New Recordings
Pop
Regina SpektorFar
(Sire ****)
Enlisting four producers for this fourth album, New York singer/songwriter/
pianist Regina Spektor remains a mighty iconoclast, her expressively flighty singing and offbeat lyrics in full effect from the jaunty start of "The Calculation." She goes on to wrangle vocal harmonies from Jeff Lynne on several tracks, approximate a dolphin on "The Folding Chair," sing an ode to "the most human color" on the organ-humming "Blue Lips," and sing through a vocoder alongside Reggie Watts' beat-boxing on "Dance Anthems of the '80s," which fittingly evolves into dreamy '80s-style pop. There's an apocalyptic vibe to the creepy "Machine," all insistent keys and splintered percussion, and on "The Wallet," Spektor excitedly presents more tiny snapshots of daily life that graduate from mundane to profound in her able, fearless hands.
- Doug Wallen
Wilco
Wilco (The Album)
(Nonesuch ***)
Wilco's seventh studio album is the Jeff Tweedy-led Chicago alt-rock band's second straight non-experimental outing. Following 2007's softly straightforward Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) kicks off with the jaunty fan thank-you "Wilco (The Song)" - "Wilco will love you, baby," the raspy-as-ever Tweedy sings - and settles into a dependable, careworn comfort zone. Occasionally, a ruckus is raised, as on the throbbing keyboard blast "Bull Black Nova," in which avant ax man Nels Cline comes closest to really cutting loose. Otherwise, the eponymous set concerns itself less with noisy envelope-pushing, a la 2004's A Ghost Is Born, than with delivering rock-solid tunesmithery about life's little ups and downs. "You and I," a duet with Feist, is a lovely love song that's mildly underwhelming considering its indie-star-power quotient. And "You Never Know," is a "My Sweet Lord"-referencing cool breeze whose "I don't care anymore" hook finds Tweedy insisting he's put the anxiety that riddled earlier Wilco efforts behind him.
That sense of calm makes Wilco (The Album) less thrilling, but still satisfying, and Wilco the Band ripe for reinvention, next time around.
- Dan DeLuca
Wilco will perform at Frawley Stadium in Wilmington on July 10. Tickets: $35. Phone: 1-800-374-7263. Online: www.ticketsatthegrand.org.
Cam'ron
Crime Pays
(Asylum ***)
This is Cam'ron circa 2009: the Harlem-based MC at his raw-knuckled best shifting his concerns from the penthouse to the pavements without missing a step.
Lest you think he's headed into the recession-era poorhouse without a fight, think again. Cam'ron likes his coupon-cutting topicality touched by the same liquor-and-drugs Iggy Pop sang of on "Lust for Life."
As the big beat hits and its melody swells, "Get It in Ohio" lets Cam play in the fields of landlords, launderers, "blue pills and Grey Goose" with his flow at its loosest. The song stays the thing on the powerfully contagious "My Job," with its piano-driven pulse pushing Cam's Office Space-like dismay to the max. Every disgusted Everyman and Everywoman will be singing "My Job" this summer. And while there are delicious examples of Cam's usual street- swaggering gamesmanship (a foul "Where I Know You From"), cocksureness ("Who"), and misanthropic romanticism ("Cookies-N-Apple Juice"), his blue-collar approach to rap, rhythm, and melody finds him at his fighting best.
- A.D. Amorosi
Jonas Brothers
Lines, Vines and Trying Times
(Disney *1/2)
At least, the teen idols get points for being ambitious. They also get docked for being overly so.
Right from the start ("World War III", loaded with big-crunch guitars and a punchy horn section), the production dwarfs the Jersey boys' callow songwriting and singing.
"Paranoid" sounds like a kiddie Billy Squier, but that musical posturing is still preferable to the Shania Twain-like "What Did I Do to Your Heart?"
The brothers sound most at home (and most impressive) on the more unadorned ballads like "Black Keys" and "Turn Right."
But first you have to get past "Before the Storm," which features a quavery- voiced Miley Cyrus. (Is she imitating Dolly Parton?)
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