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Tuesday, December 1, 2009
CD review: The Bravery - ‘Stir the Blood’
The Bravery
‘Stir the Blood’
(Island Records)
Grade: C
You could call “Stir the Blood” a study of contrasts.
On the one hand, frontman-songwriter Sam Endicott is angry. You can hear it in every jagged riff, every angsty yowl, even in the gore-evoking album title. And there are only so many ways to interpret a song called “Hate(expletive).” There’s a pretty good chance he wants to shower some physical violence on someone. Possibly you.
But we can assume he at least wants you to have some fun while he does it, because “Stir the Blood” is also a return to upbeat form for this New York post-punk new wave band after a disappointing second album “The Sun and the Moon.” It has an almost pathological need to be danceable in its instrumentation, with the speedy, steady beat on “Red Hands and White Knuckles” adding a rollicking, catchy pulse to a fundamentally violent, ugly tune. It’s that disconnect between the high-school pleading, for instance, of “I Am Your Skin” with its techno-influenced head-bopping time signature that keeps “Stir the Blood” somewhat lively. There’s something naturally fascinating about cognitive dissonance, and it doesn’t come much more dissonant than dancing to “Slow Poison,” with its focus on the bitter sting of heartbreak.
The Bravery never quite dodges the problem that’s dogged the band since its self-titled debut — namely, that “Stir the Blood” starts to sound awfully monotonous after 11 songs. And you’d have to be very young, very immature or very unfortunate to relate much to this level of focused brooding. But those who enjoyed the Bravery’s driven dance sound on the debut will be pleased by “Stir the Blood,” and it’s hard to condemn an album as too dark when it has the good sense to rock while doing it.
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CD review: R. Kelly - ‘Untitled’
R. Kelly
‘Untitled’
(Jive)
Grade: B
To paraphrase the great Texas philosopher Hank Hill, somewhere along the line we forgot to teach R. Kelly shame.
This is, of course, painfully obvious to anyone who has followed his unsavory legal problems. Artistically, on the other hand, it’s been helpful. Kelly’s go-to topic has always been sex — it’s what he writes about when he can’t be bothered to write about anything else — and a lack of shame is a pretty good thing to have if you spend your days thinking up new ways to talk about the world’s oldest activity.
Nothing on “Untitled” reaches the lunatic heights of “Trapped in the Closet” nor the complicated shadows of, say, “A Woman’s Threat.” “Untitled” is mostly sex jams, but often very funny ones.
Who else can sell “you have pretty teeth” as a pickup line, as he does during “Exit”? The single “Number One” compares sex to making a hit record (and possibly stripping a car — as guest vocalist Keri Hilson puts it, “You know you stay at the top spot/ When you’re breaking me down like a chop shop”). “Echo” is what he would like your screams to do (“I hope you’re ready, girl, to scream and moan/ like yodoley oley ohhoooo”).
“Religious” has him repenting and changing his thuggish ways (“There’s something religious about you (I wanna testify)/ there’s something church about you” - a.k.a. how to get with the choir director) yet “Bangin’ the Headboard” and “Go Low” should explain themselves. And when he tells you he wants to get you “Pregnant” (“Telling myself I’m a playa so I keep tryna shake it off/ But I keep on seeing this big old house with a picket fence and a dog”), you almost believe him.
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CD review: Adam Lambert - ‘For Your Entertainment’
Adam Lambert
‘For Your Entertainment’
(RCA)
Grade: C+
Amid all the controversy and rapt media attention showered on Adam Lambert — from initial questions surrounding his sexuality to his instantly game-changing air-sex antics during the American Music Awards — the “American Idol” runner-up has received surprisingly little attention for his ostensible selling point: his pipes.
Maybe that’s how Lambert managed to record one of the year’s most surprising albums even under intense scrutiny. “For Your Entertainment” is a disjointed but intriguing melding of rock, pop, electronica and dance — with the occasional hard left turn into schmaltz — that taken altogether is one of the most striking examples of pop-by-committee in recent years. Lambert’s at his best when he’s also at his most ostentatious, so “For Your Entertainment” really sings when he embraces his obvious gift for sweaty, sexy dance music. The title track is an electroclash-filled, sometimes-autotuned three minutes that takes to heart George Bernard Shaw’s old maxim about dancing as a vertical expression of horizontal desire. And “Fever” is the kind of track you know was co-written by Lady Gaga even before glancing at the liner notes, with its club thump and unapologetically sex-obssessed lyricism (“There he goes/My baby walks so slow/Sexual tic-tac-toe”). After tolerating the just-shy-of-risque-faux-lesbianism of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” in 2008, Lambert’s unhesitant embrace of both his sexuality and his energy is something of a relief.
