record reviews

April 18, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

‘Congratulations’

MGMT (Columbia)

Grade: B

While Oracular Spectacular, the first album from Brooklyn’s MGMT, placed them in the Flaming Lips school of lysergic pop, “Congratulations,” their second, rips pages from the British psychedelic songbook.

“It’s Working,” with its heavily reverbed tenor vocals, massed harmonies, harpsichord, and galloping drums, recalls early Pink Floyd, the Zombies, even the Moody Blues.

There’s an overt homage to Brian Eno (“we’re always one step behind him”), and a 12-minute track with a spoken-word midsection and what sounds like a children’s choir. And the album was produced with cult- hero Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 and Spectrum.

But the album rarely sounds like pastiche. It floats and shimmers — it’s a very trebly album — and then flows and drifts at the end, with “Lady Dada’s Nightmare” (a dreamy instrumental disrupted by horror-movie screams) and the title track (an acoustic ballad that satirizes star-making machinery, a sort of follow-up to the first album’s “Time to Pretend”).

“Congratulations” are indeed in order.

— Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Midnight Souvenirs’

Peter Wolf

(UMe/Verve)

Grade: A

With “Overnight Lows,” Peter Wolf offers up a perfectly realized homage to Philly soul. It’s a lush bedroom ballad with the strings, the falsetto, the background vocals — and a comical recitation by Wolf that recalls his days as a jive-talking DJ and the front man for the J. Geils Band.

Like “Overnight Lows,” much of “Midnight Souvenirs” has a late-night feel, though it’s rarely as lighthearted.

The album, his first in eight years, continues the often intimate, soul-baring style the 64-year-old Wolf has developed over his solo career, and one that remains richly rewarding.

If many of the songs sound downbeat on the surface — from “Tragedy” (with Shelby Lynne) to “The Green Fields of Summer” (with Neko Case) and especially the closer, “It’s Too Late for Me” (with Merle Haggard) — the album ultimately does not. That’s because of the way classic R&B, country, and rock-and-roll still fire Wolf’s passion, and inform his music.

“I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I’m going to see it through,” he declares on “There’s Still Time.”

And, amid the heavy sense of mortality, he’s still setting goals, in this case courtesy of Allen Toussaint: “Everything I Do [Gonna Be Funky].”

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘The Deep End’

Christine Ohlman and Rebel Montez

(Horizon Music Group)

Grade: A

Christine Ohlman is the blond, beehived guitarist and singer with the “Saturday Night Live” band. She also has notable musical friends, several of whom appear on her new album. But make no mistake: If Ian Hunter, Dion DiMucci, Marshall Crenshaw, Levon Helm, G.E. Smith, Big Al Anderson and Eric Ambel draw you into “The Deep End,” it’s Ohlman who ends up making the biggest impression. As in: Wow.

The husky-voiced singer is a full-package talent, a dynamic rocker who draws on soul and blues in ways that give her music a classic feel even as it pulses with her own personality.

The album title is telling: As a writer, Ohlman digs pretty deep here, drawing on personal loss.

From the title song (with Hunter) through the post-Katrina lament “The Cradle Did Rock” and on to “The Gone of You,” it’s not always a joyride in an emotional sense.

But it all hits home, and her originals stand up to her superb revivals of an old Southern soul gem (“Cry Baby Cry,” with Dion), a Motown nugget (Marvin Gaye and Mary Wells’ “What’s the Matter With You Baby,” with Crenshaw), and Link Wray’s “Walking Down the Street Called Love.”

After hearing this knockout, you’ll no doubt want to check out Ohlman’s earlier work. A good place to start is with the 2008 compilation “Re-hive.”

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

‘A Little Night Music’

2009 Broadway cast, Stephen Sondheim

(Nonesuch)

Grade: B-

The reaction filtering down from New York City on the recent “A Little Night Music” Broadway revival has been less than glowing at best and vaguely dissatisfied at worst.

Now we can hear why: The new, two-disc cast recording of this romantic comedy of manners, set in turn-of-the-20th-century Sweden, shows everybody up to the singing and acting demands but wearing their roles like ill-fitting costumes.

From Catherine Zeta-Jones (Desiree) to Angela Lansbury (Madame Armfeldt), charismatic flourishes are certainly heard.

But more often, the cast lacks a clear compass as to what emotional direction to face at any given turn.

So they go for big laughs — punching the show’s many witty lines and lyrics as hard as possible while crossing the fine line between stylization and affectation, in the less desirable direction.

Is it possible to love “Send in the Clowns” to death? Zeta-Jones comes close, splintering the vocal lines by fussing over the words in marginally relevant ways.

Worst of all, the lush orchestration of the original cast albums (New York and London) is replaced by something smaller and threadbare.

Is there any reason to have this set? Yes: The recording artfully includes dialogue that sketches out the plot and gives a great emotional context for almost every song.

— David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer