album reviews

May 15, 2012

Adam Lambert

Trespassing RCA

So here's the great pop album everybody was hoping Adam Lambert would make, ever since he ran wild on American Idol three years ago. It wasn't just Glambert's dynamite-with-a-laser-beam voice that got him into our national knickers: It was his warmth, his humor, his burlesque bravado. His 2010 debut, For Your Entertainment, was a typical Idol quickie – decent, but it needed more personality. Trespassing delivers, with a mix of tinsel disco-club sleaze and leather-boy love... | More »

Willie Nelson

Heroes Sony Legacy

On his millionth album, give or take, Willie Nelson is his usual self: loping through a set of well-chosen originals and unlikely covers (Coldplay's "The Scientist"!?) with casual virtuosity. This time, Nelson has packed his recording studio with friends and family, including his son Lukas, who sings on nine songs. The results are mixed: In "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die," featuring guest vocals by Kris Kristofferson, Jamey Johnson and, yep, Snoop Dogg, the stoner's bonhomie is... | More »

Tenacious D

Rize of the Fenix Columbia

The first full-length album in six years from Jack Black and Kyle Gass' comedy-cock-rock duo is chock-full of swaggering pomposity. But too many of its gags sound like they've been festering since the Pick of Destiny days; perhaps all the dick jokes here are meant to distract you from the mold growing on some of the other gags. "Rock Is Dead" is a rollicking caricature of dudes who won’t stop lionizing the past, but the gloppy stagehand rant "Roadie," the noxious ode to a mid... | More »

Beach House

Bloom Sub Pop

Beach House records live up to their name: They're cozy retreats where you can curl up in warm, droning, reverb-drenched tunes and watch jellyfish bob in the surf. But on Bloom, the Baltimore duo's fourth album, there's a bitch of a storm blowing in. "What comes after this momentary bliss/The consequence," wonders siren Victoria Legrand on the opener, "Myth." What comes after is wasted parents, shaking walls, specters of death and things that "Make us suffer/Like no other.... | More »

Rye Rye

Go! Pop! Bang! N.E.E.T./Interscope

The exclamation marks in the album title only hint at the emphatic nature of the debut album from longtime M.I.A. sidekick Rye Rye. The Baltimore rapper is a spaz extraordinaire – a party girl, smack-talker and dance-floor commandant whose unflagging energy lifts even the least of her material. Not that there’s much heavy lifting to do: Go! Pop! Bang! is clattery electro hop, with beats from top producers (Pharrell Williams, Bangladesh), and cameos from Akon, Robyn and M.I.A., who... | More »

Lisa Marie Presley

Storm & Grace Universal Republic / XIX

"I"m a bit transgressive and suppressive as well," sings Lisa Marie Presley on "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," shouting out an identity crisis her third LP fully owns. The daughter of Elvis and ex-wife of Michael never jelled as a pop-rock diva (see her 2005 duet with Pink, "Shine"). Here, producer T Bone Burnett switches on his semiacoustic roots-rock way-back machine, which highlights her appealingly husky voice on the hip-swiveling "Over Me" and the Latin- scented "Weary," but gene... | More »

May 10, 2012

Lower Dens

Nootropics Ribbon Music

As you might guess of a gal who titled her 2005 solo album Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom, Lower Dens frontwoman Jana Hunter has some goth in her. "Mutate, deface... The whole shithouse goes up in flames," she sings over gorgeous synth drones on "Nova Anthem," an interstellar dirge that detours from her folksy solo work and her band's guitar-centric debut Twin Hand Movement. It's not all zero-gravity bummers here: "Brains" drives a lively motorik beat through a vocal sandstorm; "Alph... | More »

May 8, 2012

Best Coast

The Only Place Mexican Summer

Two years ago, Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast was just a chill 23-year-old California girl with a cat named Snacks and a record collection full of teenage kicks from the Shangri-Las to Blink-182. But after the L.A. duo released Crazy for You, a massively catchy set of modern beach pop, it seemed like everyone wanted to hang with Cosentino, whether indie kids taken with her goofy humor or middle-agers impressed by her old-school songwriting chops. Yet the broad appeal that made the album a bu... | More »

Rita Wilson

AM/FM Decca

Sensuous U.S. radio hits from the Sixties and Seventies have a surprisingly able proponent in Rita Wilson, the L.A.-born actress and producer who debuts as a singer with this collection. Helped by Sheryl Crow ("Angel of the Morning," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?"), Chris Cornell ("All I Have to Do Is Dream"), Faith Hill ("Love Has No Pride") and others, Wilson renews Watergate-era gems with an expressive denim-and-suede soprano; on "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues," she and Jackson Brow... | More »

Off!

OFF! Vice

"I wanna club you like a baby seal!" hollers 56-year-old Keith Morris, formerly of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, in "King Kong Brigade," the climax of this hot new hardcore outfit's full-length debut. Morris, one of L.A.'s crustiest punks, and his similarly ripe crew manage a neat trick, sounding like hopped-up young men as they bash out 16 buzz-saw-and-brimstone tracks in as many minutes. On "I Got News for You," Morris even attacks a "king of a scene," like he just stumbled off... | More »