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 Lady GaGa strikes while the iron is hot with another CD. |
Sometimes it’s all about the bands. This week it’s all about the singers, songwriters, sex symbols and superstar rappers.
Lady GaGa
The Fame Monster
Dance-Pop
***1/2
Barely a year after being crowned the new queen of provocative dance-pop, GaGa strikes while the iron is red-hot, releasing this 34-minute EP (available with or without her CD The Fame). As expected, club cuts full of bleep-buzz synths, thumpy beats and freaky lyrics rule the day, but some Latin Abba-pop, blues and piano-rock balladry suggest the Lady is more than a tramp.
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Download: Speechless, Teeth
Rihanna
Rated R
R&B
***1/2
“I’m not stupid in love,” asserts Rihanna. Some might disagree. But few will dispute that this fourth album is her darkest disc to date, exchanging the lightweight hits of 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad for edgy, slow-burning synth-rockers full of lyrics about guns and revenge, gang warfare and Russian roulette — and enough expletives to earn that titular rating. Call it Good Girl Gone.
Download: Hard, Rockstar 101
John Mayer
Battle Studies
Pop-Rock
***
Fightin’ words from Mayer? Not quite. While the battle of the sexes is indeed the topic du jour on his fifth full-length, the charismatic guitar-slinger spends most of these 11 tunes in sensitive troubadude mode, leading his VIP combo — featuring bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Steve Jordan — through a laid-back list of breezy and impeccably crafted groove-pop. Man up, bro.
Download: Assassin, Crossroads
50 Cent
Before I Self Destruct
Rap
***
If Fiddy does sabotage his career, it won’t be through innovation. The bullet-riddled millionaire’s fourth solo album follows in the gangsta footsteps of its predecessors, with Curtis Jackson growling self-aggrandizing rhymes about crime, money and violence over hooky, hard-banging backing tracks from heavy hitters like Dr. Dre, Tha Bizness and Havoc. Been there, heard that.
Download: Death to Enemies, Crime Wave
Tom Waits
Glitter and Doom Live
Singer-songwriter
****
There are two components to a Waits show: 1) The magnificently mutated blues-skronk stompfests and heartbreakingly tender ballads he dishes up and decorates with that shovelful of hot gravel he calls a voice; 2) The arcane factoids and tall tales he proffers between songs. This live CD of highlights from his 2008 tour includes one disc of each. Pity it doesn’t also include a DVD.
Download: Get Behind the Mule, Going Out West
Jully Black
The Black Book
R&B
***
Black describes her third CD as Durban Rock, which sounds like an Arabic monument but is in fact an amalgam of dance, urban and rock. True to her word, these tunes merge driving beats and crunching guitars with funky grooves and powerhouse soul-mama vocals. Whether she’ll please everyone or no one is up in the air, but this unique outing is definitely one for the books.
Download: Recalculate, What is This
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DOWN/STREAM
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Nightwatchman
The Heartbreakers’ upcoming Live Anthology is more than a just a CD box set; it’s also part of a full-blown online concert archive of songs, photos, set lists, reviews, essays and even audio commentaries from Petty and his bandmates. Want a free sample? You can download or stream this funky reggae-rock cut from Hard Promises, taken from a 1981 concert at the L.A. Forum.
www.tompettysuperhighwaytour.com
Hot Hot Heat
Future Breeds | JFK’s LSD
It seems the Vancouver dance-punks added a few new moves for their forthcoming Future Breeds album. Recorded in their own studio, these two preview tracks find the quartet pushing the sonic and musical envelope with angular 5/4 grooves (on the title cut) and glitchy synth loops (on JFK’s LSD), without sacrificing the catchy hooks and choruses. Their Future looks promising.
Tindersticks
Black Smoke
These gloomy Brits kept us waiting five years for their last CD. Thankfully, they’re making up for lost time now — their eighth album Falling Down a Mountain comes less than two years after Hungry Saw. And despite frontman Stuart Staples’ eternally sombre moan, this folk-rocking preview cut suggests it might be a fairly energetic offering — relatively speaking, of course.
www.myspace.com/tindersticksofficial
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CDs
Chantal Kreviazuk
Plain Jane
Singer-Songwriter
***1/2
My bad. I put off listening to the Winnipeg-born piano balladeer’s fifth album, thinking it was just more of the usual stark, haunted intensity. Turns out to be the 35-year-old mother of three’s most mature and confident effort, full of warmly soulful, gently orchestrated odes to the quotidian bliss she’s found with musical and romantic partner Raine Maida. Plain and simply swell.
