October 15, 2013
Scotty McCreery
*Country*
3/5
The 2011 debut from American Idol champ Scotty McCreery was a bumpy pickup-truck ride through generic country tropes, but two years later, the baritone has cranked out brighter tunes about a topic more befitting a 19-year-old star: getting some. The title track — one of five co-written by McCreery — describes a cheery booty call, and on "Blue Jean Baby," he can't peel his eyes off a girl in a pair of Levi's "showin' off a little skin." But amid the tailgates and stolen kisses, McCreery drops "Something More," a midtempo tear-jerker that'll strike a chord on either side of the Mason-Dixon.
November 1, 2013
Matt White
*Soul Pop*
2/5
Matt White's blandly reassuring soul pop has been featured throughout Hollywood movies and network TV, most recently on The Bachelorette. No surprise: His pose is wholesome (with a dash of danger), his storylines familiar and his problems solvable in four minutes or less. Standouts on his third album – "Around the World in 80 Days," especially – have more life than his strained falsetto might sometimes lead you to believe, but that's not saying much: Mayer Hawthorne still looks heavy metal by comparison. White's struggle is trying to sound sincere in a genre that rewards cliché. "I don't want those silly love songs," he sings. "I don't know what they will prove." Then he writes one.
October 18, 2013
The Head and the Heart
*Sub Pop*3/5
"The world's just spinning a little too fast," declare these Seattle folk rockers on album number two, earnestly pumping the brakes. Their strummy singalongs make them kin to the Mumfords, their choral singing to neighbors Fleet Foxes. But they're most compelling when the harmonies fray ("Fire/Fear") and whenever marble-mouth singer-violinist Charity Rose Thielen grabs the mic ("Summertime").
October 18, 2013
Van Morrison
*Rock*
4.5/5
"Here we go to the main course!" ad-libs Van Morrison on an extended "Caravan," one of the shaggy outtakes on this fi ve-disc unpacking of the Belfast bard's 1970 jazzy-pop masterpiece. That LP is nearly all main course, and if the numerous alternate takes here often feel incomplete without their sublime, brassy final arrangements, they compensate with intimacy – see "Into the Mystic," take 11, mainly just Morrison and acoustic guitar. The set's grail is the long-lost outtake "I Shall Sing," a Caribbean-style confection that became a signature for many (Miriam Makeba, Judy Mowatt, Art Garfunkel). Its author delivers a meaty, scatted-up reading here, alongside a ferocious early version of the soul burner "I've Been Working" (His Band and the Street Choir) and a roadhouse-piano reading of Bessie Smith's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" – the sound of an Irish bluesman cruising at high altitude.
October 7, 2013
Nelly
*Hip-Hop/Rap*2/5
Nelly's seventh album opens strong with a brilliantly chill Nicki Minaj cameo on a gloriously narcotic Pharrell track ("Get Like Me") and a characteristically romantic turn from Future ("Give U Dat"), but wraps weakly with a jangly jam featuring country duo Florida Georgia Line and a cheesy ballad with Nelly Furtado. Nelly the rapper can still pull big guests but isn't sure whether to shout, whisper or sing to get our attention. He tries airy pop-hop on "Heaven" and calls in T.I. to rap around a 10-year-old Dave Chappelle joke on "Rick James." He'd have been better off making "I'm rich, bitch!" jokes around the time of "Hot in Herre."
October 7, 2013
Lorde
*Pop*
4/5
New artists in 2013 don't come any "2013"-ier than Lorde. Ella Yelich-O'Connor is 16, but she could be 25. She sings tough and raps soft. She's from New Zealand, but she could just as easily be from Tampa or Glasgow or Dubrovnik. On her debut, she's a tiny-life teenager and a throne-watching pop comer with a sound that recalls the Internet hip-hop of Kitty Pryde, the cold-storage torch pop of Lana Del Rey and the primal self-dredging of Florence Welch, while still sounding strangely sui generis. "Maybe the Internet raised us/Or maybe people are jerks," she muses on "A World Alone." She's a child of the cloud.
Yet Pure Heroine feels surprisingly real and fully formed, punching through sparse, cushily booming post-hip-hop tracks with vividly searching lyrics about growing up too fast that can seem at once arrogant and pensive. "We're so happy even when we're smiling out of fear," she sings on "Tennis Court." Songs like the hit "Royals" are foreboding but catchy, hushed but hype. She's great at dissecting her so-called life ("We're hollow like the bottles that we drain") and at evoking the feeling of loving hip-hop even as its impossible fantasies turn you inside out. "Team" is an ode to her friend crew, with a beat that booms like Run-DMC playing from inside a stu ed animal. But the song feels proudly isolated: "I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air/So there/I'm kind of older than I was when I reveled without a care." Ball up your fists anxiously at your sides to this shit.
Yet Pure Heroine feels surprisingly real and fully formed, punching through sparse, cushily booming post-hip-hop tracks with vividly searching lyrics about growing up too fast that can seem at once arrogant and pensive. "We're so happy even when we're smiling out of fear," she sings on "Tennis Court." Songs like the hit "Royals" are foreboding but catchy, hushed but hype. She's great at dissecting her so-called life ("We're hollow like the bottles that we drain") and at evoking the feeling of loving hip-hop even as its impossible fantasies turn you inside out. "Team" is an ode to her friend crew, with a beat that booms like Run-DMC playing from inside a stu ed animal. But the song feels proudly isolated: "I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air/So there/I'm kind of older than I was when I reveled without a care." Ball up your fists anxiously at your sides to this shit.
No comments:
Post a Comment