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+

Saigon/Ghostface Killah

Fans of East Coast rap who have lost count of how many albums Ghostface Killah has released in the past half decade are not alone. Neither are those who’ve lost the thread of the Saigon story, which has involved – among other twists and turns – major label drama, a bar brawl with Prodigy of Mobb Deep, and a recurring role on Entourage. Ghost could make good albums like this forever, and he could do it at this pace, but if he wants to deliver another Supreme Clientele or Fishscale, he might want to take his time on the next one. At the moment, I wouldn’t presume to give Saigon any such advice.

Saigon: The Greatest Story Never Told

“I been in the pen/been in the ‘jects…been in a box and back.” In other words, he knows about doing time. The pen and the ‘jects held Saigon for a while, but it was a box at the back of Atlantic Records’ shelf – where A&R buffoons who didn’t hear a hit kept this world-beating debut for the better part of a decade before producer Just Blaze finagled a way to release it on an indie – that had him contemplating retirement. Pray he’s left those thoughts behind. Much has been made of Saigon’s moralism, and rightfully so, but even more important are his empathy (enormous) and his honesty (bracing). He blasts the drug dealer who enlisted his services when he was barely an adolescent, but admits he still thinks about calling the guy to hang out when he’s feeling lonely; he hangs onto his faith while asking God what gives; and he vocalizes hard for the young African Americans – in the ‘jects, the pen, and boxes all their own – he deems the Abandoned Nation (also the name of a foundation he runs to assist kids whose parents are behind bars). The ex-con who triumphs through music is rap’s version of the Rocky story, but Hustle & Flow this is not. Quick to call himself a conscious rapper, Saigon never condescends the way conscious types sometimes do, and, better still, his consciousness has breadth. To be clear, no one with this many Just Blaze beats is required to use them toward the public good of indicting for-profit religion’s crass manipulation of the poor. Saigon does. A

Ghostface Killah: Apollo Kids

Unless you’ve yet to hear enough about how he and his goon buddies used to sell crack and run trains, this is not indispensible. The man born Dennis Cole is now a 40-year-old father of four. No wonder he’s more convincing referring to himself as “Grandpa Ghost” than he is for the entirety of “Handcuffin’ Them Hoes,” a misogynist goon-fest every bit as tedious as the title makes you fear it will be. Sometimes it’s easy to forget this is the same guy who wrote “Save Me Dear,” to say nothing of “All That I Got Is You.” But when Joell Ortiz and The Game show up to help Ghost tell us about that time they happened upon some other goon dumb enough to steal from them while waiting, ten beers deep, for Whoppers at the Burger King drive-thru? Or the one about the Father of the Year candidate who uses his son’s Nintendo as a blunt-force weapon? I’ll sit at this guy’s knee for hours if it means I get to hear stories as wonderfully crass and detailed as that. B+

The Strokes/R.E.M.

If either of these bands favored burning out over fading away, they missed their chance. Truth be told, R.E.M. had a far more noble option, and one that’s all too rare in rock: to bow out gracefully. They used to say they’d hang it up if any one member wanted to quit. But that was before they signed what was, at the time, the most lucrative record contract in history. And while I hope that wasn’t the only reason they carried on after Bill Berry quit in 1997, I also have to wonder whose heart is still in this. Because I’m an optimist, I hope the Strokes hold on a while longer. But I also hope neither Julian Casablancas nor I lives long enough to see his band become a corporation, which, no matter who won’t say so, is exactly what R.E.M. is now.

