The Fray's sophomore release picks up where How to Save a Life left off, reprising the same blend of piano-led ballads and midtempo pop/rock that helped establish the band in 2005. International tours and platinum-selling singles may have turned the Fray into a superstar act, but the actual songcraft remains virtually unchanged, with songs like "You Found Me" and "Enough for Now" sounding eerily similar to their predecessors.
Those parallels are strengthened by producers Aaron Johnson and Mike Flynn, both of whom helmed How to Save a Life and repeat the job here to predictable effect. What's different, then, is the occasional "widening" of the Fray's sound; the rock numbers are slightly louder (culminating in a percussive, distorted breakdown during "We Build Then We Break") and the ballads somewhat softer, with "Ungodly Hour" standing out as the sparsest of the bunch. The band seems uncomfortable with either extreme, however, either overshooting the rockers or reducing the ballads to little more than Isaac Slade's zealous vocals, which are often so garbled with angsty passion that they might as well be caricaturing the American accent.
Like the rest of his bandmates, Slade is most comfortable in the middle, where the Fray comfortably churns out the album's best numbers: the melancholy, minor-keyed "Absolute"; "Syndicate" (whose guitar riff in 6/4 time is perhaps the disc's quirkiest moment); and "You Found Me." It's testament to the band's appeal that "You Found Me" became a Top 10 single before The Fray was even released, but that likely speaks to its familiarity — this is, after all, the equivalent of How to Save a Life, Pt. 2 — rather than any purported originality.
Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase make their most convincing case for the full attention of casual fans after a three-year recording absence with an an unabashed swan dive into electro-synth disco pop, a formula that by all means and measures should be a nightmarish red-light failure- but instead arrives as a breathtaking work of freak-flag mirror-ball genius.
A sense of genuine romanticism reverberates throughout the entire album, from the throbbing dance dreams of Soft Shock to the epic, strobe phasing beauty of the tip-toeing Skeletons. The album’s got heart, real, colorful, bleeding, stomping heart, and it’s laid out in soaring fashion. The band recorded It’s Blitz! with two producers: TV On The Radio’s David Sitek, who did production work on the last two albums, and Nick Launay, who co-produced the 2007 Is Is EP along with the band. The vintage synths come on strong on the album, finding Nick Zinner utilizing an array of guitar effects and various throwback synth instruments to develop a redrawn sound that certainly bears the YYY imprint, most comparably as a more developed Show Your Bones on the club scene.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who used to think the band have always sounded best when filtered through the New York punk-fuzz garage grit that was on their early EPs. Those conceptual elements, however magnetic and propelling they may have been for their career at the onset, are thrown out the window on It’s Blitz! without so much as a cursory rearviewmirror glance. There’s still a lot of guitar on the album, but this time its got heavy backups in synth-heavy atmospherics- definitely indicative of the sense of evolution throughout, translated through what’s more a soundtrack to electro-nightlife than a batch of concert anthems.
Tracks like album opener Zero (listen below) or the creepily sensual Dragon Queen could find a cozy home between updated versions of Blondie and the Pet Shop Boys.
Zero’s a cocaine disco anthem for modern times, a pulsing mirrorball party that starts off like a red-pill digital assault, an immediately magnetic pulse in sixteenths that threatens to overwhelm the senses before Karen O’s gentle buoyancy sets in and leads the way. The theme stays strong through Heads Will Roll, a speedy satellite party in true glitter fashion, with a similarly ecstatic breakdown/outro to its predecessor. The hyper-reverberating electro-strings and looping beat build a dancefloor base for a vocal performance that little poplets like Lady GaGa could learn some things from; Karen’s passion is unrivaled, and songs like Heads Will Roll are solid proof that she’s got the chops to outshine the silly dance queens soaking up the charts these days.
Soft Shock slows the party down, a whirling instrumental track under the subtle peaks and valleys of Karen O’s pendular melody (listen for her canary-esque ooooohh’s near the end), which leads into the breathtakingly gorgeous and delicate Skeletons. By design, it’s not a far cry from the delicate beauty of Maps, but the chorus is much more fragile- and a hell of a lot less annoying. Buoyed by Zinner’s effects work and a rising march-like snare beat, the song becomes a soaring movement, Karen’s soft-vocal delivery serving as the voice of calm in an epically percussive, dropping each syllable like a slowly leaking faucet. As the soundscape builds around her, her gentle lullaby provides a light through the fog.
