song reviews
Robyn
"Hang With Me"
Robyn's planning to release three albums this year and the first single from the set's second LP proves she's can crank out catchy jams as fast as pop's biggest hitmakers. "Hang With Me" is revamped version of an acoustic track from Body Talk Pt. 1, made even better with the addition of a fierce, club-wrecking beat. "Just don't fall recklessly, heedlessly in love with me," Robyn coos. Too late. | More »
Beck
"Summertime"
This crunchy blast of blues-rock is for the geeks, the manga-loving nerds, the people whose favorite Beck album is Stereopathetic Soulmanure. Beck goes back to his lo-fi roots for this tune that he wrote under the guise of Sex Bob-omb, Michael Cera's fictional band in the upcoming movie Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Actors overdubbed several Beck-penned songs for the film, but he takes the reins on the soundtrack for this fun reminder of how he once ruled over something called alternative... | More »
T.I. feat. Keri Hilson
"Got Your Back"
If T.I. left prison and went straight to the 'musement park, got on a rollercoaster with Keri Hilson, and afterwards they ran into DJ Toomp at the caramel apple stand, and all went into the karaoke tent to commandeer the machine and record the spontaneous feeling of that moment, it'd sound like "Got Your Back." T.I. tells "shoady" how to act while her man's locked up, while Keri equates looking "good" with looking "hood" as she pledges her allegiance. Toomp's digitally-lit... | More »
Crocodilies
"Sleep Forever"
On the new single from these California fuzz-rockers, Crocodiles deliver another serving of bleary-eyed shoegaze, mixing ghostly harmonies that sound like Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers singing from the bottom of a well with the pitch-black scuzz of The Jesus and Mary Chain. "I will love you till the sky above you shatters," croons Charles Rowell on the high-arcing chorus — just before a blast of distortion-drenched guitar that sounds like exactly that. | More »
The Ghost of a Saber-Tooth Tiger
"Jardin Du Luxembourg"
"People say your brain is like cream cheese/Takes the shape of anything you please," sing Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl on the debut single from their new band. It's a fitting line for a chirpy psych-rocker — one with a whiff of Papa Lennon's surrealist whimsy. | More »
Cee-Lo Green
"No One's Gonna Love You"
The Gnarls Barkley belter remains a master of the unexpected on this knockout reinvention of the Band of Horses ballad. Green meets the lyrics' heartbroken drama head-on, transforming country rock into electro R&B and revealing a buried soul classic. | More »
Mavis Staples
"You Are Not Alone"
Jeff Tweedy produces an album by a gospel-soul legend at Wilco's Chicago headquarters and writes her a couple of songs to boot. An odd pairing? Perhaps. But this first taste, a simple soul-folk tune à la Bill Withers' "Lean on Me," driven by acoustic guitar, celesta and piano, is the sweetest Tweedy song in a while. And Staples — a civil-rights-era front-liner who dated Dylan — sounds, at 71, as inspiring as ever. "Isolated and afraid/Open up, this is a raid," she sings. ... | More »
Brandon Flowers
"Crossfire"
In the genius video for the first single from Flowers' solo debut, Charlize Theron rescues him from evil ninjas, showing off her throwingstar chops and flashing him a brilliant, you-are-so-high-maintenance glare before she cuts him free. Sadly, it's wasted on a song that sounds like a Killers B side — standard-issue Boss-meets-Bono dance rock, with Flowers serving up so much meteorological-metaphor fury, you'll want to call FEMA: "Dark clouds roll their way over town/Heartach... | More »
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