The Strokes: Angles

I’m among the very lucky subset of youngish music obsessives who got to buy the first Strokes album as a CD and listen to it for the first time in a tiny dorm room. Given the fact that I’ll remember those 36 minutes for the rest of my life, it’s a shame I’ve already forgotten how half of these songs go. This is the first Strokes album to feature songwriting from all five members of the band, and it sounds like a case of too many elegantly wasted cooks in the kitchen. Even more frustrating is that, while Julian Casablancas was by all accounts not in the same room as his band mates when these songs were recorded, a few of them are actually thrilling. “Taken For a Fool” and “Under Cover of Darkness,” especially, demonstrate just how much punch their neurotic boogie can pack. But four albums was all they owed RCA, and, unlike R.E.M., they’re not into redemption narratives. So, is this it? I don’t necessarily buy the line that longevity is impossible for this band – they’ve got the ideas and they’ve got the ambition. But I also can’t deny that I got the highest my first time. B

R.E.M.: Collapse Into Now

What you've heard is true: R.E.M., as much as any American band that ever became the biggest or best, reached the top with honor. They repped noble causes, refused to license their songs to commercials, and shared songwriting credit equally. But more to the point: they went ten straight albums without making a bad one, or – while they always had their signature moves – the same one twice (some may hold up a halting finger and say something dismissive about Monster or New Adventures in Hi-Fi, but I keep my copies close, and recommend dusting yours off if they’re around.). More impressive still was how quickly they did it. Consider this: a decade on from their debut, the Strokes have released four albums in total, and there's a reason you probably haven't heard much about two of them. Ten years after Murmur, R.E.M. had already released their eighth – the classic-on-arrival Automatic For The People. Now we get album 15, and their fifth since Bill Berry’s departure. One of my fellow R.E.M. fans has rightfully noted that their last, 2008’s quick-and-hard Accelerate, lacked the singular identity this band used to exude, but it also served notice that Buck, Mills, and Stipe were recommitting themselves to making band albums again after the beating they took for 2004’s slow-and-soft Around The Sun. They’ve taken a step back here, with Stipe turning in some of the worst lyrics of his career (“the annals of our flavored times” is an awfully big bummer coming from the man who wrote “Nightswimming”) and Buck & Mills working overtime to recapture 90’s glories. But Berry isn’t coming back, and he took something immeasurable from this famously democratic band when he left. Their formula’s bound to hit once in a while: “Discoverer” gives the impression that these 50-something multi-millionaires still feel they have discoveries left to make, and “Oh My Heart,” while a touch corny, is deeply felt. Most of the others feel like – and this word hurts – product. Out Of Time has never sounded sweeter or sadder. B-

Lykke Li/Yuck

Youth hurts. Here are two excellent examples of how.

Lykke Li: Wounded Rhymes

The song titles say it all. Three in sequence: “Love Out Of Lust,” “Unrequited Love,” “Get Some.” That’s a story as old as time, and one that’s bound to repeat itself. But it’s her story now, and she’ll tell it her way: with walls of sound like those of Phil Spector himself, who was by no means being glib in describing them as “little symphonies for the kids,” and with smarts that allow her to follow the above triptych with “Rich Kid Blues,” which she knows she has, in case you were afraid she wasn’t also self aware. “Youth Knows No Pain” at the outset, but only because she’s drunk and dancing – she’s devoting herself to sadness before all is said and done. She’s grown more assured since her debut (she was 21 then and she’s 25 now) and also (because she was 21 then and she’s 25 now) more bruised. “I’ll get back what I gave my men/Get back what I lost to them,” she pledges in “Unrequited Love.” We know how that will turn out, but so does she. So don’t go saying you told her so. A-

Yuck: Yuck

“Everybody has a mild crucifixion,” sings front man Daniel Blumberg on this young British quartet’s dreamy debut. Like every thwarted romantic of a certain age, Blumberg doesn’t have it quite as bad as he thinks he does. Thankfully, he and his mates know how to tune their guitars to that magic key between spiky and sweet – a great one for selling lyrics that confuse breakups with heart attacks and girls' names with benedictions. “Me and my guitar/drowning down down down/ready when the pain kicks in,” goes the opener. Theirs is a familiar song, still worth playing after all these years for its ability to thwart disillusionment the way one’s mid-twenties thwart romanticism. A-