The guitars return to recognizable form for the radio-ready Dull Life as well as Shame And Fortune, a grinding bass fuzz monster that wakes and settles before rising up again with a guitar lead that’s not exactly groundbreaking, but serves the song perfectly.
More traditional song structure returns as well with the epically majestic Hysteric, the melody and percussion giving the track an evolved Maps essence, but the repeated line You suddenly complete me… is achingly beautiful in a very primal nerve-stroking kind of way, a moment-of-clarity love letter, like a grown-up fairy tale. Moments like Brian Chase’s little fills around the 1:50 mark under Karen’s gorgeous The cinders, they splinter are what makes this album such a fantastic listen- and why good speakers or headphones would do the listener a world of good to utilize while doing so. The Devil’s in the details, and they love it that way. Staccato horns help build the song’s final act, a royal celebration that vaporizes suddenly, ending with a whistle and gentle feedback.
The heavenly Little Shadow closes the album with an apparent inspirational mix of Lamb, Goldfrapp and Sigur Rós. Karen’s reflective Little shadow / Into the night / Will you follow me? weaves gently through the organ’s rising, shimmering wall of sound and the minimalist perimeter set by the percussion. We’re sent out with a bittersweet mix of gentle yearning and muted sorrow, but there’s a strong undercurrent of victory as well- possibly because The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have outdone themselves here. If there’s any true harmony in the universe, It’s Blitz! will be remembered as the pinnacle of the band’s artistic achievement thus far.
After cutting their first two albums as a lean but muscular power trio, the Heartless Bastards have grown into a somewhat different creature on their third LP, The Mountain. Vocalist and guitarist Erika Wennerstrom is the only survivor from the group's original lineup, and after leaving behind her hometown of Cincinnati, OH for Austin, TX, she's assembled a new version of the Heartless Bastards.
Along with new members Billy White on bass and Doni Schroader on drums, The Mountain features violins, pedal steel guitar, mandolin, and banjo as well as a few guest guitarists, and though this music is still rooted in Wennerstrom's full-bodied vocals and thick, no-frills guitar work, The Mountain is a more introspective and rootsy sounding album than this group has released to date. Wennerstrom has a voice that can shake apart a room when she's of a mind, but she takes a more subtle approach here, slipping in a few acoustic tunes that allow her to explore the softer side of her instrument, and "So Quiet" and "Had to Go" could pass for a new millennium version of the sort of music Harry Smith would dig up on a regular basis.
But if The Mountain is a more diverse set than the old Heartless Bastards gave us, it's still rooted in the same emotionally direct songwriting and performing that is this band's trademark, and for all that's changed with the band, Wennerstrom has held on to her core virtues -- this is fierce, heartfelt rock & roll that tells stories you can believe in and lets the music sing out with a power that's all the more compelling for being firmly rooted in the real world.
"I found a new way, baby," Alex Kapranos snarls on "Ulysses," Tonight's lead single and opening track, and he's almost right. Franz Ferdinand took awhile to record this album after releasing You Could Have It So Much Better as quickly as possible after their breakthrough debut, spending a couple of years coming up with the concept of a "dirty pop" album and trying out dance and pop producers like Erol Alkan and Girls Aloud sound-shapers Xenomania before settling on Dan Carey, who has worked with everyone from CSS to Kylie Minogue.
The group tried hard to make these songs a deliberate break from their previous music, and the album is nothing if not deliberate: a concept album about a debauched night out and the morning after, Tonight is more focused than You Could Have It So Much Better, and on the surface, it sounds different than what came before. The band's normally de rigueur angular post-punk guitars are dialed down in favor of beats, bass, and lots of keyboards, all of which are on display on "Ulysses," which, like You Could Have It So Much Better's "Do You Want To?," initially sounds like an odd single choice, then makes perfect sense after a few listens. Kapranos whispers like a devil on your shoulder as the band takes its time building to disco-punk euphoria.
