Reviews of new pop, country / roots, jazz and classical releases
By
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
Source: MCT News Service
Pop:
ADAM ARCURAGI "Like A Fire That Consumes All Before It ..." (Thirty Tigers, 3 stars)
Georgia-born, Philadelphia-based songwriter Adam Arcuragi calls his ramshackle folk-rock "death gospel" and makes no attempt to disguise his seriousness of purpose on his third full-length album. "Like A Fire ..." shares a name with Arcuragi's favorite Cy Twombly painting, the beautiful red blot that is part of the late artist's Iliad-inspired series of paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and one of its songs, "Riverrun," takes its title from the first word of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Sometimes Arcuragi's throaty vocals and impassioned strumming can be rough going, but for the most part, the spirited and spiritually minded, highly articulate racket he kicks up with his band the Lupine Chorale Society is effective at both stirring the blood and stimulating the mind.
_Dan DeLuca
CLOUD NOTHINGS "Attack on Memory" (Carpark, 4 stars)
"Attack on Memory" is a literal title two ways. After a decade of lofty chamber prog and '80s E-Z listening, Dylan Baldi is restless to make indie rock again, and after two squishier garage-pop efforts, he's as poised to rewrite history as anyone else in the game. No one loves guitars with less garbage than Steve Albini, whom Baldi handcuffs to these songs to stay the course. It works, hilariously, like Wild Flag: coming together so easily because rock's not dead, just absent. For eight songs in 33 minutes it shoots out of Cloud Nothings, bridging the forgotten gnarls of Polvo and Unwound with the neglected pop-snot of Tokyo Police Club and Let's Wrestle. "I need time to stay useless," Baldi pleads with all his throat.
_Dan Weiss
OF MONTREAL "Paralytic Stalks" (Polyvinyl, 2 1/2 stars)
It's easy to admire Kevin Barnes' unfettered imagination and creativity. But he doesn't always make it easy to love his albums, and "Paralytic Stalks" makes few concessions to accessibility. This time out, Barnes is more interested in concocting a continuous prog-psych suite than in structuring conventional songs. In OM terms, it's dark and difficult like "Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?" rather than cheery and fun like "Satanic Panic in the Attic" or "False Priest."
Although his live band is duly celebrated for its maximalist extravagance, Barnes records mostly alone, this time with a handful of studio musicians. Almost every song is dense with multitracked vocals, orchestral strings, and woodwinds with abrupt twists and leaps and diversions into dissonance. It's an angry album, bitter about the human propensity for violence and spiteful about failed relationships. It's impressive, but it's more often alienating than alluring.
_Steve Klinge
BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB "A Different Kind of Fix" (A&M / Octone, 2 1/2 stars)
"Flaws," the 2010 album from London's Bombay Bicycle Club, might have been that band's breakout album. Yet with its calm acoustics and earnest yearnings, you'd think that the BBC were a bunch of hillside hippies and that singing guitarist Jack Steadman was made of cotton candy.
"A Different Kind of Fix" is made of tougher stuff. The verve is electric and danceable. Nerves are exposed. There's a lump in Steadman's throat that's less about love and more about neurosis through the electro-beeping and bumping grooves of "How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep" and the shoe-gazing complexity of "Bad Timing."
That may make BBC sound like Vampire Weekend without the yelping, yes, on the surface. But Steadman and company don't rest there. Though most of Fix's lyrics stay on the broad side, Steadman is pointed and poignant on the likes of "Leave It," with its indicting refrain of "Don't you go leave me now, come see what you've done." BBC prove to be masters of deception on "Beggars," wherein subtle shifts move the tune from forlorn folk-er to tension-filled rocker. And the summery "Shuffle" is the most contagiously swishy song that Tears for Fears ever forgot to write.
Delightful, really.
_A.D. Amorosi
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Country / roots:
TIM MCGRAW "Emotional Traffic" (Curb, 2 stars)
No need to waste too much time here: Most of Tim McGraw's new album is bad rock and adult-contemporary pap, er, pop rather than country. "Finding out you're human is really hard," we learn in "Only Human," one of the typically insipid numbers here (with a guest vocal by pop/R&B singer Ne-Yo).
That's too bad, because the tracks that don't sound like the musical equivalent of Cheez Whiz show what could have been: "One Part Two Part" offers some real down-home warmth, with background vocals by McGraw's wife, Faith Hill; "Better Than I Used to Be" is an actual country ballad and the album's most emotionally resonant song; "Touchdown Jesus" starts out in honky-tonk-tinged country-rock before ending with gospel urgency; and "Hey Now" is a slight but engaging slice of pop-soul.
_Nick Cristiano
THE REVELATIONS FEATURING TRE WILLIAMS "Concrete Blues" (Decision, 3 stars)
The Brooklyn-based Revelations recorded their second album in Memphis, and like 2009's "The Bleeding Edge," it straddles vintage Southern soul and more modern R&B.
Thematically the album is part "What's Going On" and part "Let's Get It On." It's not that the group sounds much like Marvin Gaye. It's that the first four numbers, the title song among them, deal with social issues (specifically hard times in the city), while the last six focus on bedroom issues: "Until You Get Enough of Me," "I Gotta Have It" _ you get the idea.
Singer Tre Williams is the authoritatively unifying presence. He can be gritty or smooth, and the anguish and pleading he projects, free of any melodrama or histrionics, helps elevate the material on both parts of the album. In other words, he has the makings of a classic soul man.
_N.C.
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Jazz:
JACK DEJOHNETTE "Sound Travels" (Golden Beams / eOne, 3 1/2 stars)
Drummer Jack DeJohnette kicks off the year he'll turn 70 with a Latin- and Calyspo-tinged jazz CD that features the percussionist-leader on piano.
With serious credentials as part of Miles Davis' fusion groups and pianist Keith Jarrett's trio, DeJohnette proves to be a nurturing leader. He puts the emphasis here on grooves and taking chances. Bassist Esperanza Spalding sings a spell on the happenin' "Salsa for Luisito," while trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and tenor saxophonist Tim Ries lay down some unusual thoughts on the calypso-esque "Sonny Lite," dedicated to Sonny Rollins.
The wide-ranging pop-rocker Bruce Hornsby drops in for the funky "Dirty Ground." Then vocalist Bobby McFerrin offers up wordless singing on the gently flowing "Oneness."
DeJohnette's piano is predictable, but unobtrusive and an example of the questing vibe here. The tunes tend to be brief. The title track comes in under two minutes, as if DeJohnette wanted to leave before listeners' interest flags. He mostly succeeds.
_Karl Stark
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Classical:
MARE NOSTRUM Montserrat Figueras, vocals; Lior Elmaleh, vocals; and Hesperion XXI, Jordi Savall directing (AliaVox, two discs, 4 stars)
The title is Latin for "our sea," a term coined by ancient Romans when they controlled lands on several shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In this two-CD set _ one of Hesperion's deluxe packages with a 454-page, full-color book _ the term is used either to bring together or juxtapose ancient music from numerous cultures. The usual ensemble is augmented by Turkish, Greek, Israeli and Palestinian musicians in a series of songs, dances, chants, and even a lullaby from these numerous cultures, much of the music being drawn from medieval manuscripts.
For all of its color and diversity, the set can't help feel like a memorial for Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras, who died in November at age 69. As the voice of Hesperion XX and XXI for decades, Figueras couldn't look more vibrant in recording-session photos taken as recently as July 2011 and really does deliver some of her most penetrating singing. She easily navigates complicated Middle Eastern ornaments and often sings wordless vocal lines with color, inflection, and meaning that's beyond language. There's really not enough of her on this set, which is consistently stimulating in any case, but is best heard by listeners who travel in world music circles.
_David Patrick Stearns
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(c)2012 The Philadelphia Inquirer
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