He’s less successful when he slows down and pursues the obligatory ballads — “Aftermath” somehow manages to be simultaneously earnest and soulless. The string-laden “Time For Miracles,” which moviegoers might recognize as Lambert’s contribution to the “2012” soundtrack, crumbles like a CGI Los Angeles into an ocean of cliche.
But even in the album’s darkest, most Roland Emmerich-approved moments, there are surprises in store that suggest Lambert might have a good sense of how to shepherd a great pop album, from the thundering strings of “Soaked” to the spare horror movie piano that kicks off “Broken Open.” He might not be — despite what the surviving members of Queen have suggested — a replacement for Freddie Mercury, but as young dance house glam stars go, he’s got promise.
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Black Eyed Peas at SXSW?
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Let the rumors begin. Next year’s “surprise” superstar performer at SXSW just might be Black Eyed Peas, who have a date in Dallas March 19, the Saturday of South by, preceeded by open dates Wednesday through Friday. The E.N.D. World Tour’s itinerary, which kicks off Feb. 4 in Atlanta, was released Tuesday.
There’s absolutely nothing behind this but a hunch. But after Kanye West and Metallica played last year, SXSW is becoming more and more a marketing playground for the biggies.
The Dallas show is the only B.E.P. show scheduled for Texas.
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Live review: Jackson Browne at the Bass Concert Hall
Even before Jackson Browne took to the stage of the Bass Concert Hall Monday night, it probably wasn’t hard for audience members to deduce what kind show the folk rock legend had in store for them. An impressive display of 15 guitars sat side by side in a rack, ready and waiting to be sensitively strummed, with only one keyboard and a couple of stools for company. The expansive space was otherwise unoccupied, serving notice that the evening’s solo show would be intimate, lived-in and informal. Browne delivered on that promise with a low-key, amiable three-hour set that frequently felt less like a concert and more like a living room jam.
Taking advantage of the much-touted format of the night — which lacked a set list — Browne moved through a diverse sampling of material covering all four decades of his recording career. The show kicked off with a spare acoustic take on “Barricades of Heaven,” with Browne’s voice cracking with emotional delivery. Though his guitar work and frequent use of keys were solid, it was Browne’s voice, heartfelt and impassioned, that proved his greatest asset throughout the night, as on the impassioned crooning of political ballad “Lives in the Balance” or a striking take on “Never Stop.”
The lack of a set list also led to regular interjections and requests from what was almost certainly one of Austin’s neediest audiences, but Browne handled the constant shouts with aplomb, fielding requests for everything from “Doctor My Eyes” to “I’m the Cat” — and at times playfully declining, as on the introduction to “In The Shape of a Heart.”
Browne’s banter also evidenced his confidence at playing solo to a crowd of thousands, with occasional breaks in the performance to discuss his romantic life, his love of Austin and his much-touted political views. Most winning was an anecdote over a young journalist in Chilé who grilled him on the monotony of his songs.
That journalist, of course, might have been on to something — three hours of Browne’s brand of folk singer-songwriter tunes can grow a bit wearying. There’s little to differentiate a song like “Something Fine” from “Far From the Arms of Hunger” when performed live. And his rote performance of major hit “Doctor My Eyes” evidenced all the signs of a man who’s grown tired of his signature song, with a limp and rapid delivery that suggested Browne merely wanted to get it out of the way.
But Browne’s enthusiasm for his material and technical proficiency were never in question, and even the dullest spots were inevitably livened up by delights like “Going Down to Cuba” or energetic takes on “Running On Empty” and “Take It Easy.”
“It’s always intimidating playing in Austin,” said Browne earlier in the set. “There’s such a high standard of musical accomplishment.”
But as he proved later on in the evening — with a moving performance of “For A Dancer,” dedicated to the departed Stephen Bruton — Browne needn’t have been nervous. Even playing unaccompanied — aside from a brief assist on a couple of closing songs — he had the chops to do the space, and the city, proud.
Setlist
Barricades of Heaven
These Days
Don’t Let Us Get Sick (Warren Zevon cover)
Never Stop
For A Dancer
Giving That Heaven Away
In the Shape of a Heart
Just Say Yeah
Rock Me On the Water
Doctor My Eyes
Intermission
For Everyman
Going Down to Cuba
Lives in the Balance
Far From the Arms of Hunger
Late for the Sky
Looking Into You
Running On Empty
The Pretender
Something Fine
I’m The Cat
My Stunning Mystery Companion
Alive in the World
Take It Easy
Our Lady of the Well
Encore:
Before the Deluge