Throughout the rest of album, however, Franz Ferdinand alternates between putting their rave-ups in slightly different skins and taking some real chances with their music. With the most familiar-sounding songs at the top, Tonight's song sequencing might be the most pop thing about it: "Turn It On"'s stop-start rhythms,"Send Him Away"'s Afro-pop-tinged guitars, and "Can't Stop Feeling"'s DFA-like percussion and fuzzy synths are minor refinements on the sound the band has used since Franz Ferdinand. A few songs transcend templates, like the unrepentantly rakish swagger of "No You Girls," which boasts saucy lyrics like "kiss me where your eye won't meet me" and a cleverly twisting chorus that expresses the album's theme of smart enough to know better hedonism perfectly. "Live Alone"'s disco-fied push-pull between solitude and intimacy makes ambivalence exciting, and "Bite Hard"'s punchy drums are the sound of dancing on your conscience's grave.
The band saves Tonight's most interesting songs for last: "Lucid Dreams" is oddly dark and jubilant, setting its fantasies to one of the album's boldest arrangements -- whether or not the way it trails off on a four-minute jam is successful is a matter of taste, but it's a welcome risk on an album that often feels safe despite its attempts to shake things up. Likewise, the way the acoustic closer "Katherine Kiss Me" transforms "No You Girls"' raw nighttime demands into wry daytime flirtation is so clever that it makes the rest of Tonight all the more puzzling -- it's often catchy and kinetic in the moment, yet it still feels like Franz Ferdinand has the potential to do more with their music than just slightly tweak and polish a sound they established several albums ago.
Lamb of God's follow-up to 2006's exceptionally brutal Sacrament returns the Virginia-based heavy metal outfit to the political soapbox that framed 2004's Ashes of the Wake. While Sacrament positioned itself firmly in the metalcore section of fan playlists, 2009's Wrath wraps itself in a relentless firestorm of Bay Area thrash.
Despite a promising, heavily melodic instrumental intro ("The Passing") that fuses Black Album-era Metallica with the sonic artistry of Agalloch, Wrath ultimately descends into a black abyss of atonal riffing, machine-gun drumming, and forgettable lyrics peppered with clichéd metal outrage that stirs up a mighty storm, but no carnage. Wrath's production is as aggressive as ever (thanks to longtime LOG colleague Josh Wilbur), but so is nearly every major label alt/death/black/grindcore release in the 21st century -- all it takes is a few good choruses to separate a band from the herd, something that Lamb of God have done in the past, but not so this time around.
The band does occasionally step outside of its comfort zone ("Grace" lives up to its name with some truly inspired early and midsong guitar work, while "Reclamation" mines epic, Sabotage-era Black Sabbath), and there's no denying the sheer "angry basement workout/summer garage weightlifting" potential that Wrath's perfectly acceptable 45-minute running time offers, but without a single hook that sticks around long enough to reel in the fish, all you've got is bait.
At the height of Pulp's fame, Jarvis Cocker channeled all his existential dread about celebrity into a chilling epic called "The Fear." Ten years later, Lily Allen -- the funniest British pop star since Jarvis and perhaps the best -- uses the same title to explore paralyzing fame, but instead of turning inward, Lily deflects, pushing all her anxiety into a Paris Hilton wannabe, a "weapon of massive consumption" that we know isn't Lily herself because this girl "doesn't care about clever." Lily, of course, cares very, very much about clever: it's how she defines herself as an artist and as a persona. Her quips are precise in her lyrics and savage in public, as evidenced when she drunkenly baited her co-presenter Elton John at a British awards show. Such displays tend to obscure her considerable skills as a storyteller, a gift that also gets buried beneath tabloid headlines that place her among pop tarts and princesses. Lily is attracted and repelled by fame, adoring the limelight but neither the company or how it forces personal problems to the forefront, and all these contradictions fuel her second album, It's Not Me, It's You.
