John Legend - Once Again

Legend's pop R&B style is smooth enough that his music is almost uniformly pleasant, but a lot of it can barely rise above background music. His sophomore album opens with a one-two punch of "Heaven" and "Stereo," but by the end, it mires itself in slow songs that barely distinguish each other. I'm going to point out "Again" as the spot where things turn sour: backed only by his own piano, it's a 5-minute ballad that's passionate without being particularly moving or pointed. From there, highlights fail to materialize for the rest of it. It makes for pleasant background music, but not much else. I will say that "P.D.A. (We Just Don't Care)" has enough swagger to be a memorable cut away from Once Again.

The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free

The Streets might be a great illustration that hip hop is not necessarily rap and vice-versa. Mike Skinner's music barely even fits into "rap," really, with a kind of drawl-ish delivery only coincidentally seems to sync with the beat. But it's in his relaxed delivery that his detailed narrative finds their heart. Few have captured the kind of middle class ennui present here, where returning a DVD and calling your mother can be such an inconvenience that, well, a song results from it. It's a concept album, but it's one of the rare ones where not a song is wasted on moving the plot forward. The beauty of the concept is its simplicity (guy loses money, must get it back). It recalls silent comedies by Chaplin in the sense that the plot is just window-dressing for a bunch of tangential skits that, maybe, don't add up to a complete sum but on their own are great entertainments.

Wilco - Kicking Television: Live in Chicago

Rarely, you can sum up a live album by what songs appear from what albums. Wilco, however, is a band that lives by its albums; each has such a unique sound, sometimes it's hard to bring the picture together. So really, a live album is perfect for them, highlighting how they're really the same band despite lineup changes and a diverse set of styles. In this case, A Ghost Is Born is improved. "Heavy Metal Drummer" is looser, and "The Late Greats" is in a context where it doesn't sound like a throwaway at the end of a long album. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot seems less like an aberration to their general sound when placed next to Summerteeth and Being There songs. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" sounds natural coming between "Handshake Drugs" and "Shot in the Arm." Summerteeth mixes effortlessly with the aforementioned albums, and the songs chosen from the more roots rock-driven Being There unexpectedly feel at home. Their debut, 3AM was not invited, but a couple songs from their Mermaid Avenue project complete the picture. Until a "Greatest Hits" set is compiled for them (and maybe even after that), Kicking Television works best as a summary of where Wilco were in 2005.

The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

The Cure's greatest gift is texture. They manage to give their core sound - that familiar, brooding kind of rock - various textures that carry them through their occasional double album. "The Kiss" opens the album with a somewhat violent kind of distortion that leads directly into the ballad "The Catch," yet it never sounds unlike The Cure. Elsewhere, they adopt a glam-like stomp on "Why Can't I Be You?" and a sitar drenches "The Snake." There are songs driven by strings, and "Hot, Hot Hot!!!" shows that they can be kind of funky. It's not a consistently compelling set of songs, but it's an erratic double album that tries out various styles without ever abandoning that core Cure sound.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Seduced by "Lisztomania," a giddy pop delight, I'm not completely convinced about the rest of the album. Phoenix's sunny keyboard-driven indie pop approach works well, but when taken over the course of a full album, it gets to be a little same-sounding. Certainly, it's all lovely and dance-oriented, but is that all there is? I do love the centerpiece, "Love, Like a Sunset," parts I and II, which build slowly and cool off within their seven-minute duration. It's not quite the dance utopia created in the rest of the band's songs, which makes it interesting. Another highlight: "Rome," which pulls a similar hot-cold-hot dynamic but with the pop craftsmanship. Okay, I'm convinced.

M-1 - Confidential

M-1's solo album sounds exactly like what it is: a solo album by one half of one of the more political rap duos to gain prominence in the past decade. Strangely, his vocals seem low in the mix, making the beats take precedent over his messages. The beats don't stick as hard as those on Dead Prez's albums, and M-1 himself doesn't have enough personality to carry an album by himself. That's problematic. What's good is that M-1 is a good lyricist, and some songs overcome the shortcomings found all over. "The Beat" is a highlight, with a pulsating production, and "Gunslinger" swings like any good Bo Diddley homage should. "Been Through" features the most R&B-indebted production and features Ghostface," which is a solid recipe for success at this point.

