RIYL: Norah Jones, Sarah McLachlan, Alicia Keys

There’s a school of thought that says it’s better to aim low and hit your target than shoot for the moon and waste all your ammo, and Sara Bareilles’ Kaleidoscope Heart is a fine example of that principle in action. An album that lays out a limited set of goals and achieves them all with undeniable flair, Kaleidoscope Heart should find itself glued into MOR piano pop lovers’ media players for months — and it might even throw off enough winsome sparks to make begrudging believers out of folks who are ordinarily bored to tears by this sort of stuff.

All of which is to Bareilles’ immense credit, because her biggest hit to date, “Love Song,” was one of the most overplayed singles of 2007; only Colbie Caillat’s toxic “Bubbly” exerted more of a candle-scented hold over VH1 and the adult end of the Top 40 that year. By all rights, Kaleidoscope Heart should be a fumbling, self-conscious set, but Bareilles has an uncommonly strong grasp of her strengths as an artist, and she plays directly to them here with track after tasteful track. It’s true that her songs occupy a rather limited musical/emotional bandwidth — a mid-tempo track here, a ballad there, a tongue-in-cheek up-tempo number or two for good measure — but they do it with style. A lot of Bareilles’ peers sound like they’re cynically pandering to their demographic, but she comes across as though she really means what she’s saying; there’s a natural, conversational feel to her songs, and while the album isn’t anyone’s idea of gritty, producer Neil Avron keeps things radio-friendly without drowning the tracks in gloss.

Like eating an entire can of Pringles, listening to Kaleidoscope Heart might be something you’re ashamed to do in public — but dammit, Pringles taste good sometimes, and there isn’t a track on this album that doesn’t go down easy. A few more albums like this one, and Sara Bareilles might even make adult contemporary music cool again. (Epic 2010)

Sara Bareilles MySpace page

RIYL: Kylie Minogue, The Cardigans, Little Boots

No, you’re not remembering it wrong — Body Talk Pt. 1 really did arrive less than three months ago. Robyn took five years between her last two releases, but the long downtime had more to do with label machinations than lapsed creativity — and she proves it with Body Talk Pt. 2, which trades its predecessor’s frantic experimentation for a more traditional — and laser-focused — eight-song set.

Robyn’s best work has always rubbed at the sweet spot between machine-controlled pop and raw emotional power, and Body Talk Pt. 2 finds her right in her wheelhouse, from opening track “In My Eyes” (which opens with a quick callback to “Konichiwa Bitches”) through the thrilling six-song run that opens the album. The soaring melody and artificially sweetened harmonies of “Eyes” yield smoothly to the stomping, sparkling “Include Me Out,” which is followed by the crown jewel of the set, “Hang With Me.” Recorded as a ballad for Body Talk Pt. 1, it’s recast here as a surging ode to no-strings-attached romance that swaps out the original’s mournful tone for pure pop seduction. “I know what’s on your mind / There will be time for that too,” she promises over a plangent synth figure, cautioning “Just don’t fall recklessly, headlessly in love with me / ‘Cause it’s gonna be all heartbreak / Blissfully painful insanity.” You know she means it, but with hooks like these, who can resist falling in love?

The set’s weak link is undoubtedly the Snoop-assisted “U Should Know Better” — its cheap boasts would be funnier if they had a stronger song backing them up — but that’s a small complaint for an album with a batting average this high, especially in light of how quickly Pt. 2 is following Pt. 1. And she isn’t done yet: Robyn plans to release another Body Talk record before the year is out. Hang with her. (Universal/Konichiwa 2010)

Robyn MySpace page

RIYL: The Chemical Brothers, The Future Sound Of London, everyone on Hospital Records

Barking is the third Underworld album since Darren Emerson left the the duo of Karl Hyde and Mark Smith in 2002, and the first since then that is worth a damn.

A Hundred Days Off was a forgettable mess and the nicest thing that can be said about Oblivion With Bells was that its album title was an apt descriptor of the music. It’s probably no coincidence that this, the first good Underworld album since 1999’s Beaucoup Fish, is a collaborative effort between the group and a series of high-profile and up-and-coming producers.

Drum and bass producer High Contrast contributes the two highlights of the album, the very High Contrast-like sounding “Scribble” and the oddly sedate “Moon in Water,” which features some truly inventive vocal manipulations over a simplistic, but effective beat.

