album reviews
Jimmy Cliff
Rebirth Universal Music Enterprises
Before Bob Marley, there was Jimmy Cliff – the singer whose 1970 single "Vietnam" was allegedly called "the greatest protest song ever written" by Bob Dylan, who inspired Paul Simon to fly to Jamaica and hire Cliff's backing band to cut "Mother and Child Reunion," and who starred in The Harder They Come, the 1972 film that broke reggae globally and whose Cliff-centered soundtrack initially defined the genre. Then Marley grabbed the spotlight, and Cliff became a crossover ambassador... | More »
Dirty Projectors
Swing Lo Magellan Domino
The much-anticipated followup to Bitte Orca, Dirty Projectors' 2009 art-rock breakthrough, is billed as "simple and direct." But that’s a relative statement with a band this squirrelly. Sure, there are love songs, big choruses and sticky melodies. Then there are chamber-music dissonances, talking-drumbeat sputters and quotation-marked power chords. The ripe alto of Angel Deradoorian, on hiatus, is missed, although oddball harmonies still... | More »
Frank Ocean
Channel Orange Island Def Jam
The question isn't who Frank Ocean loves. It's how he loves: ardently, recklessly, yet knowingly, with a young man's headlong passion and a mordant wisdom beyond his years. Ocean made headlines when he revealed on his Tumblr that his first love had been a man; his laments for that doomed romance are all over Channel Orange, his first official album. In "Bad Religion," the LP's shuddering centerpiece, Ocean sings: "This unrequited love/To me it's nothing but/A one-man ... | More »
The English Beat
The Complete Beat Shout! Factory
The English Beat snuck in under the banner of the 2-Tone ska revival, and on albums like their 1980 debut, I Just Can't Stop It, they showed off a rhythmic attack as buoyant as any north of the Caribbean. But the band's secret weapon was pop, the ear-candy tunes and sharp-fanged lyrics of frontman Dave Wakeling – at his finest, a singer-songwriter as savagely witty as Elvis Costello. This five-CD box set features the band's three great studio albums, plus terrific bonus t... | More »
Tom Findlay
Late Night Tales—Music for Pleasure Late Night Tales
Many DJs mine Seventies AM gold for inspiration, but this mix from London vet Findlay (half of Groove Armada) dives all the way in. Seamlessly and shamelessly blending the obvious (Boz Scaggs' "Lowdown") with the semi-obscure (Hall & Oates' "I'm Just a Kid"), it's a set your mother could love – and recognize. Listen to 'Late Night Tales – Music for Pleasure': | More »
Maroon 5
Overexposed A&M/Octone
It takes chutzpah for a band to call its fourth album Overexposed, especially when the singer has spent most of the past year zinger-slinging in a comfy red chair on The Voice. You can hear that chutzpah in the blinged-up disco sheen of Maroon 5's new LP, which is why it's their best yet. This is where Adam Levine cops to the slick Hollywood sex-panther role he's perfected on TV, wheedling and pitching woo to every lady within earshot, even though they know he won't rememb... | More »
Linkin Park
Living Things Machine Shop/Warner Bros.
Linkin Park showed up to the rap-rock mixer late, but they were the first band with a DJ to sound so utterly alienated, hitching Chester Bennington's existential wail to the suburban swagger of Mike Shinoda's rhymes. Five LPs in, they've traded turntable scratches for dub-step flourishes, but still lean on Bennington's harrowing hooks, including the one on "Burn It Down," one of their best singles yet. But while they've spiffed up their sound for the dance floor, the ... | More »
R. Kelly
Write Me Back RCA
R. Kelly's second consecutive throwback soul LP moves forward in time from the raw mid-Sixties-style belting of 2010's Love Letter. Write Me Back is suave, string-swathed Seventies revivalism, with tips of the hat to Barry White, Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye. It's virtuoso pastiche – but Kelly's Seventies are freakier than your dad's. The distant lover in "One Step Closer" gets play-by-play of R.'s commute home, which culminates in oral ... | More »
The Offspring
Days Go By Columbia
Nine albums in, these Cali punks are coasting by on dourly told jokes and reheated mad-at-the-world bluster. The low point is the deliberately bubbleheaded Dr. Luke rip "Cruising California," a "gag" track with no laughs in sight. Songs like "Dirty Magic," which sounds like an hommage to Nevermind’s deep cuts, will at least aid ex-mall punks looking to work out midlife crises via adolescent angst. Listen to 'Days Go By': Related• Full Album Premiere: The Offspring Stret... | More »
King Tuff
King Tuff Sub Pop
If "Keep On Movin'" is to be believed, King Tuff's guitar doesn't shred, it "drools." That's an appropriate visual: The greasy, catchy garage-pop on the Vermont-bred singer's second record sneers like convenience store parking lot stoners. Black-and-blue bruisers "Anthem" and "Bad Thing" benefit from some chicken-fried riffing, but Tuff is just as good in the slower moments. The dewy-eyed, piano-bar gospel of "Swamp of Love" suggests that, under the leather jacket and... | More »
Music Reviews
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star ratingOverexposed -
star ratingLiving Things -
star ratingDays Go By
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star ratingWrite Me Back -
star ratingKing Tuff -
star ratingHa Ha I’m Sorry EP
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