Passion of the Weiss - Top 50 Rap Albums of the '00s

I have a lot of respect for Weiss and his bloggerly friends, and they've compiled a list of the 50 best of the decade. Worth a read if you're into hip-hop:

Passion of the Weiss Top 50 Rap Albums of the '00s: 50-1

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is far from the best album by Sir Elton. It opens like it might be - "Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" is among the best songs of his entire career. The cavalcade of hits - "Bennie and the Jets," "Candle in the Wind," "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," might tell you the same. But it's not. It's a sprawling double-album, but it sags in the time between the first batch of hits and "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting." All of it is competent, but not all of it is entirely engaging. Part of the problem is that it's transitional in nature - following the stripped down, low-key releases of his early career, John was moving in a more showy, pop-inspired direction. For what it is, it's impressive and a great listen, but Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy would prove that John was capable of much, much better as his artistry evolved.

Edan - Beauty and the Beat

A jazzy mix of psychedelia and hip-hop, with vague traces of trip-hop. Occasionally a familiar sound - say, a James Brown grunt - will penetrate the mix, but Edan's sound is all-original. It's like the strangeness of 3 Feet High and Rising without the whimsy. Sound bits, samples, voices fade in and out of the mix while the drums sound like there's a thick layer of smoke in the air with a damp kind of sound. It's a 3 Feet High and Rising for the 00s, tougher and shorter. No skits. A little bit of the weirdness of Kool Keith, but none of the spotty track record.

Ghostface Killah - The Pretty Toney Album

On Ghostface's first album for Def Jam, two things are immediately
noticeable: he leans more on a sort-of loverman persona than on a
hardened gangsta one. How can a rapper carry an entire album of
relationship songs? By having Ghostface's eye for detail, that's how.
His rapid-fire rhymes don't calm down for the hour-plus this runs, and
the beats sound fuller than on past releases, probably due to a higher
production value. If it ranks lower than Supreme Clientele or Fishscale, it's mainly for what the Burgess Merideth soundalike says on the latter: he "ain't been hungry since Supreme Clientele!"
This is all not to say that he leaves street narratives behind - "Run"
is one of the most energetic songs here, and it's a definite highlight.

Company Flow - Funcrusher Plus

"Funcrusher," indeed. El-P, Bigg Jus and Mr. Len are not your friends. Driven like few hip-hop groups since Public Enemy, they present confrontation verbally and sonically. Railing against the system, the man, and as always, wack emcees, their lyrics are packed tight with imagery and multisyllabic words. Sample lyric: "Bigg Jus mind invention the king battle of epic proportions/Lyrical intrigue, the master of contortion/Optimized computerization virus/Paradoxical acoustic sound bombing" (from "The Tragedy of War (In III Parts)"). Musically? It's not funky. They're always vaguely off-kilter, but intentionally. This isn't dance music: the beats don't make you think of a club or a party. but instead, Fight Club in a junk yard. It's a tough kind of complexity that stays rhythmic but sets itself into a niche, knives in hand. Company Flow intends to present you with a challenge, to your worldview, to your listening habits, and it's worth the effort.

Brian Wilson - Smile

How do you rate this album? Nearly 40 years in the making, it started as a Beach Boys album to follow up Pet Sounds and came out a Brian Wilson album out of nowhere Like Chinese Democracy, you have to hold it to some higher standards, right? Unlike Chinese Democracy, it far surpasses those standards, right? It's a pop masterpiece, and if you don't like it, you may want to see a doctor. Ask if your heart is made of coal. I'll grant any naysayers (whom I have never met) this much: "Good Vibrations" probably comes off better as a Beach Boys single.

Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals

When all is said and done, Marilyn Manson's a pretty shitty boogeyman. If anything in his oeuvre can be called scary, it's the darkly ominous Holy Wood. His shock tactics are blatant and shameless, and his lyrics can sometimes border on being an unintelligible mix of naughty words. The music, especially Antichrist Superstar always sound somehow less heavy than they should. So all in all, I prefer Manson when he's being a bit more theatrical. Here, taking a page from Bowie with a semi-concept album about an alien rock star (or some such bullshit) works better than most. Because it's got one Gary Glitter boot firmly in the realm of glam rock, he's free to stretch out a bit. The gospel singers on "I Don't Like the Drugs," for example, add a little bit of flavor to what otherwise would be an interminable stomp. The sinister, snake like first single "The Dope Show" ranks as the best track here, but the rest has a sort of flamboyant charm to it, making it my second favorite Manson album (first place goes to the absurd The Golden Age of Grotesque).

Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown

This is Green Day's most ambitious album, probably. Divided into three mini-suites, the album continues American Idiot in sound and mood, if not in plot or characters. It lacks the zeitgeist of its predecessor, though, coming a bit too late. A few months after the end of the Bush administration can make a big difference, so the songs here feel like grumpy remnants of a long-gone era when they shouldn't and truly aren't. It's too bad, though, since some of the songs on here rank with Green Day's best, including "21 Guns" and "Last of the American Girls." It's possible that this set of songs, not quite as married to the political climate of the 2004 election, might age better than American Idiot. For now, though, it's the lesser of the two. Also, listening to it in 3 separate sittings is highly recommended: no matter how many tricks Green Day learns, a straight 80 minutes is still a long time to spend hearing politics from the guy who wrote "Longview."

Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop

Cosmic Slop is one of the lesser Funkadelic releases, with only the title track ranking as one of their best, but thankfully the songs are all short. Not that their bad - but hearing any of these elongated too far would throw the album off-kilter. Funk in general, but especially that overseen by George Clinton in his prime, has the benefit of working as background music when it's not great. Funkadelic, too, is a very technically sound band, so it's never bad. It's just mediocre.

Say Anything - ...Is a Real Boy/Was a Real Boy

Normally, my tolerance for navel-gazing emo bands is somewhat low, but Max Bemis backs himself (he plays nearly everything but percussion and some keyboards here and there) with enough musical muscle to make his self-aware (he's in a band, he sings about being in a band!) songs live with a sense of dignity. Instead of playing like some diary entries from a narcissist, ...Is a Real Boy comes off like a raging storm against shallowness, whether it's sexual ("The Writhing South"), critical ("An Orgy of Critics"), etc. Closing song "Admit It!!!" hits a bit close to home - attacking hipsters, some of the lyrics sound a bit like me. Which ones? Not telling. The strength is musical; unlike so many other bands with emo leanings, Bemis doesn't rely on preciousness to make his argument. It's not a brutal record on the level of a metal band, but it's incredibly powerful for a guy singing the insides of his head.

The bonus disc on the reissue, ...Was a Real Girl, is pretty inessential, sounding a bit like leftovers. Of the seven songs, I would say none of them are bad, but none are essential, either. "Wow I Can Get Sexual, Too" is a highlight, though - so catchy, so cute, such delightful little keyboards. It sounds nothing like the album, and in a sense that makes it more memorable than the rest. Not better - but more memorable.

Maroon 5 - Songs About Jane

You won't hear me say "God bless the crass commercial concerns of major label execs" very often, but I will say it in reference to this album. The story goes that Maroon 5 submitted Songs About Jane only to be told that they needed to write a couple songs that would stand up better as singles. The results: the tense breakout single "Harder to Breathe" and the lite-funk of "This Love," two of the best songs here. They open the album, while the other best song, "Sweetest Goodbye" closes it. In between, you get some white funk and Prince-like falsettos, a sweet, delicious ear candy. Without those first two singles, the album wouldn't begin with a bang, no matter how you arrange them. Not a bad song here, but they all somehow feel less consequential than the ones they were forced to write.

Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty

The Beastie Boys finished the 90s with a bang. Continuing in the vein of their sound for that decade (Check Your Head and Ill Communication), Hello Nasty puts their rhymes up against their instrumental prowess. A Beastie Boys record is like its own world, and in this world, dub experiments (Dr. Lee, PhD) can be preceded by the electro-flavored hits "Body Movin'" and "Intergalactic." The jokes and pop culture references here are as funny and sharp as ever, while the key Beastie Boys ingredient, their chemistry, remains potent. Few hip-hop groups exist, period, but even fewer can claim to create a great mix of voices. The way the three MCs have completely unique voices that clash and contrast with each other sets them apart, and it's a joy to hear just that, even without the amazing beats.

Amadou & Mariam - Welcome to Mali

If enough people tell you something's good, why not check it out? This album was the top-reviewed album on Metacritic for 2008. Does it live up to that hype? Perhaps not, but what could? So far, after a few listens, individual songs don't seem to stick, but the sound does. And that's not to say I don't like it (my impression of The Arcade Fire is similar). It's such an exuberant listen, filled with chanting, quietly skillful guitars and subtle electronica elements, how can one turn against it? Reviews are useless against this kind of music. Much like the Stevie Wonder's "The Duke," it's impossible to listen to it and feel unhappy.