Frank Ocean/Tyler, the Creator

Divisive LA crew Odd Future has been the rap story of the year; even New Yorker subscribers not necessarily known for their horror-core affinity have heard a thing or two about them. I’m in the camp that contends their glib shock-rap—especially that of leader Tyler, The Creator—goes absolutely nowhere. The exception is singer-in-residence Frank Ocean, whose voice will be familiar to anyone who’s heard Watch the Throne, and whose brainy brand of R&B is by far the greatest thing Odd Future hath wrought.

Frank Ocean: Nostalgia, Ultra

What this guy understands that his Odd Future cronies don’t is that real candor is more exciting than any blatant attempt to shock. It’s usually more shocking, too. “They say you can’t miss something you never had/Well I can/I’m sad,” he says of the father he never knew and the grandfather he met once. If those words look flat on your screen, trust that they’ve got plenty of dimension when Ocean sings them. They’re also awfully soft for a guy whose key affiliation is with a gang of rape-and-pillagers. Other highlights on this debut mix tape include Ocean’s improvement of Coldplay and Eagles songs you’ll recognize, one about a lost weekend with a future dentist/current porn star that Ocean likens more to Novocaine than ecstasy, and another detailing his frustrations with the girls who turn off his copy of Kid A (“What is a Radiohead, anyway?”) in favor of Drake and Trey Songz, both of whose “songs for women,” Ocean is chagrinned to discover, said women prefer to his own. If all the above doesn’t make you want to know Ocean a little better, you’re aware of more innovative modern R&B than I am. He’s such a breath of fresh air that you wish he didn’t under-stay his welcome. Things end abruptly with his fantastic reworking of MGMT’s “Electric Feel,” effectively reminding us that this is a mix tape, not an album. Other artists have blurred that distinction. Ocean nearly obliterates it. A-

Tyler, the Creator: Goblin

The problem isn’t—as many have asserted—that this 20-year-old Odd Future ringleader is socially irresponsible; it’s that he’s boring. Tyler rapes and stabs his way through a coma-inducing 15 songs in 75 minutes, the scope of his vision summarized thus: “kill people, burn shit, fuck school.” Forgive me if I like my rebel yells just a little more interesting than that. His “Random Disclaimer,” along with his introductory declaration that he is not a role model, along with pretty much everything he does, clearly evokes early Eminem, but this is closer in spirit to Relapse than The Marshall Mathers LP. Speaking of that one, wasn’t the whole point of Slim Shady raping his own mother even though they gave him the Rolling Stone cover—a near rhyme funnier and more shocking than anything here—to render moot the dull gross-out fantasies of dweebs like this? “Her,” in which Tyler discovers that even goblins can get stuck in the friend zone, comes as a relief not so much because it gives the goblin himself some depth, but because he leaves the ‘her’ in question unmolested for a change. “I’m fuckin’ radical! I’m motherfuckin’ radical!” he shouts at us, as if shouting alone made it so. C

Arctic Monkeys/Old 97's

Words up front, guitars not far behind.

Arctic Monkeys: Suck It and See

Turns out the bludgeoning desert rock these normally nimble Brits turned in on 2009’s Humbug was just an aberration. Phew. Main Monkey Alex Turner weds quip to hook with far too much finesse to settle for brawn alone. A bit of Humbug’s heaviness remains, but it comes with the sorts of angular guitars and turns of phrase that marked the band’s surprisingly durable 2006 debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. And Turner, always precociously self-aware, is beginning to do genuine feeling almost as well as come-ons and kiss-offs. “Love Is A Laserquest” maps the moment young people start feeling old with a cartographer’s precision, and the title track—it’s British slang for “give it a try,” in case you were wondering—suggests that Turner may go on to write the sorts of wry love songs that become standards. If, for now, it sounds like he’s still a few genuine feelings away from that, give him time. Four albums in, he’s still only 25, and getting deeper. B+

