Fresh off their performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards, British prog-rockers Muse return with their fifth studio album, The Resistance, an LP packed with symphonic grandiose and humongous songs. American Idol’s Adam Lambert and Twilight fans the world over might very well love this album, but Rolling Stone gave the album three stars due to frontman Matthew Bellamy’s continued fixation with his idols. “Songs like the industrial-flavored ‘Uprising’ prove again that Muse know how to whip up an almighty roar,” Jody Rosen writes in his review, “But the lyrics are pompous doggerel (’Coercive notions re-evolve/A universe is trapped inside a tear’), and they borrow shamelessly from Radiohead and Queen without the former’s musical invention or the latter’s cheeky swagger.”
Also earning three stars from Rolling Stone is the debut album from Cleveland rapper Kid Cudi, Man on the Moon: The End of Day. With a title like that, you’d think MGMT were the authors, and lo and behold, MGMT and Ratatat appear on the single “Pursuit of Happiness.” Needless to say, this isn’t the typical album you’d expect from a protégé of Kanye West, who features along with Common on the Gaga-sampling “Make Her Say.” The album shows potential, but the weight of lyrically carrying this concept album proves too heavy for Cudi as he falls into a trap of pedestrian raps. Still, it’s worth hearing if not for “Day N Night” alone.
Hitting digital music services today is the second album to feature the vocal stylings of Scarlett Johansson: Break Up, the actress’ collaboration with singer-songwriter Pete Yorn. Although they boast bigger marquee names than eerily similar Zooey Deschanel/M. Ward project She & Him, Yorn and ScarJo don’t capture the same magic as the pair attempts to reinvent the great Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot albums. Break Up’s nine songs have plenty of sweet harmonies, but there’s just no sexual chemistry between these two friends,” Melissa Maerz writes in her two-and-a-half stars review.
Joining these new albums at stores: Perez Hilton’s new favorite artist, Living Colour’s first album in six years and a Big Star compilation. Check out all the New Reviews below, and don’t forget to stop by our Reviews section for RS’s take on Pearl Jam’s Backspacer and Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3:
• Mason Jennings – Blood of Man
•The Drums – Summertime!
•Living Colour – The Chain in the Doorway
•Sliimy – Paint Your Face
•Big Star – Keep an Eye on the Sky
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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC.
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