Sunday, March 17, 2013
Bon Jovi
Album: “What About Now” (Island Def Jam)
Grade: B
Why does Bon Jovi crank out an unending string of relentlessly upbeat, unavoidably catchy songs in the style that made the Jersey boys famous 30 years ago and kept them there till now?
Because they can.
The band’s 12th album, “What About Now,” fairly bursts with the encouraging self-help anthems that have long defined the Bon Jovi sound and style, from the early days of Tommy and Gina “Livin’ on a Prayer” to keeping the faith and realizing “It’s My Life.”
One listen to “Because We Can” and its chorus will be burned into your brain forever. It’s one of many Bon Jovi odes to faithfulness, trust, perseverance and a belief that no matter how bad things get, it’ll be OK as long as we hold on tight to each other and don’t lose hope. Richie Sambora adds a harmonic guitar solo adapted from “Capt. Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars” from their 2000 album, “Crush.”
The title track literally sounds like a session with a self-help psychologist, and it’s a sure guarantee you’ll hear this song blaring at Democratic presidential rallies in 2016.
But the most interesting is “Room at the End of the World,” where Bon Jovi sings of heaven as a calm, unhurried place where dead roses bloom again, where truth has its turn, where young love never dies, where there’s no sin and “where we never said goodbye.”
—Wayne Parry, Associated Press
SHOOTER JENNINGS
Album: “The Other Life” (Black Country Rock/Entertainment One Nashville)
Grade: B
Fans of the old Art Bell Coast to Coast radio show — a call-in program about alien encounters that was a staple of Southern late nights in the ’90s — might find a lot to like about Shooter Jennings’ new album, “The Other Life.” There’s a bit of a rural-futurist bent (see “Flying Saucer Song” and “15 Million Light-Years Away”), but more importantly, the album shows how quiet, open spaces can lead to great flights of imagination.
“The Other Life” is a showpiece for Jennings’ familial knack for outlaw-country hell-raising. Note the Skynyrd-isms of “Mama, It’s Just My Medicine” or “The White Trash Song,” a collaboration with Scott H. Biram that’s less a duet than a drinking game. But it’s balanced with ballads of fine, rough beauty. “Wild & Lonesome,” with Patty Griffin, owes its sweetness to Willie Nelson and its hoarseness to Jennings’ dad, Waylon.
The title track is a spare waltz that puts Jennings’ vocals and Erik Deutsch’s bleary piano up front, and it comes pretty close to devastating. It’s the moment you see why Jennings puts so much work into imagining other worlds — because there’s a lot of heartbreak in this one.
—August Brown, Los Angeles Times
David Bowie
Album: “The Next Day” (Columbia-ISO)
Grade: B
Many people wondered if there would be a next day for David Bowie, professionally speaking.
Bowie retreated after suffering a heart attack in 2004, leaving many of his fans to wonder if he had retired. He recorded secretly in New York the past couple of years, announced the imminent release of “The Next Day” on his 66th birthday in January, and has said nothing about its contents publicly.
Absence has clearly made the heart fonder, judging by the pre-release raves for his first new music in 10 years. Simmer down. This does not auger a return to Bowie’s 1970s glory days, although “The Next Day” is certainly more focused than his string of forgettable work in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The album cover and song “Where Are We Now?” harken back to Bowie’s fruitful period in Berlin. The moody, atmospheric song has Bowie, in a voice rendered fragile by age, wandering the German streets again. Like “Heroes,” it ultimately soars and is life-affirming.
It also sounds like nothing else on the disc, not only in tempo but in the personal glimpse it offers. As a songwriter, Bowie is a reporter and sings of medieval evil, the shamed offspring of a prison warden, a soldier wasted by his work, a gleaming young girl in a rotting world. And, unexpectedly, Bob Dylan, in the rocker “[You Will] Set the World on Fire.”
Producer Tony Visconti and Bowie steer the band toward a muscular rock sound. Bowie sounds refreshed, happy to be working at his own pace, and Visconti is one of his best collaborators. Most compelling are “The Stars [Are Out Tonight],” which addresses celebrity as both necessary and an evil, and “Dancing Out in Space.” The track is no space oddity: it’s a thrill ride with a swinging beat and trippy guitar.
The balance is more solid than spectacular. While a welcome return for those who know him, “The Next Day” isn’t likely to get more than a shrug from a new generation of fans.
—David Bauder, Associated Press