record reviews

May 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

THE BLACK KEYS

Album: “Brothers”

Grade: A

Sometimes, more is really more. For five albums, the Akron, Ohio, duo The Black Keys has done impressive work, drawing mainly on loud guitar riffs and brute force, with a touch of inventiveness.

On “Brothers” (Nonesuch), singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney take a whole new approach, a broader one that proves to be even more effective than the raw, blues-oriented one they have used for years. Working with hip-hop and R&B stars on last year’s “Blakroc” project has stuck with them, leading to a new interest in bass lines and soulful vocals that suits them well.

“Everlasting Light” kicks things off with a surprise, as Auerbach adopts a sultry falsetto for the gospel-tinged lyrics that play nicely against the soulful backing vocals and the chugging guitar and bass. There’s a breeziness to the Danger Mouse-produced single “Tighten Up” that balances the intense drum work and retro-soul guitar, giving it that retro-futuristic vibe that Gnarls Barkley does so well. And the faithful cover of Jerry Butler’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” shows how recording at the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama seeped into Auerbach’s delivery.

These excursions don’t mean The Black Keys have abandoned their original sound, still around in “She’s Long Gone” and “Unknown Brother,” but they have added so much to it that we never knew it needed. “Brothers” isn’t just the best Black Keys album yet, it’s the album that will introduce them to a brand new world of fans.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

REFLECTION ETERNAL

Album: “Revolutions Per Minute”

Grade: A

Rapper Talib Kweli and producer Hi-Tek have paired well with unlikely collaborators — Kweli on songs with Justin Timberlake and UGK, Hi-Tek as beatmaker for 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg — but they’ve always seemed destined to work together.

In 1998, they teamed up for Kweli and Mos Def’s Black Star; two years later, under the moniker Reflection Eternal, they released an album of their own, “Train of Thought.” “Revolutions Per Minute” (Blacksmith/Warner Bros.) is the follow-up to that record, and it’s both fresh and nostalgic.

Hi-Tek excels at soulful, roomy tracks with bursts of funk and crisp percussion, and here, he offers some of the finest beats of his career. Kweli plays the perfect narrator, dancing with the somber rhythms in “City Playgrounds” and “Lifting Off,” and knocking around the drums in “Back Again” and “Ballad of the Black Gold.” This is conscious rap without an agenda: Just when things get too serious, Estelle drops by for “Midnight Hour,” turning the revolution into a party.

— Michael Pollock, Philadelphia Inquirer

BOBBY MCFERRIN

Album: “VOCAbuLarieS”

Grade: A

It’s ridiculous to call this album pop; it’s an insult to call it perfect. Supervocalist Bobby McFerrin enlisted composer Roger Treece (who should be even more prominently co-credited) to compose complete pieces — full-on serious works — based on McFerrin tunes, phrases, nice bits. Seven years later, Treece came back with these astonishing creations.

McFerrin recruited more than 50 of the best singers in the world and individually recorded them; the album (EmArcy) comprises more than 1,400 vocal tracks.

These are fabulous singers, such as Kim Nazarian and Darmon Meader of New York Voices, Janis Siegel of Manhattan Transfer, Brazilian trailblazer Luciana Souza, the amazing Joey Blake and Rhiannon (from Voicestra, McFerrin’s improv vocal group) — and R&B goddess and longtime Rolling Stones singer Lisa Fischer, second soloist here.

This virtual choir sings right off the planet, synthesizing all McFerrin has explored, Bach, tuva, the African diasporas, reggae, Qawwali, nursery rhymes. “Baby,” the first piece, about how infants watch adults, is so unbearably good you’re almost afraid to listen to the rest. (But you should — the high standard never flags.)

In “Baby,” Treece elevates a McFerrin concert favorite from charming/ cutesy into stratospheric, gleeful profundity. The way the chorus settles on the line “Have you thought about whatcha bring your baby up to be” stuns — it just stuns.

The first four tracks are a postmodern oratorio on language, music, and meaning, vocabularies that bust apart, stripped down to the keening ululations of “Wailers.” The last three pieces open out into matters of the spirit. McFerrin knows he’s being pushed, and he responds. His blues scatting (over Indian melismatics!) in “He Ran to the Train,” or his vulnerable pas de deux with Fischer in “Brief Eternity,” the KO finale, elbow dozens of high points that gun VOCAbuLarieS beyond pleasure to lasting joy.

— John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

Album: “Together”

Grade: A-

It’s easy to see where A.C. Newman, one of the leaders of Canadian rockers the New Pornographers, stumbled. When you make two perfect albums in a row, it’s generally to be assumed that you’re used up, at least for a bit, which goes double when your trade is in pop.

Newman and company weren’t quite tapped: The singles “Use It” and “Sing Me Spanish Techno” were so good they made people think they, too, were on a great album, and “Mutiny, I Promise You” added a tricky time-stutter to those old reliable chord shifts. But you could tell Newman was nervous about running out. He tried to sidestep the bottom of the barrel with wandering ballads (“The Bones of an Idol”) and prog symphonics (“All the Old Showstoppers”), and he let Dan “Destroyer” Bejar, also a lead singer and writer, run amok with psychedelic ambition (“Myriad Harbour”).

But none of those worked as well as the power-pop, which sounded easy and rewarded hard.

The New Pornographers’ new “Together” (Matador) breaks this pattern and finally might afford them a life after hooks. The first few tracks come simple enough: one-dimensional thrashing on “Your Hands [Together],” Bejar Anglo-jangling like the Monkees on “Silver Jenny Dollar,” Neko Case (yet a third prominent vocalist and writer in this talented band) competing for space with a whistled hook, of all things, on “The Crash Years.”

But for once the best songs aren’t the catchiest ones, and the places they go are actually surprising, like the way the brisk “Up in the Dark” keeps stacking on harmonies, or how the lovely “Valkyrie in the Roller Disco” glides to heaven via piano and banjo. And the baroque “Daughter of Sorrow” is Bejar’s most straightforwardly gorgeous performance since “Streets of Fire.” While no tracks on “Together” peak as high as a “The Laws Have Changed” or “Use It,” it’s the New Pornographers’ easiest full-album listen in years.

— Dan Weiss, Philadelphia Inquirer

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

Album: “This Is Happening”

Grade: A

LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy hones the grand style of his “Sound of Silver” album to an even finer indie-dance point with “This Is Happening” (DFA). There are extended dance anthems to burn — especially the thrilling “Dance Yourself Clean” and “Pow Pow,” while the single “Drunk Girls” is a jaunty, more focused “North American Scum.”

But it’s the “Heroes”-era David Bowie flair of “All I Want” and the punk rebelliousness of “You Wanted a Hit,” clocking in at a radio-unfriendly nine-minutes-plus, that guarantee “This Is Happening” will be the soundtrack to cool spaces all summer long.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday