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My Chemical Romance: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

November 24, 2010 /


RIYL: Queen, Cheap Trick, Oasis

My Chemical Romance have balls of steel. They shed their pissed-off jilted lover skin in favor of a full-blown rock opera (2006’s The Black Parade), even though they could have made millions mining teen angst for the next ten years. Then, perhaps to diffuse any overblown build-up over their new album, they release a breakneck rave-up as the first single, and gave it the ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ title of “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na).” It’s a genius move, really – sneak in the back door, despite being one of the biggest bands on the planet. It makes them look like they’re still hungry, and God knows the pop world (and the world in general) could use a little humility.

The problem is, it may have worked a little too well. With Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys just now hitting shelves and e-servers, “Na Na Na” has already peaked at a slightly disappointing #10, and the label has moved on to the second single. Flash back to 2006, when “The Black Parade” dominated radio for months. You have to think that the label is a little nervous at this point, though they shouldn’t be: Danger Days is a powerhouse of an album, positively stuffed with potential singles and shows the band once again exploring new territory, both sonically (keyboards!) and musically.

The band has cooked up another gonzo concept for the album – a group of desert renegades fighting a massive company in 2019, accordingly to Wikipedia – but it doesn’t weigh down the individual songs. “Sing” is a reach-for-the-rafters singalong, while “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W” out-Oasis’ Oasis. “Party Poison” is another power pop-ish rocker, and “Summertime” is downright tender, if bleak. The band’s reach had been a bit farther than its grasp in the past, but the songwriting steps up in a big way here.

It would have been easy for My Chemical Romance to shy away from the epic scale of The Black Parade and opt for a minimalist approach to the follow-up, so it is to their credit that they not only went for it on Danger Days, but pulled it off. For all the bashing that the major labels take these days, it’s nice to see one of them take off the reins and let their horses run free. (Reprise 2010)

My Chemical Romance MySpace page
Click to buy Danger Days from Amazon

Alternative, Artists, CD Reviews, Power Pop, Rock

Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday

November 24, 2010 /


RIYL: Rihanna, Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim

Kick off your first album with a track titled “I’m the Best,” and you’re making a hell of an announcement — either you’re more gifted than your peers, or you’ve just got the biggest balls. With Pink Friday, Nicki Minaj displays a bit of both: though it’s admittedly an uneven affair, this album contains some of the best hip-hop/R&B you’re likely to hear in 2010, and while it doesn’t play to Minaj’s otherworldly rapping talent as often as many fans would no doubt prefer, it still makes for an intoxicating, eclectic debut.

minaj

Of course, unlike most new artists, Minaj has the advantage of being a known quantity before her album even reaches shelves; she’s been all over the charts as a guest artist for months, popping up on songs by Lil Wayne, Trey Songz, M.I.A., Drake, Usher, and others – including Kanye West, whose “Monster” features an incendiary Minaj verse that outclasses everyone else on the song, including Jay-Z and Rick Ross. Nothing on Pink Friday comes close to “Monster” – not even “Roman’s Revenge,” her profane, rapid-fire showdown with Eminem – but that isn’t really the point. Minaj has a lot of weapons in her arsenal, and this album is meant to display them all, while aiming directly at Top 40 radio.

What’s somewhat surprising, given her aggressive/aggressively weird image, is just how savvy Minaj’s pop instincts are – and how successfully Pink Friday makes room for them while incorporating plenty of singularly Nicki moments. This is an album that makes heavy use of Buggles and Annie Lennox samples, and features will.i.am, Rihanna, and Natasha Bedingfield cameos – but it takes the fetid roar of “Roman’s Revenge” and “Did It On ‘Em” to tell the whole story, and she brings both halves together in the stunning “Right Thru Me,” which takes breathless verses about reckless love and leads them into a chorus that brilliantly, nakedly asks: “You see right through me / How do you do that shit?”

That kind of duality is hard to distill in a pop song, and with Pink Friday, Nicki Minaj doesn’t always succeed. But her punches connect more often than they miss – and if that’s mostly because she never stops throwing them, well, that only makes it that much harder to stop listening. Her peers had better lock in those guest spots now – a few more albums like this one, and the words “feat. Nicki Minaj” will be a lot more expensive than they are now. (Universal/Cash Money 2010)

Nicki Minaj MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Hip Hop, R&B

Steal This Song: Destroyer, “Chinatown”

November 23, 2010 /

For the last five years, there has never been any question that when it came to the songwriting powers that be behind the New Pornographers, I am a Carl Newman guy. It’s not that I disliked Dan Bejar’s stuff – “Jackie, Dressed in Cobras” is still my fave – but his songs never scaled the dizzy heights of pure pop tunes like “Sing Me Spanish Techno,” “The Bleeding Heart Show,” “Stacked Crooked” and “These Are the Fables.”

You’ll notice that I only listed songs from the New Pornographers’ 2005 album Twin Cinema. That’s because I’ve been largely underwhelmed by the band’s work since then. And it appears that Bejar is ready to take advantage of my wavering loyalties.

Armed with yet another album under his day job Destroyer (his tenth in 15 years), the band’s new album Kaputt, set for release in January, might surprise some people. Bejar forsakes his usual disjointed pop for something more casual, like he’s been listening to a lot of ’80s-era Bryan Ferry (which he cops to in the press release), and perhaps even Al Stewart. It seems an odd match on paper, but his voice is actually well suited for the genre, and the tunes he came up with are gorgeous. We’ve been given permission to share the album’s opening track, “Chinatown,” and it’s a must for anyone who digs the Blue Nile, China Crisis, and their ilk. Dig in.