Other tracks are less surprising, but still good. D. Ramirez and Paul Van Dyk both specialize in dance-ready house and trance music, so it’s no surprise that their tracks, especially Ramirez’s “Always Loved a Film,” make Underworld sound like classic Underworld again, with frantic beats and epic synths serving as a perfect backdrop to Hyde’s distorted and manic vocal delivery. Van Dyk’s “Diamond Jigsaw” is so damned uplifting it should be played in rehab centers, and its peaks of Everest proportions pretty much ensures you’ll hear it on every mix by the DJ for the next few years. Minimal techno producer Dubfire is a little off with the slightly-too-slow “Grace” but makes up with it by delivering “Bird 1,” the opener to the album that builds in a way reminiscent of Beacoup Fish’s “Shudder/King Of Snake.”

The only contributors to seemingly miss the point of the exercise are Appleblim and Al Tourettes, who never rise out of the dubstep doldrums they’re so comfortable in, with “Hamburg Hotel,” a barely-there collection of looping beats and boring bass lines. But hey, it’s dubstep, so you get what you ask for.

Maybe Hyde and Smith need someone else to bounce ideas off of in order to truly be great? Whatever the reason, here’s hoping their collaborative streak doesn’t stop with Barking. They just need to avoid any additional “dubstep” artists. (Cooking Vinyl 2010)

Underworld MySpace Page

RIYL: The Bird and the Bee, She & Him, Mates of State

Connect the Dots is a fine title for an album, but Rabbit! could just as easily have chosen Too Adorable for Words for this breezy 17-track collection. Song titles like “Ladybug,” “Jellybean,” and “1-4-3″ don’t necessarily tell the whole Rabbit! story, but you get the idea – these are cute, catchy pop songs about things like staring at clouds, being in love, and feeling great. Cynics need not apply.

Even if you aren’t particularly cynical, Connect the Dots might test your twee endurance; the vocals conjure visions of girls in vintage clothes, strumming pawn shop guitars and smiling shyly next to dudes with rumpled button-down shirts and Abercrombie hair, while the music is chock full of Casios set to “xylophone” and “harpsichord.” It’s all so very Zooey Deschanel.

But here’s the thing: Close as it might come to sending you into a diabetic coma, Connect the Dots is brimming with clever, catchy songs. It sounds like a series of mash notes passed between people so wrapped up in their fuzzy love cocoon that they don’t even know anyone else is in the room – but where that kind of thing can be unnerving and annoying in person, these songs just kinda make you smile. Case in point: “Pea,” which opens with the following call-and-response lines:

It’s time to wake up / But you don’t need no makeup / ‘Cause you look stinkin’ foxy / With nothin’ but my old Led Zeppelin t-shirt on
I’ll be / Ready in a hurry / So we can hit the snooze bar / And spoon together in five nine-minute increments

And you just know the song closes out with a round of la la las, right?

You’ve got to walk a fine line with this kind of Hello Kitty pop, and it isn’t as easy as it looks – but damn if Rabbit! doesn’t pull it off. Part of Connect the Dots‘ appeal is its brevity – even at 17 tracks, the whole thing tops out at just under 48 minutes, and one of the songs isn’t even two minutes long, which makes it hard for anything to outstay its welcome. If you’ve ever been head over heels in love, woken up on the right side of the bed, or smiled on a sunny day, Connect the Dots might be the album for you. In fact, you may have a hard time prying it from your CD player. (Rock Salt Songwriters 2010)

Rabbit! MySpace page

RIYL: Rilo Kiley, Sleigh Bells, Buckingham/Nicks

Part blog rock summit, part Laurel Canyon throwback, I’m Having Fun Now offers further proof that 2010 is the year of the guy/girl duo. We’ve already had the second She & Him record, Bird and the Bee released their album of Hall & Oates covers, and Sleigh Bells set the Web on fire over the summer – heck, even Nu Shooz has a new album out. Now comes the debut offering from Jenny and Johnny, better known as Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis and her beau, Scottish singer/songwriter Johnathan Rice.

It reads like a Pitchfork editor’s wet dream, but I’m Having Fun Now is more like a Buckingham/Nicks for the Aughts, with a dash of paisley-patterned ’80s jangle thrown in for good measure. This isn’t exactly surprising, given Lewis’ penchant for paying homage to her L.A. musical roots with Rilo Kiley, but these songs serve as a pleasant reminder that Lewis understands the music on a level that few of today’s ’70s California Gold fetishists ever approach – as well as harmony-drenched proof that, whatever the future might hold for their day gigs, Lewis and Rice were meant to sing together.