Like many a bright pop star before her, Allen is feeling a little bit older than her 23 years, knowing that the landscape of her life is changing, and she's dreading her 30s, which still feel very far away. Lily doesn't state this outright, of course: she puts it into the character sketch of "22," just like how she deals with the blizzard of cocaine and pills on "Everyone's at It," registering her sneering disdain for a social scene she's outgrowing yet not quite ready to leave behind. Far from being a crutch, this narrative distancing is Lily's strength: unlike so many of her too-sensitive peers, she doesn't indiscriminately spill emotions onto the page, she picks her targets, choosing to reveal personal secrets we already know -- tellingly, she never addresses her 2008 miscarriage, but happily serves up her dysfunctional relationships with her parents, something that has provided endless column inches in gossip rags. If there's an element of Lily picking low-hanging fruit here and on "The Fear" and on the George W. Bush kiss-off "F*** You" -- or even "Not Fair," a cousin to "Not Big," where Allen laments a lover who is perfect in every way except his inability to make her scream -- the key to any story is how it's told, and telling is Lily's strength, how she ferrets out bypassed details or delivers a well-worn punchline.
It's Not Me pushes this talent to the forefront, in part because she works with only one collaborator here: Greg Kurstin, half of the Bird and the Bee and responsible for several cuts on Alright, Still but not the big hits "Smile" and "LDN," which were produced by Mark Ronson. Without Ronson, Lily isn't quite so glitzy or glammy, she even flirts with adult pop without succumbing to tedium. Kurstin doesn't avoid pop hooks or cheeky camp -- "F*** You" galumphs by on a two-step, "He Wasn't There" is music hall pastiche, and "Never Gonna Happen" gives Lily plenty of room to be coyly disingenuous -- but It's Not Me, It's You streamlines Allen's eccentricities and bad habits, holding together in a way the gloriously messy Alright, Still never quite managed. There's a slight drawback to this cohesion -- It's Not Me never hits heights as blinding as "Smile" or "LDN" -- but this approach does wind up spotlighting just how special a pop star Lily Allen is, how she captures all that's wretched and glorious about her time without falling into any of its traps, probably because she's clever enough to avoid them in the first place.
Aside from being one of the greatest comedic actors of our generation, an author, renowned art collector, and a playwright, Steve Martin is also a helluva banjo player with over four decades of experience under his belt. During his time as a teenage picker, he began a lifelong friendship with John McEuen, who would later see stardom as a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and who produced this project.
Martin’s music has appeared on some of his comedy records throughout the years; however, The Crow is Martin’s first full-length album, one that he said was “forty-five years in the making.” It’s worth the wait.
The meat of The Crow is its instrumentals, which make up eleven of the album’s fifteen tracks. Though Martin is primarily a Scruggs-style picker, he throws in “Clawhammer Medley” for good measure, proving that he is an able frailer as well. A few of the album’s songs are from Martin’s 1981 comedy album The Steve Martin Brothers, and the title track is from a song he recorded for Tony Trischka’s Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, but he’s recorded new versions for The Crow. All of the re-recorded tracks sound better than their earlier incarnations, due in part to McEuen’s production, which should be commended for turning a collection of songs recorded in four cities on two continents into a polished whole.
In general, bluegrass instrumentals tend to be forgettable and/or indistinguishable from one another. Many times, they are a vehicle for showing off just how fast a band can play. What separates the songs of The Crow from other bluegrass and bluegrass-influenced instrumental tracks is Martin’s ear for melody. Each song is a separate entity, recognizable from the opening notes, and the quality of the song is never sacrificed in favor of overly-fancy, overly-fast picking.
On The Crow, Martin doesn’t sing much. Listening to “Late for School,” the song he performed to mixed reviews on the January 31 episode of Saturday Night Live, it’s easy to understand why: he’s a great picker, but not much of a singer, as those who have seen the classic “King Tut” sketch may recall. Regardless, “Late for School” is a fun, fantastic romp reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, or Shel Silverstein’s children’s poetry, and Steve Martin is probably one of the few semi-decent singers around who is also able to pull off the necessary comedic timing. It may be a goofy kids’ song, but it’s sure to hit home for those adults who’ve experienced the panicked rush that comes after oversleeping only to realize…it’s the weekend.