Destroyer – Chinatown

Adult Contemporary, Artists, CD Reviews, Downloads, Hipster, Pop, Steal This Song

Syd Barrett: An Introduction to Syd Barrett

November 23, 2010 /


RIYL: early Pink Floyd, Robyn Hitchcock, The Flaming Lips

Fans of Pink Floyd’s original frontman, the late Syd Barrett, will no doubt look at this latest collection of some of the man’s greatest musical moments and wonder why on earth they should be expected to fork out several more dollars for songs that they already possess in their collections. Indeed, a cursory glance at the track listing would lead one to believe that the only possible merits to purchasing An Introduction to Syd Barrett are these: it’s the first time that there’s been a Barrett collection which also included highlights of his work with the Floyd, and there are a handful of tracks…five, if we’re to be precise: “Matilda Mother,” “Here I Go,” “Octopus,” “She Took A Long Cool Look” (note the title change, as the look in question used to be cold), and “Dominoes”…which bear parenthetical assurances that they have been either freshly mixed or newly remixed in the year of our lord 2010. Is this really enough to make An Introduction worth your while, let alone your money? Before you make that decision, it’s worth considering that the purchase of the CD, whether in digital or physical form, also grants you the opportunity to download “Rhamadan,” a heretofore-unreleased instrumental from the Barrett vaults.

That’s got you, hasn’t it? And don’t think EMI doesn’t know it.

It might also up the credibility of this collection to know that the mixing and remixing has been done at the hand of one D. Gilmour, with assistance from Damon Iddins and Andy Jackson. Gilmour also added a bit of bass of “Here I Go,” despite the fact that the song had successfully remained bass-free for 41 years, but given that he and Roger Waters probably had as much (if not more) to do with The Madcap Laughs getting finished as Barrett himself, it’s hard to begrudge him the opportunity to fix something that he’s apparently always heard as broken.

While it’s not hard to accept that the world might be a better place with a collection that covers both Barrett’s work as a solo artist and as a member of Pink Floyd, the choice of material to represent the latter could’ve done with a bit more expansion. Presumably, EMI didn’t want to lose possible future purchases of A Saucerful of Secrets by including the only Barrett composition from that record, but given that “Jugband Blues” stands as his final song to be placed on a Pink Floyd album, its absence can’t help but be felt. And when in Syd’s name is someone at that label going to wise up and offer official release to “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream”? Surely this was the time and place to finally make it happen, but, no, they dropped the ball, much as they’ve continued to drop it for…wow, has it really been 43 years since those songs were recorded and locked in the vault? How time flies.

If you’ve yet to be introduced to the strange and psychedelic world of Syd Barrett, this is certainly a way to go, but if we can pretend for a moment than An Introduction to Syd Barrett is about bringing new fans into the Barrett camp (as opposed to getting existing fans to spend more money on old material), it’s not likely to do any better or worse than any of the existing albums. Underlining Barrett’s place in Pink Floyd’s legacy is a noble gesture on Gilmour’s part, but Syd’s still going to be the same acquired taste that he’s always been. (EMI 2010)

Syd Barrett official website

Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop, Psychedelic, Rock

Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

November 23, 2010 /


RIYL: Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Lupe Fiasco

In these days of PR flacks and image groomers, the era of the divisive, unpredictable pop star is almost a distant memory – now that we’re living in a world of infinite niche audiences, conventional wisdom says the only safe bet is to try and be all things to all people. But then there’s Kanye West, a guy whose propensity for water cooler-worthy gaffes seems to grow along with his sales; one of the few true stars left in the music industry, he’s also one of the least “managed” celebrities around, and while his actions have a tendency to alienate and offend, there’s something undeniably refreshing about a guy who blurts out whatever’s on his mind.

As an artist, West has always been just as messy – and just as captivating. It’s a shame that some people will never listen to his albums simply because of the things he’s said and done outside the recording studio, but part of his music’s appeal is how unfiltered it feels – the dude just can’t shut his mouth. In fact, for most of his fifth studio outing, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he sounds so blanketed in creative impulses that he can barely breathe – this is a record that careens from one emotional extreme to the next with dazzling urgency, so stuffed with ideas that it takes an army of guest stars and a series of wildly inflated running times to get them all out. On paper, it’s an ungodly, unwieldy mess, and further proof that West desperately needs an editor.

But through the speakers – where it counts – Fantasy lives up to each of the words in its title in equal measure: it’s a startlingly rich artistic outburst from a guy who’s made a career out of exceeding expectations, no matter how high they get. An about-face from 2008’s cold, insular 808s & Heartbreak, it signals a return to the anthemic, eclectic form he displayed on 2007’s Graduation, but it isn’t a retreat; rather, it’s a deepening and an extension of West’s playfully broad aesthetic. An album that incorporates a King Crimson sample, Bon Iver cameos, and a Chris Rock skit before closing with a dose of Gil Scott-Heron shouldn’t work; a song featuring Rihanna on the hook, Elton John playing piano, and Fergie rapping should collapse under the weight of its own ridiculous ambition. Fantasy contains all these things and many more, and defies the laws of pop physics as it goes – it’s the kind of record that keeps the ideas coming so quickly you don’t even notice the songs routinely stretch out past the five-minute mark. (In fact, four songs clock in over six minutes, with “Runaway” leading them all at 9:08.)

If there’s any real negative to draw from Fantasy, it’s the overriding sense that West is frantically pouring out ideas as quickly as they come; he’s too captivated by his muse to slow down – or to consider the consequences of failure. He won’t be able to maintain this pace forever, and when he finally does take a breath, it might be hard to resist the urge to think before he speaks. That’s just nervous nitpicking, though – and there’s no reason to waste your time with it when one of the best albums of the year is waiting to swagger its way into your brain. God only knows how West will top this one; here’s hoping it isn’t long before we get to hear him try. (Roc-a-Fella 2010)

Kanye West MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Hip Hop

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