Old 97’s: The Grand Theatre, Volume Two

How is Rhett Miller, who has built a long and fruitful career out of using train mishaps as metaphors for romantic dysfunction, just now writing a song called “I’m A Trainwreck”? Everything here sounds like something the 97’s could have, should have, or actually have done before, and your degree of affection for the band will determine whether you describe this little brother to last year’s Volume One as freewheeling or merely stitched together. The two volumes should have been edited down to one, sure, but the keepers here prove this is still one of the few bands whose live chemistry translates to record, and Miller more than meets his quota for lyrical jewels: “He said, ‘Can I buy you a drink?’/What he meant was, ‘Can I buy you?’/Yeah his eyes were pits of despair/But his accent recalled the bayou.” That’s almost as good as “I keep turning up The Wedding Present/You’re too tired to turn me down/Well you’re probably gonna tell me that this sounds a little adolescent/But counting me there’s 1.3 million lonely people in this town.” You barely notice that sly little ‘counting me’ the first time around, which is exactly how Miller wants it. B+ 

Jay-Z & Kanye West/Bad Meets Evil

Two rap collaborations, with three of the biggest names in the game between them. Side project or no, Eminem’s predictably potty-mouthed team-up with fellow Detroit MC Royce Da 5’9” is disappointing. Jay-Z and Kanye, meanwhile, earn their use of the imperative mood.

Jay-Z & Kanye West: Watch the Throne

Sonic ambition and improved flow aside, Kanye's greatest contribution here was using both to inspire (or maybe scare?) his older and more business-minded mentor back up to his artistic A game. Jay-Z hasn’t sounded so nuanced or effortless on record since American Gangster, if not The Black Album. So while Kanye is a pop artist who earns the title, Jay is an MC who makes it look easy; where sheer elan is concerned—and elan is a major concern on an album like this—a scrapper like Kanye is bound to come up short by comparison. But we probably have him to thank for how well the whole thing works as a piece; album-making is his game, and good luck beating him at it. The black power songs "Murder to Excellence" and "Made in America"—and the sentiments nested throughout—are inspiring no matter your race, the Frank Ocean hooks are gold, and the floss-and-gloss tracks everyone feared would be the whole story upon hearing lead single "Otis" are more aspirational than discouraging for those of us whose net worth Jay-Z spends on an average Tuesday. At home in the stratosphere, Jay and Ye can do what they want. In this case, what they wanted was an Event album (a deeply weird and ambitious one at that), which they took great care to keep from leaking before its street date so we could all hear it for the first time together—and, yes, to encourage us to spring for the deluxe edition on iTunes. Among many other things, these two are living proof that capitalism and generosity of spirit are not mutually exclusive ideals. A-  

Bad Meets Evil: Hell: The Sequel

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: Eminem’s Detroit buddies just don’t bring out the best in him. While it’s true that Royce Da 5’9” has twice the talent as any member of D12, he’s also happy enough to be here that he rarely tries to shift the focus away from tired scatology and woman hate. Fans who missed Slim Shady’s mischief on last year’s Marshall Mathers-heavy Recovery might want to check this out, if only to see what none of us were missing. Em’s rhymes are as acute as ever, but lack the context and wit that separates The Slim Shady LP from D12 World. He’s also cynical enough to say lascivious if not cruel things about an assortment of pop stars, but still bring Bruno Mars in for a hook. The best moments here are those when Em remembers he’s his own best punch line. When one of the many women he douses with epithets reminds him just how much everyone hated Relapse, you want to stand up and cheer. C+

Tune-Yards/Bon Iver

By now you know how much acclaim these ostensible one-person bands—Tune-Yards masterminded by former puppeteer/superhuman performer Merill Garbus, Bon Iver by sensitive soul/insufferable drip Justin Vernon—have enjoyed for their sophomore albums. Sometimes it’s clear what all the fuss is about. Sometimes it isn’t.

Tune-Yards: Who Kill

“There is a freedom in violence that I don’t understand/and like I’ve never felt before.” So shouts Merrill Garbus midway through an album that begins with the intimation of an underclass revolution and ends with a song called “Killa.” There isn’t a lot of peace in between; “violence” is a word Garbus uses as casually as most songwriters use “love,” and her bat-shit arrangements—horn blasts slam up against big beats while guitars blare and sirens wail and yes that is a ukulele you hear—are meant to agitate. Even the love song is jumpy. Garbus shares M.I.A.’s pan-musical ambition and Tom Waits’ knack for repurposing junk. Like those great artists, she is also, on occasion, easier to admire than she is to love; all that kinetic energy can be overwhelming. Then again, how else do you want your revolution? It also helps that Garbus chooses her targets well: manipulative record label execs, unjust cops, the penny-pinching top one percent, and oppressors of all sizes and stripes. In short, she’s one of the good guys, and she sums herself up in the end: ”All my violence is here in my sound/Ready or not/I’m a new kind of killa.” A-