Download: Plain Jane, Ordinary People
Nile
Those Whom the Gods Detest
Death-Metal
***1/2
The mummy’s curse has no effect on Karl Sanders. The singer-guitarist and his South Carolina death-metal archeologists have been raiding Egyptian pharaohs’ tombs for 15 years, with no end of riches in sight. As usual, this sixth CD wraps frenzied death-metal and demonic vocals in Middle Eastern exotica and exhaustively detailed lyrics. A new definition of pyramid power.
Download: Kafir!, The Eye of Ra
Spiral Stairs
The Real Feel
Indie-Rock
***1/2
While you wait for next year’s Pavement reunion tour, renew your acquaintance with co-frontman Scott (Spiral Stairs) Kannberg. Five years (and one divorce) after his last Preston School of Industry CD, the singer-guitarist treats us to a batch of idiosyncratic indie-rock and hazy balladry, most of which is more melodic, direct and personal than his old band. A welcome return.
Download: Subiaco Shuffle, Stolen Pills
Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Night Castle
Symphonic Rock
**
If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess. That’s the MO of TSO’s Paul O’Neill. Fittingly, the fifth CD from his gargantuan prog-metal Christmas orchestra is his most over-the-top effort yet: A two-disc rock opera set in the Vietnam War crammed with maudlin sentiment, political subtext, classical-rock bombast, and homages to everyone from Bach to ELP. Exhausting.
Download: Another Way You Can Die, Nutrocker
Heavy Trash
Midnight Soul Serenade
Rockabilly
***
Third time’s the ... well, same as the other two, actually. Singer-guitarists Jon Spencer (formerly of his eponymous Blues Explosion) and Matt Vetra-Ray (late of Madder Rose) join forces on another raucous collection of hard-twangin’ rockabilly-boogie raveups and reverb-soaked honkytonky ballads. Nothing you haven’t heard before — but you won’t mind hearing it again.
Download: Good Man, Bumble Bee
Morningwood
Diamonds & Studs
***
It’s a whole new day for Morningwood. Now reduced to a duo and split between L.A. and N.Y.C., sultry singer Chantal Claret and partner Pete Yanowitz do a fair job of sounding like a coherent band, offering up a sophomore album that continues to toe the fine line between sugar-buzz power-pop and body-moving dance-rock. Guess that’s what you call rising to the challenge.
Download: Best of Me, Sugarbaby
Echo & the Bunnymen
The Fountain
Post-Punk
**1/2
There was a time when Ian McCulloch’s baritone invited comparison to Jim Morrison, while guitarist Will Sergeant and co. recalled the Velvets with their dark, paranoid tracks. Not anymore. Between McCulloch’s rough rasp and Sergeant’s chiming, scratchy fretwork, the melodic midtempo pop-rockers of their 11th album suggest Neil Diamond fronting U2. Take that as you will.
Download: Do You Know Who I Am?, Proxy
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DVDs
Dolly Parton
Live From London
Country
***1/2
Backwoods Barbie Parton may be Queen of country — but the Brits act like she’s Queen of England on this DVD, lining London’s rainy streets to welcome her like a visiting dignitary. The royal treatment continues at her O2 Arena gig, with a typically dolled-up Dolly chirping hits like 9 to 5, I Will Always Love You and Jolene between bouts of folksy self-mythologizing. Jolly good fun.
The Killers
Live From Royal Albert Hall
Pop-Rock
***1/2
From the dance-rock of Hot Fuss to the Boss-tones of Sam’s Club to the synth-pop of Day & Age, The Killers haven’t exactly been consistent. But give Brandon Flowers and co. credit — they manage to put it all together seamlessly in this stylish performance at London’s legendary Albert Hall. Bonus fare includes the usual backstage doc, along with some festival appearances.
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GARAGE BAND
Alice Would
Toronto
I don’t normally use this space to help bands find new members. But since these Toronto screamo-punks’ MySpace page makes it clear at every turn that they are eagerly seeking a new singer, what the hey. Besides, judging by the nasal yelping of whomever was working the mic when they recorded competently rendered but uninspired cuts like Hospital Friends, Short Breaths and Jori Ann, it’s probably not a bad idea. While they’re at it, they might also want to advertise for a few original melodies, lyrics, hooks and choruses.
VERDICT: “Alice in slumberland.”
*1/2
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UPCOMING
December 1
Stir the Blood
The Bravery
Til the Casket Drops
The Clipse
December 8
Graffiti
Chris Brown
Buffet Hotel
Jimmy Buffet
Malice N Wonderland
Snoop Dogg
This is War
30 Seconds to Mars
Shock Value 2
Timbaland
Monster
Usher
December 15
Body
Jamie Foxx
The Element of Freedom
Alicia Keys
Rebirth
Lil Wayne