Luckily, Martin seems aware of his vocal limitations. Thus, in lieu of singing, he employs a stable of immensely talented guest stars. Vince Gill and Dolly Parton are together again for “Pretty Flowers,” a sweet and melodic ode to mature love, and probably the only bluegrass song in which a couple walks to the river and yet the woman is still alive at the end of the song. This alone would make “Pretty Flowers” a standout song, but Martin’s lyrics make it one for the ages; there’s not a woman alive who wouldn’t swoon at Gill’s delivery of “If I told you, you were lovely/If I put my arm around you/If I touched you on the shoulder/Would you rest your head on mine.” Bluegrass veteran Tim O’Brien tackles rootsy “Daddy Played the Banjo” and Irish folksinger Mary Black sings on the Celtic-influenced “Calico Train;” both are above average vocal performances, but pale in comparison to Gill’s and Parton’s absolutely gorgeous duet. Earl Scruggs, Tony Trischka, and Pete Wernick don’t sing, but lay down some facemelting banjo riffs alongside their longtime buddy Steve.
We’re barely into 2009, and already The Crow is a frontrunner for bluegrass album of the year. People may buy it simply due to the novelty factor of Martin’s fame, but those who actually listen to it are in for a pleasant surprise. Let’s just hope Steve doesn’t wait another forty-five years before releasing his next one.
Andy Cabic's Vetiver have never been as far out as some of their indie folk compatriots like Devendra Banhart, and they've never been as outside as some of their influences (as detailed on 2008's album of covers Thing of the Past) might lead you to believe. Instead, their gentle, almost classic rock smooth sound is something you could play for just about anyone and not have a single eyebrow raised in any degree of alarm. That being said, Tight Knit is the group's slickest, tightest record so far.
From the opening ballad "Rolling Sea" onward, Cabic and crew make music that can only be called easy listening. Not the kind you hear in a dentist's office, but the kind of music that makes no demands on you as a listener and just wraps you in cottony coziness. The lush beds of acoustic guitars, the gently swooping electric guitars, the rich vocal harmonies, and restrained percussion serve the tender and vulnerable lead vocals of Cabic perfectly; the simple melodies and drifting chord changes are unchallenging in the best sense of the word.
Apart from the peppy, perfect for a soda pop commercial "Everyday" and the almost rocking in a lazy bar band way "More of This," the record is perfectly constructed for lazy days and hazy nights. It takes skill to create a record filled with so little energy and drive, and again, that's not a criticism though it probably sounds like it should be. Cabic is creating a mood here, an ode to tenderness and quiet that never wavers from its aims. Indeed if you're looking for a record to wake you or shake you, Tight Knit might drive you into a fury.
If you want a record to lull you and tuck you in with a kiss on the forehead, then you're in luck. It might not be the best album Vetiver have made, but it's the most consistent and beguiling.
On the surface, The Century of Self is more than a little similar to ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's previous two albums, Worlds Apart and So Divided: The songs' sounds and scopes are of epic proportions, and just as high concept as the band's previous work, if not more so -- the album takes its name from an acclaimed BBC documentary, and war and religion are just some of the heady topics it tackles. However, The Century of Self sounds liberated where Worlds Apart and So Divided often seemed labored. This is no coincidence.
The Century of Self is the Trail of Dead's first album for their own Richter Scale label after a troubled stint on Interscope, and the first album the band has recorded without a click track since their breakthrough Source Tags & Codes. The Festival Thyme EP hinted that this album would be ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's freest, most fiery work in some time, and two of its songs reappear here. "Bells of Creation," with its striding, pounding piano and well-placed power chords, feels like a spiritual cousin to the Who's "Love Reign O'er Me," while "Inland Sea" underscores how organic and graceful the band's interplay is when it's not shackled to a click track.
Most excitingly for longtime fans, the Trail of Dead's punk roots show up just as loud and proud as their prog rock ambitions -- the excellent "Ascending" has the dual vocal attack, guitar onslaughts, and smart passion that Source Tags & Codes had in spades. Meanwhile, "Isis Unveiled" blends that sound with Celtic-tinged strings (a book written by singer/guitarist Conrad Keely's Irish Nationalist grandfather was a major influence on the album), and "Far Pavilions" is a perfect example of the band's flair for giving raw-sounding songs titles that should be graced with Roger Dean artwork.
