album reviews

February 3, 2012

Dierks Bentley

Home Capital Nashville

Dierks Bentley is a second-tier Nashville star, and he works awfully hard at it. On his seventh studio album, you can hear him laboring. He strains his thin singing voice on ballads like the title track, a sappy plea for American unity. He staggers through his country-dude paces, sounding unconvincingly good-ol'-boy on hard-partying anthems like "Am I the Only One" and "Tip It On Back." Bentley's last album, Up on The Ridge, was an excursion into alt-country-style bluegrass; it was ... | More »

February 2, 2012

The Doors

L.A Woman (40th Anniversary Edition) Elektra/Rhino

Some artists create their most intense work when they hit rock bottom: See Vincent van Gogh, Billie Holiday, Nick Drake and Jim Morrison, whose final album with the Doors is a Southern California death trip that matches anythingin their catalog for beautifully spooked rock & roll urge-purging. Made amid professional train wrecks and personal downward spirals, it’s a surprisingly focused set, in part a return to the Doors’ blues-rock roots. Morrison’s hot baritone killed,... | More »

Various Artists

Giant Anthology: The Profile Records Rap Anthology Arista/Legacy

This menagerie of thrilling, mostly overlooked jams begins in rap’s naive era, when “I’m on the cover of TV Guide” passed as a big-time boast. New York-based Profile Recordsstruck gold with Run-DMC, whose success funded a bonanzaof odd experiments, like Dana Dane’s charmingly tuneless singingon “Nightmares” and Rammelzee Vs. K-Rob’s eccentric masterpiece “Beat Bop.” Profile slowed down in the 1990s, when rap turned lesscarefree. But ... | More »

Mighty Sparrow

Sparrowmania! Strut

Harry Belafonte made calypso briefly popular in1950s America, but Trinidad’s Mighty Sparrow wasits sharpest-tongued golden-age singer. This tour of his 1960-76 output has too many novelties and covers – stick with Louis Jordan’s version of “What’s the Use of Getting Sober.” But Sparrow the social commentator is in force, sometimes in atime-capsule way (playlist “Kennedy and Khrushchev” for your next Mad Men party). And rap-battle fans should hea... | More »

January 31, 2012

Imperial Teen

Feel the Sound Merge

It's a good time to be Imperial Teen. The San Francisco quartet were squishing together hooks and drones before everyone had broadband, and now they've returned with their first album in five years, just as bands like Frankie Rose and Weekend are helping revive the sound of classic indie pop. Feel the Sound turns blipping guitars and synth riffs into roller-skate jams the whole band can harmonize over. Even if Imperial Teen's gay pedigree seems, thankfully, far less of a big de... | More »

Ringo Starr

Ringo 2012 Hip-O/UMe

Every Ringo Starr album is a concept album. The concept is: Man, Ringo, what a good dude. These nine buoyant, no-frills tunes could've been recorded anytime in the past 40 years. But they're knocked out with unchanging bonhomie, steeped in the nice vibes he generates with pals like Dave Stewart and his brother-in-law Joe Walsh. From the cute plea for peace, "Anthem," to a smiling evocation of his Cavern Club days, "In Liverpool," his 17th solo album proves that even after so many th... | More »

Hospitality

Hospitality Merge

Synth doodles and squeaky-cutesy vocals abound on this Brooklyn trio's aggressively adorable debut. But Hospitality have more to offer than mere sweetness: Check how the wistful ballad "Eighth Avenue" left-turns into a spastic guitar outburst, like Tom Verlaine crashing a Belle and Sebastian session. Amber Papini's lyrics keep the merry-sounding tunes grounded in reality – deft sketches of young New Yorkers falling for new loves, droning away at dead-end jobs and dreaming of f... | More »

Underworld

A Collection underworld.com

A single CD of short edits is an odd thing for a prog-techno act who specialize in spacious songs that often run for more than 10 minutes. The live "Cowgirl" is nothing and the dubstep moves are clumsy. No matter: Motormouth vocalist Karl Hyde and music man Rick Smith (plus, in the Nineties, Darren Emerson) headline festivals because they craft hooks, however abstruse at times. An R&B star should sample the surging synths of "Two Months Off" and "Dark and Long." The creeping menace of "Re... | More »

Escort

Escort Escort

Got lamé? If not, this 17-member New York collective are offering the aural equivalent: a wickedly catchy, note-perfect return to the heyday of disco, with every high-hat sizzle and string shiver glittering like spangled hot pants. The revivalism extends to the lyrics, awash in Studio 54-era decadence – "A knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork/That's the way we spell New York" – delivered by Adeline Michèle with barely a wink. As with many retro-fetishists, Escort&... | More »

The Internet

Purple Naked Ladies Odd Future

The debut from this Odd Future offshoot duo – beatmaker Matt Martians plus lone Odd Future female Syd the Kyd – is an endearingly scattershot take on spaced-out R&B, complete with drug fetishism and a load of moves apparently copped from the Neptunes. "Violet Nude Women" samples a college lecture about LSD over vaguely Middle Eastern psych soul, and "They Say" stretches snares and strings out to afternoon-nap tempo. The hook is Syd's surprisingly fluid crooning about girl... | More »