Author: Jeff Giles (Page 7 of 41)

Sarah McLachlan: Laws of Illusion

June 17, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Annie Lennox, Enya, Jewel

Sarah McLachlan’s brand of pillowy, doe-eyed balladry has always been easily parodied, but beneath all the glossy instrumentation and tastefully aching vocals, her music has always had a dark depth that belied its adult contemporary trappings – and offered proof that it’s possible to create placidly pretty music with real emotional undertow.

Alas, this is something McLachlan seems to have forgotten during the seven years since she released her last album of original material. Right from the album cover, which finds her lounging beautifully on the moon, Laws of Illusion has the disconnected, gauzy air of a fantasy; the track listing floats woozily from one vaguely moody, mid-tempo number to the next. It’s like a Thomas Kinkade painting set to music – which is pretty ironic, considering Illusion is more or less a song cycle about the collapse of McLachlan’s marriage. You’d think this would raise the stakes for her usual themes – love, obsession, heartbreak – but instead, these songs feel curiously flat, with melodies that have the plastic echo of McLachlan’s past work and some of the most enervating arrangements of her career. Even the song titles are tired: “U Want Me 2”? Where’s a Prince lawsuit when you need one? Any random Peter Cetera album has more heft.

None of which probably matters to most Sarah McLachlan fans. Her earlier work’s resonance earned her critical respect, but it’s got little to do with the millions of records she’s sold; to a lot of people, a Sarah McLachlan album’s true value lies in its smooth surface appeal, and Laws of Illusion is nothing if not smooth. If none of it is particularly memorable, well, McLachlan’s voice is as lovely as ever, and these songs will still sound great with your next candlelit bubble bath. Proceed accordingly. (Arista 2010)

Sarah McLachlan MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop

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Robyn: Body Talk Pt. 1

June 10, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: ABBA, Annie, Goldfrapp

No one in mainstream pop blends cutting-edge production flourishes with devastating hooks better than Robyn. You want to know what’s wrong with the major record labels in 2010? Don’t look at illegal file sharing, look at the fact that not one of them was able to turn her into a dancefloor-ruling superstar after her debut. More power to Robyn that she’s releasing her music on her own imprint and her own terms, but in the old days, talent like this was locked up, placed in indentured servitude, and used to make tons and tons of money. When Christina Aguilera recorded her silly Bionic, she wanted to be as cool as Robyn.

Compare Bionic with Body Talk Pt. 1 – supposedly the first of three Robyn releases this year – and you’ll hear how far Aguilera, and everyone else on the American pop scene, has to go. At just a blonde hair over half an hour, Body Talk covers more ground than most dance-pop singers manage to stake out in a career, from the trippy, spoken-murmured opener “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do” to the closing number, the Swedish traditional song “Jag Vet En Dejilg Rosa.” In between, you get the delicious champagne fizz of “Fembot” and the prom-theme-in-waiting “Cry When You Get Older” (suck it, Vitamin C!), plus a moody dance track (“Dancing on My Own”), a chilly slice of synth reggae (“Dance Hall Queen”), a space-age Röyksopp collaboration (“None of Dem”) and even a piano ballad for good measure (“Hang with Me”).

It’s smart, instantly addictive, and it’s over before it gets anywhere near wearing out its welcome. While Robyn’s imitators are busy copping her sound, they’re all missing the important part – it’s the songwriting, stupid – and if you aren’t a fan yet, then you’re missing out too. Time to correct the error of your ways. (Cherrytree/InterscopeKonichiwa 2010)

Robyn MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Pop

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Carole King and James Taylor: Live at the Troubadour

May 25, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash

Like a charity softball game that trots out a pair of aging power hitters for a leisurely stroll around the bases between innings, Live at the Troubadour presents a couple of Hall of Famers revisiting past glories one more goddamn time, sharing a warm nostalgia bath with an audience glad for nothing more than evidence that their heroes – and, by extension, the audience members themselves – are still alive. If you could put this CD/DVD package on one of those old-fashioned sailor’s maps of the world, it’d fall under the heading “beyond this place lie geezers.”

That’s the cynical point of view about a project like this, anyway. And it’s easy to be cynical about Live at the Troubadour — both James Taylor and Carole King have released live CDs and/or DVDs in the last few years, and Taylor has been dog-paddling through a happy period of creative loafing since releasing October Road way back in 2002. Who needs to hear another version of “You’ve Got a Friend,” “It’s Too Late,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” or, God help us, “Sweet Baby James”? No one, probably, and if you skip the DVD part of the program and head straight to the audio portion of this live set, no one will blame you for falling asleep halfway through. As Taylor quips before breaking out “You’ve Got a Friend,” he’s been performing this song every night for most of his life; everything here has been done, and done, and done again. And better, too – King’s vocals remain as warm and honey-coated as ever, but you can hear the first signs of fraying in her upper register. As a live album, Live at the Troubadour is hardly definitive.

But its real appeal doesn’t lie on the CD. Playing one’s hits in an intimate acoustic setting has become part of the creative death spiral of the heritage rock act, but to watch Taylor and King return to their old haunt is to remember not only why “unplugged” became a fad in the first place, but to be struck all over again by the sheer quality of both performers’ early work. You can still hear the sound of barrel-scraping if that’s what you’re listening for, but there’s something undeniably appealing about watching two old friends rifle through their songbooks’ back pages, and you can tell that Taylor and King aren’t just doing it for the applause — they’re doing it for themselves, and for each other. Die hard fans will be thrilled with Live at the Troubadour, and if it’s something less than essential for the rest of us, it’s hard to quibble with songcraft this elegantly (and joyously) displayed. (Hear Music 2010)

James Taylor MySpace page

Adult Contemporary, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Folk, Pop

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Truth & Salvage Company: Truth & Salvage Company

May 25, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Black Crowes, Georgia Satellites, Lynyrd Skynyrd

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here / With our heads full of reefer and our bellies full of beer,” begins Truth & Salvage Company’s excellent debut album, but this six-piece outfit has more on its mind than the munchies; in fact, this sinewy 12-track collection wastes no time in getting down to the business of delivering a dirty boot to your rock-starved ass, and keeps it there for a solid 46 minutes and 12 seconds. Laced with Wurlitzer and Hammond organ, shot through with loud guitars and punchy drums, and recorded by guys with tons of hair and names like Walker and Smitty, Truth & Salvage Company proves you can still make a damn fine record with nothing more than a few chords and a healthy stack of amps.

As a songwriting unit, the band doesn’t really offer anything you haven’t already heard from the Loud ‘N Shaggy section of your record collection – it’s clear they’re no strangers to the Allmans/Skynyrd/Faces axis – but their rock swagger feels more like a real attitude, not a pose, and even if there are already a million songs about hard-livin’ dudes on the road and the slutty-yet-totally-respectable babes who love them, these guys cover the territory so well (and with so many plaintive, drawl-tinged harmonies) that it’s hard to question their logic. Why did bands stop making records like this, anyway? Can these guys maybe do something about all that Godsmack and Drowning Pool on the radio?

Anyone who loves rock & roll knows the road is littered with the corpses of bands with tattoo-ready logos and song titles like “Pure Mountain Angel,” and with a debut as hard to top as Truth & Salvage Company, odds are high that these guys will join that list sooner than later. In the meantime, though, this sure is fun to crank at full volume. (Megaforce 2010)

Truth & Salvage Company MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Rock

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Marina and the Diamonds: The Family Jewels

May 20, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Kate Bush, Dresden Dolls, Regina Spektor

Blending Kate Bush dolphin cries with stomping drum machines and buzzing, ‘80s-kissed synths, Marina and the Diamonds join La Roux on the list of British exports hoping to turn UK buzz and new wave nostalgia into American gold. Marina sounds fashionably ambivalent about crossing the pond, and fame in general – check out “Hollywood” for the latest in Top 40-ready tabloid-razzing pop – but beneath all her quirky affectations, she’s careful to pile up tall stacks of indelible, hip-shaking hooks.

The result is a record that’s certainly enjoyable in its own melodramatic way, but one that’s also hard to love. It has the uniquely British chill of arty singer/songwriters like Kate Bush, but The Family Jewels lacks the depth to live up to those comparisons on more than a superficial level – it’s like an art rock record that wants to trick you into dancing. Or a dance record that wants to pretend it’s an art rock album. Either way, a little of this stuff goes a long way; after the umpteenth hiccupping cry and dog-whistle harmony, it’s hard not to wish you could reach through the speakers and make her stop trying so hard.

The shame of it all is that The Family Jewels includes the ingredients of what might have been a really addictive album – tracks like the tongue-in-cheek “Hollywood” and the moving-in-spite-of-itself “I Am Not a Robot” prove Marina understands the mechanics of pop melody. Everything else is just a gimmick – and while gimmicks sometimes help sell records, they’ve also been known to backfire. For once, less polished Jewels might have made a better first impression. (Atlantic/Chop Shop 2010)

Marina and the Diamonds MySpace page