Tag: Headlines (Page 24 of 76)

Rabbit!: Connect the Dots

September 1, 2010 / Jeff Giles

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)

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Jenny and Johnny: I’m Having Fun Now

September 1, 2010 / Jeff Giles

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)

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Disturbed: Asylum

September 1, 2010 / Bill Clark

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)

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Iron Maiden: The Final Frontier

August 30, 2010 / R. David Smola

RIYL: Dream Theatre, Savatage, Queensryche

Looking for another set of covers by an established act? How about a band looking to completely re-invent itself by offering up Bossa Nova versions of its classics (Rundgren did it in 1997 on With a Twist)? That ain’t happening here. Iron Maiden offers up 76 minutes of progressive metal, professionally and unapologetically on the very good The Final Frontier. The shortest track is 4:29, two tracks are slightly over 5:19 and the rest are in the six-to-11-minute range. Frontier has the necessary Maiden ingredients; song titles like “The Alchemist” and “The Talisman,” theatrical vocalizations by Bruce Dickinson, the monster guitar work, the rolling, rumbling bass lines and the kinetic drumming of Nico McBrain.

This is a 2010 release but sounds like a classic. With a loose galactic theme running throughout, Dickinson really lets it fly with his best vocal performance on “Coming Home.” That track joins Bowie’s “Space Oddity” or Planet P’s “Why Me?” in the pantheon of great space pilot songs. One wonders how Dickinson just doesn’t collapse because he sounds as if he puts everything he has in every note. He doesn’t have the vocal pop of Geoff Tate or Rob Halford, but he certainly makes up for it with passion and a delivery that lets it loose at the very edge of his range. As usual, the guitar work – and there is plenty of it as the keyboards are very subtle – from Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers is terrific, coming up with small nuances and solos making the material sound fresh and never tired. The first four minutes of dissonance and drum work from McBrain on “Satellite 15…The Final Frontier” grabs the listener by the throat before breaking into a fabulous rolling metal tune. Several of the songs set up with a slower, more methodical beginning, before the guitars soar and Dickinson’s starts to extend his voice. Maiden’s Frontier is full of delicious progressive work which demonstrates there is plenty of gas left in the old warhorses’ tank. (Columbia Legacy 2010)

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Goo Goo Dolls: Something for the Rest of Us

August 30, 2010 / Jeff Giles

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)

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