As much of a return to form as The Century of Self is, it still falls prey to some of the pitfalls that bogged down So Divided and Worlds Apart. The Trail of Dead still aren't big on nuance: "Giants Causeway" opens The Century of Self at a fevered pitch that continues until "Luna Park" begins the album with a string of ballads that, when taken together, feel nearly as exhausting as the first half's wall-to-wall rockers. The interlude "An August Theme" and "Insatiable (One)" and "Insatiable (Two)" feel fussy and overly theatrical in comparison to the more powerful songs that surround them, and on songs like "Pictures of an Only Child," emotions get hidden behind gargantuan arrangements and dynamic shifts.
Nevertheless, this album offers the Trail of Dead's best balance of heart-on-sleeve outbursts and orchestrated bombast in some time, and it's the band's most cohesive, satisfying music since Source Tags & Codes. As they sing on "Luna Park," "in order to live, it's gotta be free," and The Century of Self is compelling proof that the only way a band as fiercely ambitious, righteous, and single-minded as ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead can do things is on their own.
A rock & roll open secret: U2 care very much about what other people say about them. Ever since they hit the big time in 1987 with The Joshua Tree, every album is a response to the last — rather, a response to the response, a way to correct the mistakes of the last album: Achtung Baby erased the roots rock experiment Rattle and Hum, All That You Can't Leave Behind straightened out the fumbling Pop, and 2009's No Line on the Horizon is a riposte to the suggestion they played it too safe on 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
After recording two new cuts with Rick Rubin for the '06 compilation U218 and flirting with will.i.am, U2 reunited with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (here billed as "Danny" for some reason), who not only produced The Joshua Tree but pointed the group toward aural architecture on The Unforgettable Fire. Much like All That You Can't and Atomic Bomb, which were largely recorded with their first producer, Steve Lillywhite, this is a return to the familiar for U2, but where their Lillywhite LPs are characterized by muscle, the Eno/Lanois records are where the band take risks, and so it is here that U2 attempts to recapture that spacy, mysterious atmosphere of The Unforgettable Fire and then take it further.
Contrary to the suggestion of the clanking, sputtering first single "Get on Your Boots" — its riffs and "Pump It Up" chant sounding like a cheap mashup stitched together in GarageBand — this isn't a garish, gaudy electro-dalliance in the vein of Pop. Apart from a stilted middle section — "Boots," the hamfisted white-boy funk "Stand Up Comedy," and the not-nearly-as-bad-as-its-title anthem "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"; tellingly, the only three songs here to not bear co-writing credits from Eno and Lanois — No Line on the Horizon is all austere grey tones and midtempo meditation. It's a record that yearns to be intimate but U2 don't do intimate, they only do majestic, or as Bono sings on one of the albums best tracks, they do "Magnificent."
Here, as on "No Line on the Horizon" and "Breathe," U2 strike that unmistakable blend of soaring, widescreen sonics and unflinching openhearted emotion that's been their trademark, turning the intimate into something hauntingly universal. These songs resonate deeper and longer than anything on Atomic Bomb, their grandeur almost seeming effortless. It's the rest of the record that illustrates how difficult it is to sound so magnificent. With the exception of that strained middle triptych, the rest of the album is in the vein of "No Line on the Horizon", "Magnificent" and "Breathe," only quieter and unfocused, with its ideas drifting instead of gelling.
Too often, the album whispers in a murmur so quiet it's quite easy to ignore — "White as Snow," an adaptation of a traditional folk tune, and "Cedars of Lebanon," its verses not much more than a recitation, simmer so slowly they seem to evaporate — but at least these poorly defined subtleties sustain the hazily melancholy mood of No Line on the Horizon. When U2, Eno, and Lanois push too hard — the ill-begotten techno-speak overload of "Unknown Caller," the sound sculpture of "Fez-Being Born" — the ideas collapse like a pyramid of cards, the confusion amplifying the aimless stretches of the album, turning it into a murky muddle.
Upon first listen, No Line on the Horizon seems as if it would be a classic grower, an album that makes sense with repeated spins, but that repetition only makes the album more elusive, revealing not that U2 went into the studio with a dense, complicated blueprint, but rather, they had no plan at all.
