Album Reviews for June 15, 2012
Usher
Usher
LOOKING 4 MYSELF
In the last decade, Usher, along with Justin Timberlake and Beyonce, was part of an elite group of pop acts who released back-to-back albums that were epic and masterful.
These days, Usher still racks up hit singles (“OMG,” “Love In This Club” to name a few), but he hasn’t produced an album as brilliant since. And he still hasn’t.
But the entertaining Looking 4 Myself is his best attempt at making magical music following Here I Stand and Raymond v. Raymond, lackluster albums saved by a few sterling songs.
Usher’s 14-track set is a multi-genre affair: There are mid-tempo grooves like “Show Me,” as well as bedroom R&B (“Dive”), rhythmic hip-hop (“Lemme See”), upbeat pop (“Twist”) and electro-dance numbers (“Scream,” “Numb,” “Euphoria”).
But the be-all-things-to-all-people approach doesn’t always work: “Scream,” the current single produced by Max Martin, is like everything else on top 40 radio.
Like many of Chris Brown’s Euro-flavored jams, this one could easily be performed by another act. It’s flavorless and generic — words normally not used to describe Usher’s music.
Usher sounds better on “Numb” and “Euphoria,” both written and produced by Swedish Mafia House and Klas Ahlund, the main producer behind Swedish dance singer Robyn. Still, those songs don’t come close to “Yeah!” or even “Without You” with David Guetta.
Overall, Looking is a hit: The title track, which features Luke Steele of Empire of the Sun, is amazing, Rick Ross adds to the greatness of “Lemme See” and “Lessons for the Lover” is Usher doing R&B like it should be done.
Mesfin Fekadu
The Associated Press
Neil Young and Crazy Horse
AMERICANA
For his offbeat yet thoroughly Young-ian Americana, Neil Young reunites with Crazy Horse, the band he’s recorded so much classic rock music with during his long career. Young-Crazy Horse album collaborations include Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush and Rust Never Sleeps.
Individual songs include Young standards “Down by the River,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Southern Man” and “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).”
But Young, lacking new material when he entered the studio with Crazy Horse for their first album together in nine years, interprets American folk songs, Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna,” Billy Grammer’s 1959 country hit “Gotta Travel On” and even the anthem sung in the United Kingdom, its territories and Commonwealth of Nations member states, “God Save the Queen.”
The group also reinvents murder ballad “Tom Dooley,” old West favorite “Oh My Darling, Clementine” and 20th-century folk-protest song “This Land is Young Land.” Distorted electric guitar leads and chords, rock drums and — in contrast to the album’s otherwise rough edges — chorale, even celestial backup vocals effectively transform the old songs into 21st century garage rock.
“Tom Dooley,” renamed “Tom Dula,” runs eight minutes and 13 seconds. The song’s new epic length and original dark subject matter make it a natural follow-up to Young’s own, nearly 10-minute-long classic, “Down By the River.”
Keeping on the cloudy side of life, the group renders “Gallows Pole” as a macabre hoedown. “Travel On” trades the original’s smooth pop-country gloss for a heavy rock groove worthy of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
The usually cheery “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” grows apocalyptic as the band reclaims the song’s original Negro spiritual, end-of-the-world connotation.
Throughout the album, Young’s guitar rides are, while far from virtuoso, always unmistakably his own.
Still on fire after all these years, Young and Crazy Horse are booked Oct. 26 for the annual Voodoo Experience music festival in New Orleans.
John Wirt
Patti Smith
BANGA
Singer-songwriter-poet Patti Smith’s muse wanders productively through Banga, her first album of new songs, recitations and improvisations in eight years. She’s joined by band members Tony Shanahan, Jay Dee Daugherty, original Patti Smith Group member Lenny Kaye and a string quartet in this project that navigates from ancient Rome to the New World in the 15th century to the death of a 21st-century pop star.
A talented writer of poetry and prose, Banga follows the 2010 publication of Smith’s book, Just Kids. The memoir of her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe won the National Book Award for nonfiction.
In the essay that fills the CD’s accompanying booklet, Smith explains the inspirations for Banga’s songs. Her natural, lovely writing adds much additional value to the package.
Smith calls “Amerigo,” a poetic re-imagining of Amerigo Vespucci’s New World exploration, the album’s overture. The song’s music, vaguely Indian in a ’60s sort of way, might have gotten the punk-rock poet knocked if she’d created it back in that reactionary time in music, the ’70s.
A ’60s ambience rises again in the swirl of mystic guitars in “Fugi-San,” which Smith conceived of as a song of consolation for the people of Japan following last year’s tsunami and earthquake.
A few songs were inspired by fallen stars. “This Is The Girl” slow dances like a sad ballad from the early ’60s. Based on a poem Smith wrote after singer Amy Winehouse’s death, it includes spoken lines. The death of troubled actress Maria Schneider led to the graceful “Maria.”
Smith adopts a nasal, Bob Dylan snarl for “Banga,” the album’s abrasive title track. As grating as “Banga” is, the collection also features a song that’s as much a sweet, melodic pop tune as Smith has ever recorded, “April Fool.”
Banga’s title song may not deserve title track status, but the recording as a whole reaffirms Smith’s creative vitality. Her frequently beautiful new opus is worthy of many return visits.
John Wirt