Sunday, October 21, 2012
Jamey Johnson
Album: “Living For A Song: A Tribute To Hank Cochran” (Mercury)
Grade: A
Jamey Johnson set out to honor one of the most successful songwriters in country music history with “Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran.” He does that — and much more.
He also honors other heroes and favorite vocalists, by inviting them to participate. Pairing with such legendary figures as Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Ray Price and George Strait, Johnson shares beloved songs with many of the distinctive voices that shaped his ideas of what country music can achieve.
In a broader sense, he also honors the highest qualities of country music — not just its great songs and its great voices, but also how sublime an old-school Nashville studio recording can sound when done with care by outstanding musicians.
Co-producing with Buddy Cannon and Dale Dodson, Johnson creates a traditional country masterpiece by taking classic songs, re-arranging them in fresh ways, then focusing on subtly bringing out the emotion in each song through both the vocal and instrumental interplay.
Each recording makes a case for why Johnson loves country music, and he lets everyone else involved in their project share in that love. Any listener who loves classic country music will enjoy hearing it as much as those involved enjoyed making it.
— Michael McCall, Associated Press
Brandy
Album: “Two Eleven” (RCA/Chameleon Records)
Grade: A
Not many singers have released six consistently amazing albums. Brandy has.
Her newest, “Two Eleven,” is a collection of R&B songs that are personal, flavored and fantastic. The album doesn’t miss a beat, as Brandy’s raspy-yet-earthy tone weaves into each song’s beat nicely to create outstanding tracks.
First single and R&B hit “Put It Down,” co-starring Chris Brown, is full of swag and one of the year’s best thanks to its addictive beat, courtesy of producers Bangladesh and Sean Garrett. And when she slows it down, Brandy is just as good: “Do You Know What You Have” is smooth and top-notch, as is the Rico Love-penned “Hardly Breathing.”
Most of “Two Eleven,” which features songwriting by Frank Ocean, Mario Winans and Breyon Prescott, finds the 33-year-old singing about a relationship — she’s happy at times and questioning her man at others. The jams “So Sick” and “Wish Your Love Away” are self-explanatory, but then there’s “Slower,” a love tune co-written by Brown, and the upbeat “Let Me Go,” which samples a Lykke Li song and is about her lover keeping her around.
— Mesfin Fekadu, Associated Press
Jason Aldean
Album: “Night Train” (Broken Bow)
Grade: A
Jason Aldean blends hard-rock sonics with country music themes better than any of his contemporaries, as he proves on his fifth album, “Night Train.”
But his multiplatinum success depends just as much on his willingness to break formulas and take chances. Aldean has made every album with producer Michael Knox as well as with his road band backing him in the studio. That symbiotic relationship keeps getting tighter and more ferocious with each outing. It gives Aldean’s music an edge lacking in most current Nashville country rockers.
“Night Train” shows how confident the singer is in his crew. There’s the fierce guitar squawks set against the arena-rock drum beats in the chorus of “Feel That Again.” There’s the Zeppelin-style acoustic opening of “Wheels Rollin’,” which also features an imaginative guitar solo. And a synthesized carnival sound pops up behind the rocking arrangement of “This Nothin’ Town.” No one else in country music is creating music that sounds anything like these songs.
— Michael McCall, Associated Press
DIANA KRALL
Album: “Glad Rag Doll” (Verve)
Grade: A
Diana Krall’s last album, 2009’s “Quiet Nights,” was quintessential Krall: a tasteful, careful, and artfully easygoing set of bossa-nova tunes. “Glad Rag Doll” is an anomaly: It’s a lively, loose, and swinging bunch of old pop nuggets, mainly culled from Krall’s father’s collection of 78s of songs from the ’20s and ’30s.
T Bone Burnett produced, and he assembled some of his favorite players — guitarist Marc Ribot, drummer Jay Bellarose, bassist Dennis Crouch, with a few guest turns from Krall’s husband, Elvis Costello — to accompany Krall’s sexy, sometimes bluesy, singing and her surprisingly forceful piano. While not exactly Krall’s rock record, “Glad Rag Doll” fits with Burnett-produced albums by Sam Phillips and Robert Plant/ Alison Krauss: It’s earthy and precise, with moments of edgy friction, and Krall sounds like she’s having fun.
— Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer
LUPE FIASCO
Album: “Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, Part 1” (Atlantic)
Grade: A
Contending with Lupe Fiasco is no easy task. On his last album, “Lasers,” the cerebral rapper played fair-and-balanced by dissing Glenn Beck and Barack Obama while crafting an alternate ending to American slavery with stunning strangeness. Each album before “Lasers” had trouble in mind — lyrical or musical, drifting as Fiasco does into vampy, operatic prog-hop on occasion.
That’s Fiasco’s calling card: no single answer, no simple twist. To call his work heady and provocative is an understatement.
With zero connection to 2006’s debut, “Food & Liquor” (save for his usual cluster of wise rhymes), Fiasco goes about borrowing from hip-hop’s bible, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You [T.R.O.Y.],” for his incendiary “Around My Way [Freedom Ain’t Free].” On “Audubon Ballroom,” the ghosts of Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes are vividly alive in the ferocious Fiasco as he cries out: “I rap black history/ you can only see my past if you fast/ forward.”
His music may drift and be wifty, but as a rapper, Lupe Fiasco is sniper-sharp.
— A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer