates sub-five-minute songs.
Opeth – Heritage
As far as metal bands go, Opeth has always been pretty progressive, occasionally finding brilliance in their unique blend of death metal, skillful acoustic picking, elaborate arrangement and ethereal/dismal lyrical content. Heritage, though, I dunno. Much of the album feels slow and plodding, as if the focus were intentionally shifted away from the darker tones and the punishing riffs earlier albums employed to such astounding effect, especially in counterpoint to the sweeter, quieter moments. It’s not that Heritage isn’t beautiful; Opeth can write some of the most haunting instrumental melodies and are one of the better guitar showcase bands around, regardless of mood or style. It’s hard to feel as if a band as capable as Opeth at being gorgeous and aggressive simultaneously weren’t failing to live up to their potential when nearly all traces of guttural angst are emaciated into something no more violent than your average Red Hot Chili Peppers song. People on the fence about Opeth because they just can’t get into the black metal genre may be delighted, but those who have followed Opeth along are likely to toss this aside in disgust.
Recommended for: Ex-Cannibal Corpse fans trying to adjust to their antidepressants; hippies who always secretly wished Jethro Tull would just go ahead and make a proper death metal record; confused genealogy enthusiasts.
Tori Amos – Night Of Hunters
Ms. Amos is another of those artists I haven’t really checked in with much since the mid-90s during her In The Pink heyday. I can recognize the proficient songwriting skill she’s displayed even since the girl-solidarity landmark of Little Earthquakes but, as with Night Of Hunters, Amos frequently strikes me as being a bit more artistic in the let’s-try-it-because-it’s-art sense than I can really tolerate. Night Of Hunters is some kind of blend or re-imagining or re-working or something of classical tunes with her signature obtuse lyricism and warbling but passionate vocal style. It’s… well, it’s Tori Amos embracing classical music and textures provided by a full orchestra. I get the impression that Amos’s work is designed for a particular audience of which I cannot seem to find a part in and there’s nothing wrong with that I just don’t find anything in her music that isn’t done better elsewhere, most of the time. In Night Of Hunters this is on painful display as her lyrics and singing don’t add anything of note to the arrangements and while the melodies are nice enough I just can’t help thinking if I really wanted to listen to classical music, I’d be better off not having to try to listen around Amos’s eyeroll-inducing poetry.
Recommended for: Derps who always wished classical music were more sing-along; guys with ginger fever; girls who can’t admit to their friends they don’t understand the song meanings, either.
Tony Bennett – Duets II
Combining a legendary voice like Tony Bennett with a who’s who of contemporary singers on standards sounds kind of like it would be fun, and in part it is. Naturally the appeal here is going to be dependent on how you feel about the guest performers, including here Amy Winehouse, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones and Andrea Bocelli. But it’s nice that Bennett went out of his way to perform these duets in person, so the duets have an immediacy and a nice sense of timing that I think is missing from a lot of “collaborations” that really involve performers doing the studio equivalent of singing along with the radio in the car. There are some nice tracks here, but the whole thing feels a bit gimmicky, which is not necessarily bad, just kind of unnecessary.
Recommended for: Postmodern martini drinkers; parents looking for a Lady Gaga song they can stomach, so they can connect with their kids; septuagenarian hipsters.
Wilco – The Whole Love
Jeff Tweedy and his revolving door of co-conspirators create persistently beautiful sonic heartbreak. Every once in a while a glimmer of joy will appear and most of the time the summary of all this misery seems to be a kind of resigned shrug which somehow keeps Wilco from descending into emo downer depths where pathos reigns supreme. The Whole Love continues the majestic alt-country (that is, country that doesn’t rely on exaggerated inflected southern accents and/or dippy faux-working class imagery) tradition its predecessors forged and is nearly magical with its ability to never sit still but remain tight, building and expanding track after track. What’s impressive about The Whole Love is that this trick works even when the album isn’t listened to in the strict track order from the increasingly obsolete plastic disc. Unfortunately for radio programmers or playlist designers is that there isn’t really a track or three that can be held aloft as transcendent but representative of the album itself (probably something that has been missing from Wilco albums since Heavy Metal Drummer off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). In short, you kind of have to listen to the whole thing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good songs here, just that you can’t really get a sense for how good they are without some kind of context. But as an album, you’d be hard pressed to find better this year.
Best of Year Candidate
Recommended for: Anyone familiar with loneliness; living creatures; transplanted Northerners trying to blend in Texas without having to subject their ears to Alan Jackson.
Feist – Metals
I like Feist’s voice and her curiously ethereal/earthy (is that a thing? it is now) sensibility which is like the exact middle ground between Florence + The Machine and Neko Case. But I dunno, there is something missing from large sections of this album. Maybe it’s in the songwriting which is middling quality but never quite seems to transcend. Take, for example, the track Bittersweet Melodies which is a song that demands to actually have a bittersweet melody match the title and the lyrics. Instead it contains a cutesy little dream wisp of a tune, which is fine but it screams missed opportunity. And that’s the way a lot of the album plays: It’s fine, but there are too many missed opportunities. Feist has the makings of a phenom, but she and her songwriters/producers/advisors/muses/whatever need to coalesce into something with a bit more identity. I thought she was on to something with the dingy, confessional 70s throwback vibe on One Evening from 2004’s Let It Die, but she seems to have skipped over the moment and headed into Sarah McLachlan‘s well-tread territory instead.
Recommended for: Misunderstood, unicorn-loving high school girls; indie romantic comedy directors looking for the perfect track to play over a post-breakup montage; single-named whisper-vocals superfans who’ve worn out their copies of Jem and Dido albums.
Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto
Coldplay remind me a lot of U2 in that they have a very distinctive sound and style and while they play with their own formula from album to album they never stray so far that they aren’t instantly recognizable. Mylo Xyloto is probably the least far the band has traveled, with much of it sounding like outtakes from their previous work, Viva la Vida. Granted, even leftovers from that album are better than most alt pop you can find so MX is solid and tuneful as appropriate. The minor transitional shift seems to be that Coldplay has cast off any hint of indie or even the barest pretext of being subcultural they may have once possessed, happy it seems to embrace their household name status to the extent of collaborating with the ubiquitous airwave presence of Rihanna on the surprisingly sublime Princess of China. This isn’t a slight in any way, because Coldplay pop is exigent listening, safely capturing a particularly simple near-zeitgeist that doesn’t really reflect reality but is rather a mirror you can look into and see a mostly familiar world you might rather inhabit instead.
Recommended for: Cutting edge mom taxis; men who like butterflies; teenage pop stars who want something to reference when they don’t want to admit they only really listen to their own music.
The Decemberists – Long Live The King
Taken from the same sessions that gave us The King Is Dead, these songs fit right in alongside those numbers. In some ways it’s understandable why these were cut from the LP: Foregone feels extraneous next to the other western-sounding mid-tempo numbers from the LP like Dear Avery. The track I 4 U & U 4 Me is a nice—in the blandest sense of that word—addition and Sonnet is lyrically powerful but perhaps needed a bit more polish in the arrangement to be really album-worthy until about the 1:30 mark when the horn accompaniment comes in. All in all it combines with TKID for a nice Director’s Cut of that (somewhat sparse) album, even if this EP isn’t quite capable of standing on its own.
Recommended for: The King is Dead owners who wore it out in ten months; song collector completionists; people who like album titles that form phrases when combined with other album’s titles.
Megadeth – TH1RT3EN
Oh my. Granted, I haven’t really cared for much of what Dave Mustaine and company have had to offer since 1994’s Youthanasia which was their final transitionary album between the high-speed thrash of earlier and often spotty works before drifting into the trend-chasing years that began with the highly disappointing Cryptic Writings. I sort of half paid attention to the band during albums like Risk and The System Has Failed and then basically ignored everything after that. So I saw Th1rt3en hit and thought, “Okay, let’s see what they’re up to.” Well. This is what they’re up to. I do admire that they seem to have decided it’s okay to go back to doing high speed, wall-of-sound thrash music. Or, you know, whatever version of that middle aged guys can muster. Mustaine’s distinctive vocals have always been best at delivering rapid-tempo snarls of paranoia and there is plenty of that formula here, but he’s also somehow decided to try to try and inject some vocal melody (example: Never Dead) which… just no. The solos are dull, derivative and wanky, the riffs are tired and the lyrics—rarely Megadeth’s strong suit—are atrocious (“I’m burnin’ up the fast lane / like a jet plane” ouch). It’s not awful in the “turn this off before I snap that iPod in half” sense, it’s just sad in the “why are they still trying?” sense.
Recommended for: Bald dudes with long hair; people who still say that something they approve of is “metal”; metalheads just waking up from a twenty-year coma.
Rihanna – Talk That Talk
I listened to Good Girl Gone Bad quite a few times and checked out Rated R, amazed that they were able to cram more hooks into them than a bait shop. Talk That Talk still features Rihanna’s pleasant voice and plenty of catchy, car-dance-inducing grooves but something is a bit missing from those earlier successes. I went in search of what people more familiar with Rihanna thought and found that many people cited that TTT is less on the dark edginess that ran like a partial shadow through earlier albums and it turns out, I liked that edge. Talk That Talk is good in that well-produced, nicely-performed, we-made-good-pop-music way, but it’s not like there’s a dearth of professional songwriters and expensive producers and talented female vocalists out there. What is missing sometimes is a different perspective and I thought Rihanna allowed that to stretch across GGGB and RR. Without it, this is a serviceable but not remarkable album by someone who probably won’t miss one middle aged curmudgeon’s appreciation one iota. Minor side accolades for the inclusion of a The xx sample on Drunk on Love, which was a nice touch.
Recommended for: Dance clubbers running out of credit on their Hot Topic gift cards; dubstep-loving hipsters trying to connect with their mainstream girlfriends; folks who love saying, “That’s what she said!”
Amy Winehouse – Lioness: Hidden Treasures
Talk about late to the party: I only really discovered Ms. Winehouse’s astounding vocal talents following her premature passing earlier this year, finally taking the time only then to discover 2006’s Back To Black. This collection of alternate takes and vault pulls (of which there is apparently very little to draw from) contains more Amy Winehouse, which I guess is the point, but other than the promising Between The Cheats, which lacks for the existence of a hook sung by Winehouse herself (doo-wop session singers take over on the chorus and it sticks out like a nagging hangnail) and Body And Soul, the Tony Bennett duet available elsewhere, there isn’t much that is must-hear. The Valerie ’68 Version here is vastly inferior to the one from Mark Ronson‘s 2007 album Version and most of the alternate takes from Back to Black are interesting curiosities but were supplanted on by the final versions for a reason.
Recommended for: Winehouse collectors; Nas collectors; mp3 collectors
from ironsoap's Last.fm Journal — December 13, 2011 at 11:44AM