album reviews
French Montana
Excuse My French
Nothing gets to French Montana. The Moroccan-American MC has scored a string of hits on the strength of his luxuriously unhurried flow, slinging street dreams in the cadences of a sleepy don. The beats on his major-label debut range from bleak to triumphal to jackhammer-manic; none of it seems to make a di fference to French, who spills syllables in the same rich slurry nearly every time. He’s a man of few words – many of his hooks consist of a single staccato phrase, looped until... | More »
Demi Lovato
Demi Hollywood
The title of Demi Lovato's fourth LP promises a "personal" album, and Lovato gets songwriting credits on nine songs. But make no mistake: This is industrial-strength pop, and all the better for it. The songwriters include hitmaking heavyweights like Ryan Tedder and Rami Yacoub; the choruses boom; the production has a high-gloss sheen. It's predictable stuff – sassy songs, lovelorn songs, a couple of pop-psych pep talks – but Lovato is good company, and her voice has gust... | More »
Patty Griffin
American Kid New West
After detours including a Grammy-winning gospel LP and a key role in boyfriend Robert Plant's Band of Joy project, Griffin is back to her day job: singing her own artful country-folk songs. Except here, with a voice evidently stretched by her side projects, she expands the notion of country. Her unusual harmonies with Plant on "Highway Song" and the hypnotic "Ohio" match anything from his celebrated Raising Sand LP. And when Griffin turns the unlikely line "God is a wild old dog/Someone ... | More »
Huey Lewis and the News
Sports (30th Anniversary Edition) Capitol/UMe
In an era when "radio-friendly" was the coin of the Top 40-dominated realm, Sports was a veritable radio reach-around, spawning five Top 20 singles. (This reissue adds a disc of "Hell-o Cleveland!" live versions.) Lewis, a recovering folk rocker, filed Fifties corn ("The Heart of Rock & Roll"), red-sport-coat country ("Honky Tonk Blues"), warmed-over New Wave ("You Crack Me Up") and Cali soft rock ("If This Is It") into his own cheese Everest. This being the Eighties, Sports also had a bi... | More »
Various Artists
Traxx: The House That Garage Built Needwant
Garage music – the recently revived sound of late-Nineties London via early-Nineties New York and New Jersey – is starting to bother the dance mainstream, from Skrillex dropping a surprise "future garage" set on the Holy Ship! EDM cruise to young Londoners Disclosure slaying Ultra Music Festival. (Garage's bright syncopation is perfect if you're up on Molly.) This sizzling overview of mostly U.K. producers blends fetching new tracks (Rhythm Operator's sultry "Anytim... | More »
The National
Trouble Will Find Me 4 A.D.
This is the sound of despair, according to singer Matt Berninger of the National: "If you want to make me cry," he claims early on this record, in "Don't Swallow the Cap," "play Let It Be or Nevermind." It is a surprising admission, given the Brooklyn band's established anguish on albums like 2007's Boxer and the 2010 bestseller, High Violet: a chaos of broken a ffections and mortal fears drawn with spare rhythmic and melodic flourishes, often in wide, open reverb. On much of T... | More »
Majical Cloudz
Impersonator Matador
Don't be thrown by the name: The music Montreal duo Majical Cloudz makes is cold, stark and confrontationally intimate. Over a backdrop of loops and electronic drones patient to the point of static, Devon Welsh bellows lyrics so naked they're embarrassing to hear, let alone repeat. His bravery lies in the fact that he doesn't mince words. His talent lies in the fact that so many of his words are universal, however dramatic. "If life could forever be one instant," he sings on "B... | More »
The Breeders
LSXX: Last Splash: 20th Anniversary Edition 4AD
On 1993's Last Splash, former Pixies bassist Kim Deal pulled off a shocker: a record as good as anything by her old band that was also a pop success. With sister Kelley on guitar, Deal churned out sweet, slothy ballads, put a feminist spin on blues cliché and even had a Top 40 hit with the looped-out surf-rocker "Cannonball." This three-disc reissue adds a raft of cool demos, a 1994 concert and four EPs, including two doozies, 1994's Head to Toe and 1992's Safari, where ... | More »
Daft Punk
Random Access Memories Columbia
French duo Daft Punk helped create our current stadium-shaking, Coachella-dominating dance-music moment, and their new album is by far the year's most anticipated EDM set. The only issue is that it sounds almost nothing like EDM. Random Access Memories is full of WTF moments: Julian Casablancas delivering maybe the most emotive vocals of his career through a vocoder-style haze; dance godfather Giorgio Moroder waxing nostalgic on an electro-jazz-funk epic; pop-schmaltz guru Paul Williams... | More »
Deap Vally
Get Deap! Cherrytree/Communion/Interscope/Island
L.A. guitar-drums duo Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards play trashy blues-rock with a wink—a modern tradition rooted in music made 40 years ago. There's plenty of White Stripes in their style, but their sound has a blown-out quality less Vintage Tube Amp and more Cheap Boombox Cranked to 10. Misspelling their own name is an attempt to play dumb, which only smart bands like them can do well. "Come on take a breath now," Troy wails in a witchy cackle on EP highlight "End of the World." ... | More »
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