There aren’t any bad songs here, and neither are there any brain-drilling, grab-you-by-the-collar pop masterpieces – which is as it should be. At its core, I’m Having Fun Now feels like an album rooted in the late mornings and lazy afternoons of domestic bliss, and who wants to bother swinging for the songwriting fences when your loved one is near at hand? “I don’t believe in sucking your way to the top,” declares Lewis in the tres Fleetwood Mac-ish “My Pet Snakes,” and that’s just as well – with records this effortlessly alluring, the top will come to her. (Warner Bros. 2010)

Jenny and Johnny MySpace page

RIYL: Godsmack, Staind, Nonpoint

Of all the nu-metallers of a decade ago, Disturbed would have been towards the bottom of most lists of those who would survive the short era. 2000’s The Sickness was perfect for that time: heavy and loaded down with chugging guitars and vocalist David Draiman’s choppy, pseudo-rap styling. Over the years the band has become a rock behemoth, consistently delivering the kind of radio-friendly heaviness that doesn’t send mom to the guidance counselor looking for answers. While hardly the musical takeoff that 2008’s Indestructible was, Asylum delivers some of the band’s best songs yet and confirms that these guys are still angry and motivated.

Asylum shows the band settling into the groove established by Indestructible. Disturbed took its biggest leap forward from a technical and production standpoint with that record, and Asylum proves to be a compulsively listenable experience. Guitarist Dan Donegan has transformed before our eyes from a down-tuned shredder to the driving force of the band. He’s simply a one-man wrecking crew. The title track is Donegan Exhibit A, offering a haunting, wah-driven lead with a fist-pumping chorus. He, along with bassist John Moyer and drummer Mike Wengren, may be one of the tightest rhythm sections in the genre today. Lyrically, it’s nothing groundbreaking. Draiman continues his ongoing assault on backstabbing politicians, bad relationships, ecological destruction (”Another Way to Die”) and Holocaust deniers (”Never Again”).

Metal fans are always looking for a band’s progression. While Disturbed have progressed plenty over the past decade, Asylum is not much more than a companion piece to Indestructible – and that’s not a bad thing. Like its predecessor, it’s a solid record, top to bottom. If you liked Disturbed before, you’re not about to stop with this release. The Limited Edition release features live versions of “Down With the Sickness” and “Stricken,” “Decade of Disturbed” documentary, and nine instructional videos for learning Disturbed songs. (Reprise 2010)

Disturbed MySpace page

RIYL: hipster bands, watching your kids dance

Landing a cool 10 months after the release of Volume I of Yo Gabba Gabba’s Music Is…Awesome! series, this set rights some of the wrongs of that first album by including some of the bands they overlooked the last time (Jimmy Eat World, MGMT, Datarock, and thank God they finally released the Ting Tings’ cover of “Happy Birthday”). The catch with this set is that the songs by the contributing rock bands are much better, but the songs from the show are, well, not. Yes, “Hold Still” finally makes an appearance, but it’s the lesser of the two versions that have appeared on the show. Meanwhile, the “Freeze Game” song here does not measure up to the ‘you can’t catch us!’ ‘Freeze’ song from another episode. (Perhaps they chose the version they did so they didn’t have two songs that featured Brobee whining about not being able to keep up.) Alas, the Aggrolites’ song “Banana” is still nowhere to be found, nor is GOGO13’s song “Pick It Up” which, years after their debut on the show, are still the two most commonly sung “Yo Gabba Gabba” songs in this writer’s household. Their exclusion from these sets is bordering on comical, if it weren’t so tragic. Still, the Weezer song (”All My Friends Are Insects”) is great, as are the songs by Hot Hot Heat (”Time to Go Outdoors”) and the Apples in Stereo (”That’s My Family”). In the end the album, much like the show, has some moments of genius, surrounded by stuff that you merely tolerate for the sake of your kids. No excuses, guys: put “Pick It Up” and “Banana” on the next set, or there will be hell to pay. (Filter 2010)

OK Go MySpace page
Click to buy Music Is Awesome! Volume 2 from Amazon

RIYL: Bryan Adams, The Plimsouls, Richard Marx

The Goo Goo Dolls have, at this point, been an adult contemporary recording act longer than they were Buffalo’s answer to the Replacements, so the time has probably come to stop using each new album as an excuse to whine about how much cooler they used to be, and lament what might have been if only Superstar Car Wash had been a hit. At this point, everybody knows exactly what they’re going to get from a Goos record, and if you’re looking to the fellows who brought you “Iris” for hungover blue-collar rock, well…that’s your problem, not theirs.