Bon Iver: Bon Iver

For my money, the best musical decision Justin Vernon has made since the release of his massively overrated debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, in 2007 was when he allowed Kanye West to use his (heavily autotuned) voice to both soothing and menacing effect on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Lord knows he’s too dull to have achieved either on his own. Said debut’s oft-repeated back story—Vernon got dumped and retreated to a cabin in the Wisconsin woods to write songs about it—was stereotypic emo-by-numbers, and the songs Emma Whoever She Is inspired were, to my ears, exactly that. To everyone else, Emma was some kind of touchstone, a breakup album so “pure” and “real” that even its boring back story turned to myth. So now we see what a little taste of love can do for the lovelorn. That is, convince them it’s okay to indulge every single idea that comes to mind: gentile arpeggios that build to money-shot walls of sound? At least one per song. Synths and strings? All over the place. Flutes and other various woodwinds? Those’ll age great! Unlike new BFF Mr. West (or Merill Garbus, for that matter), Vernon doesn’t have the taste or the talent to bring all his disparate musical ideas together in one song; he simply pours his paints on the pallet and stirs until they turn gray. The most memorable moment here is the electric keyboard intro to closer “Beth/Rest,” mainly because it sounds like a Christopher Guest joke about singer-songwriters whose emotionality is as direct as it is false. So is Vernon just too sincere to know when he’s being mawkish, or cynical enough to know he can get away with it? You probably shouldn’t trust him either way. C

Consider/Avoid

A few words about what does and doesn't get reviewed on this blog. If you're going to regularly review music, there's nothing more exciting than loving an album. Therefore, any record that, by my own highly subjective standards, deserves an A- or better will get reviewed. So will a strong B+. And since the second most exciting thing about reviewing music is hating something, you'll get some outright pans from time to time too. Of course, most albums aren't deserving of love or hate, and these in-betweens, for the most part, won't get reviewed here. There are exceptions, of course; formerly great or currently overrated artists doing B- work are often worth the blog inches. But one more Brooklyn band named after an animal whose album I'd give a B? You've got better things to read. The same goes for C-grade music I would roll my eyes at but that does not actively offend me. In short: if something doesn't elicit a strong response in me, I won't review it. Still, lots of music that doesn't grab me might grab you. Likewise, just because I don't totally hate something doesn't mean I won't try to steer you away from it. To that end, I'm putting together this list, as I will periodically, of albums I think might be worth your time (Consider), and others I'm quite sure are not (Avoid). They are in descending order of my own affection/admiration for them, and the albums in the Consider column include tracks worth previewing, though if you need to preview Adele you probably haven't walked into a Starbucks this year.

CONSIDER

Drive-By Truckers: Go-Go Boots ("Ray's Automatic Weapon," "Used To Be a Cop," "The Thanksgiving Filter")

The Antlers: Burst Apart ("I Don't Want Love," "No Widows," "Putting The Dog To Sleep")

Lady Gaga: Born This Way ("Marry The Night," "Hair")

Steve Earle: I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive ("The Gulf of Mexico," "Meet Me in the Alleyway")

Gang Gang Dance: Eye Contact ("Chinese High," "Sacer")

Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring For My Halo 
("Puppet to the Man," "Runner Ups")

Adele: 21 ("Rolling in the Deep")

Smith Westerns: Dye It Blonde ("Still New")

AVOID

Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues

Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi: Rome

Moby: Destroyed

New York Dolls: Dancing Backward in High Heels

Anna Calvi: Anna Calvi

Wild Beasts: Smother 

Raphael Saadiq/Lucinda Williams

Two heavyweight songwriters fall short of nobody’s standards but their own. Shout-outs to Robert Christgau and my mother for describing Lucinda's recent songs as litanies before I did.

Raphael Saadiq: Stone Rollin’

“This is just what I hear when I hear music,” Saadiq told a rapt crowd at Irving Plaza back in 2009. From a guy in a natty white suit and Buddy Holly specs, leading a similarly outfitted band through a set of songs that sounded more like Holland-Dozier-Holland joints than any R&B recorded this century, the statement could have been disastrous: a last disingenuous straw in an evening of gimmicks. But Saadiq has a sure hand. He inhabits the early-60s soul man role so convincingly, and with such ease, that it seems a serious injustice to call him retro—note that Jay-Z sounded more at home on 2008’s masterly The Way I See It than really-retro Joss Stone did. This follow-up is grittier, and has as much to do with 50s rock n’ roll as it does 60s soul. That was Saadiq bopping around with Mick Jagger during the Solomon Burke tribute at the Grammies this year, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who’d have fit the bill better. Everything here is much looser and less focused than The Way I See It, and side A, to speak in the parlance of the era Saadiq loves so explicitly, is a good measure stronger than side B. But fast and loose is fun too, and there is never any doubting the depth of Saadiq’s love—for communicating the joy of his craft, for warmth, for making a tune go go go. That won’t stop anyone from calling him retro, but let’s look at it the other way: would “Day Dreams,” about maxing out your credit card to impress your baby, resonate as deeply in less debt-ridden times? I’d wager yes. A-

Lucinda Williams: Blessed

The music is so rich and satisfying—like no Williams album since Car Wheels On A Gravel Road—that it’s easy to overlook some of the lyrical shortcomings. Lucinda’s been moving away from the scene-setting details that defined her earliest and best work (remember how cold that Corona was against Sylvia’s hand in “The Night’s Too Long”?) ever since 2001’s Essence. She leans toward litanies now—not a bad way to lean, given her way with incremental repetition. But she owes us something better than “we were blessed by the watchmaker who gave up his time.” When we see the widow who doesn’t yet know she’s a widow push her daughter on a merry-go-round in “Soldier’s Song,” we’re thankful for the image—for the people and the things—even if the song gets a little cozy with the platitudes. Quite a few of them do. But this is still Lucinda Williams, still the most well regarded writer in a family that also includes her father, who was Bill Clinton’s second inaugural poet. So we still get stuff like “Seeing Black,” which honors her late friend Vic Chesnutt without letting him off the hook for the way he went out, and “I Don’t Know How You’re Livin,’” which offers further proof that no one knows how to miss somebody the way Lucinda does. Of course, the latter also recalls the superior “Are You Alright?” a little too blatantly. Sometimes greatness comes back to haunt you. B+

TV on the Radio/Tennis

Songs of love that revel in worldly context and others that shun it, delivered on scales big and small. While I have no preference when it comes to scale, I am always grateful for some context.

TV on the Radio: Nine Types of Light

The golden age these Chroniclers of Our Times foresaw in 2008 did not come to pass, so what now? The attempt at love, naturally. That’s not a new thing for this band, and nothing else on their fourth album is either. Still musically omnivorous, their arrangements are lighter on their feet this time around, and, it must be said, less surprising; this is the first TVOTR album that sounds better on the first listen than it does on the fifth. Good thing it makes a hell of a first impression then. If Return to Cookie Mountain and Dear Science made you work for it, this one, as if recognizing that our national moment feels less like the fiery apocalypse of a few years ago than a winter that just won’t end, warms you up right away. Half the songs are relationship songs explicitly, but they’ve got conflict and context to spare; Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone are as direct with the words as they and their band mates are with the music. Lines about bastards who broke the world, landmines for miles, and bullshit that keeps you stuck up on the shelf raise the stakes on their lover’s pleas/laments/reveries. Most pleasing is that their gift for uplift (an underused word for this band, from my view) has never come through clearer. Holding fast to their belief that “love is the province of the brave,” they make their fight for it sound valiant. “Every lover on a mission/shift your known position,” they command at the start. That kind of bravery is hard, but I appreciate the encouragement. A-

Tennis: Cape Dory

What this sweet little album about a yacht trip real-life married folk/band mates Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore took up the Eastern Seaboard lacks in weight is nearly made up for by its effervescent tunes, the ease of which suits these charming songs-at-sea perfectly. From “South Carolina” to “Bimini Bay,” Riley and Moore’s time off the grid will make you wish you had a boat, or at least more vacation time. If a whole record about a voyage undertaken by two people in what sounds like an admirably healthy relationship doesn’t strike you as, you know, exciting, bear in mind that it’s short – here and gone like a summer breeze. Pleasant and insubstantial like one, too. B+