Michael BubleIt’s TimeReprise
Two out of five stars
Toasting martinis with Sinatra and marshmallows with Harry Connick Jr., Michael Buble has sired a set of sugarcoated vocal chords, sure to make the ladies weak in the knees (ladies donning beehive-dos and poodle skirts, that is).
The nu-crooner’s sophomore effort, It’s Time, descants its way from Pop Standards nostalgia (Gershwin’s “Foggy Day in London Town”) to contemporary pop pabulum (“Home”), but never quite shakes the lingering scent of moth balls. Nelly Furtado attempts to knock Buble back into the new millennium, as she throws up her dukes on the Engelbert Humperdinck classic “Quando, Quando, Quando”-sadly, “Quando” is still an Engelbert Humperdinck classic.
It’s Time exposes the world to the sweet taste of Buble’s undeniable talent but leaves a vodka-bitter aftertaste as each of its classics are better left in the past-too little, too late.
EisleyRoom NoisesReprise
Four out of five stars
In Eisley, the term “homespun” has never rung so true, or so darn sweet. Eisley’s four siblings (and one neighbor…seriously) attached musical feathers to their parent’s Brit-rock classics (Pink Floyd, Radiohead), but won the hearts of union-jack-donning contemporaries Coldplay and Snow Patrol on the wings of their full-length debut, Room Noises.
As lush female poetics paint themselves over the melancholy indie musings of “Lost at Sea,” this transatlantic adoration begins to make sense. But these Texan rockers dig FINGERNAILS deep into their lone-star roots on the acoustic “Just Like We Do” and the humble ambience of “Memories.”
Eisley wisely avoids the spaced-out dynamics of the Brit-rock scene, opting for a simple, small-town essence that they know by heart. In turn, Room Noises strikes like a Brit-gem, but opens up like a roots-rock confessional.
SuperchickBeauty From PainInpop Records
Zero out of five stars
God has no place in rock and roll, and Superchick’s Beauty from Pain chips this commandment deep into stone tablets.
Proclaiming its musical innovation by building a bridge between “Black Eyed Peas and Blink 182,” (again…seriously) it quickly becomes clear that this motley crew of O.C. rejects have no clue what the word “innovation” means.
“Wishes” embodies this “innovation” with its pop beats and mall-punk tantrums-think Avril Lavigne at Sunday School-while “Stories (Down to the Bottom)” spews the Peas’ pop-hop at its most nauseating.
If the good Lord can condone this level of musical sacrilege, the apocalypse is clearly at hand. Riders, man your horses.
SubtleA New WhiteLex Records
Four out of five stars
Anticon crew all-star, Doseone’s lo-fi, home-made hip-hop has always been a bit eccentric, but on his latest indie endeavor, Subtle, Dose falls completely off the deepest end possible-in a good way. On Subtle’s debut, A New White, Dose spits caustic poetics over his full band’s sonic wasteland of hip-electro-rock-hop, revealing vocal chords masquerading as integral instruments-an act unheard of in today’s hip-hop heap.
The syncopated grooves of “The Long Vein of the Law” give way to a distorted bass backdrop, ripe for Dose’s spoken-word destruction, while “Eyewash” sees these vocal acrobatics claim center stage in a DJ Shadow-esque electric circus.
A New White is like nothing the world has ever heard, and knowing the Anticon
crew’s appetite for innovation, will ever hear again.
Motley CrueRed, White & CrueHip-O Records
Three out of five stars
Twenty-four years ago, four strung-out Sunset Strip guttersnipes set out to play good, old-fashioned rock and roll…very drunk and disorderly.
Today, after five years of silence, the Crue is back in full force.
Leading the post-rehab/post-Pam/post-‘the-video’ comeback is Red, White & Crue, a career retrospective spanning the band’s two-and-a-half decades of existence and dropping two brand new Motley jams.
Disc one pledges allegiance to timeless ’80s classics “Shout at the Devil,” “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Dr. Feelgood,” dragging the trash-can anthems back into America’s bar rooms and back alleys.
Installment two chronicles the Crue’s confused maturation through the grungy, nu-metal-plagued ’90s.
Today’s re-united Motley Crue introduces itself with the schmaltz-ridden epic “If I Die Tomorrow”-a track Nikki Sixx co-wrote with Canadian poppers Simple Plan (who, obviously, totally rock).
“Sick Love Song” witnesses Sixx’s cock-rock riffing re-emerge, but lacks the debaucherous, glam-rock glory of the band’s early amphetamine-drenched breed of sex…er, music.
Compiled by
Dan Fletcher