What we have with Something for the Rest of Us, then, is what sounds like – please, Lord, let it be – the final step in the Goos’ decade-long sanding down of their old sound. They’ve been inching this direction since they released Dizzy Up the Girl in 1998; 2002’s Gutterflower and 2006’s Let Love In were each slightly slicker, duller versions of what came before them, and Something out-slicks and out-snoozes them all. According to John Rzeznik, the more tuneful Goo with the Bon Jovi pout, the songs on this album are supposed to address the trying times we’re living in, but if there’s any topicality here, it’s so buried in snuggly layers of radio-ready gloss that it hardly matters.

When it comes to the Goo Goo Dolls, all that matters anymore is the ratio of sweeping Rzeznik power ballads (ten) to slightly punkier, slightly snottier Robby Takac rockers (two), and how soothing/vaguely dramatic it’ll sound in your car while you’re driving home from a long day of answering phones or filling out spreadsheets (very). There isn’t a line, chord, or cymbal crash that will change your life, or hit you anywhere but the soft, nougaty part of your cerebral cortex where you hide your secret affection for Lifehouse and Three Doors Down. It’s a very boring album, in other words, but who needs excitement? Excitement is messy, and it doesn’t have Rzeznik’s artfully tousled hair. (Warner Bros. 2010)

Goo Goo Dolls MySpace page

RIYL: hip new indie rock, your kids

If Drew Barrymore and Justin Long make a movie together, you better believe that they are going to see to it that the soundtrack is stuffed with bands so hip it hurts, and that is exactly what Going the Distance is. Indeed, some people may view a band’s inclusion on this soundtrack as a sign that said band or artist is no longer cool, and it’s officially time to stop listening to them. If you’re friends with one of those people, do yourself a favor: stop being friends with them.

All kidding aside (Psssst! We weren’t kidding), the soundtrack plays out much like the one for “500 Days of Summer,” blending cutting-edge indie acts like the Boxer Rebellion (they’re here a whopping three times, but there’s a reason for that – they’re a key piece to the movie’s plot) with first-gen alt-rock bands like the Cure, the Pretenders and the Replacements. The end result is a more enjoyable experience than the movie itself, consistently engaging and high-brow. (Don’t get us started on the spray tanning scene.) It’s most likely to appeal to alt-rock suburbanites in their 30s and 40s, and that might sound like a death knell on paper, but here’s the thing: there are tons of people who fit that description, and while they may no longer be the hippest demographic in the world, they’re one of the most passionate groups of music fans left that actually still pay for music. And they love stuff that makes them feel cool again. Well played. (Water Tower Music 2010)

Click to buy Going the Distance from Amazon

RIYL: Aimee Mann, Heather Nova, Fiona Apple

As if there needed to be proof out there that trying times can lead to the most inspired music, singer/songwriter Ruth Gerson hammers that point home again on her latest, This Can’t Be My Life. The album was recorded and ready for release in 2007, but a divorce and sudden single-momhood put the project on the shelf for a few years. Lucky for us, Gerson finally did release it, and the painful time period she endured shines through loud and clear on This Can’t Be My Life, her first full-length effort since 1998. Gerson writes music with heart, and delivers it with equal parts bluesy brood and rocking growl. It’s also melodic enough to be accessible to the masses, but still unique and cool enough to be considered alternative. Right from the title track, a piano anthem that sets the tone for the rest of the set, Gerson tells her story with simple yet powerful lyrics: “I made two lefts / I shoulda gone right / If I made one more left, it would have been right / It can’t be, can’t be my life.” This and the singsong “Bulletproof” have a falsetto melodic bent a la Aimee Mann, while “Fresh Air” and “Someday Soon” have a dark yet powerful pull akin to Fiona Apple. Add the jazzy, rainy day feel of “Hazel” and the guitar-picking “Take It Slow,” which will remind you of a female Nick Drake, and you’ve got a very complete, damn good album here. Whether Ruth Gerson breaks out big or remains on a smaller radar plane doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s shared her stories with us, and is doing what she does best – making great music. (Wrong Records 2009)

Ruth Gerson website