A Month’s Worth of Music

Steve proves he was working during CONFRONT’s month off

It’s good to be back, folks. It’s been a long, albeit quiet, month away from the magazine, and in that month there have been some fairly interesting music releases. Some albums, two in particular, come from such significant artists that they are the proverbial elephants in the room: we know they’re there, and it would be denying the undeniable to not talk about them. So, let’s start with the biggest elephant in the room: Madonna’s Hard Candy.

This is Madonna’s eleventh album, not counting compilations and special editions. I can sum up my opinion of this latest album in one word: disappointing. Madonna’s proficiency as a musical artist/actress/writer/record producer/film producer/fashion designer/dancer proves the old adage: if one is a Jack of all Trades, they are a master of none.

The album has definitive Madonna sounds, but where her music used to be daring, innovative, challenging and groundbreaking, this album sounds pedestrian, tired, cliché, even. Instead of forging a new path or doing something completely unexpected, Madonna does what everybody else has done of late, collaborating with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, with equally predictable results: the songs that Timbaland and Timberlake worked on sound exactly like every other song by every other artist who collaborate with Timbaland and Timberlake.

It’s a lazy approach to music, especially from someone whose career and (former) reputation has been as a very demanding and uncompromising musician and artist. It’s been ten years since she’s done anything that’s truly wowed me. 1998′s Ray of Light was the highlight of Decade Three, it seems. Yes, the music on this album, including the on-air-everywhere “Four Minutes” is appropriately dancy, infectious and rhythmic, but it hardly sets itself apart from the fold. Pick up any other popular dance album released over the last decade and you’ll find exactly the same material there.

There was a time when every new Madonna album was released amidst a storm of controversy, outrage, and musical innovation; her music used to be daring. Now her music has become as bland and generic as a Wal-Mart clothing line. This album is full of safe musical choices, no risks and it is also almost completely devoid of originality. Down even to the album name and artwork, she’s making all the standard choices. I, for one, am fed up of the formula.

Madonna: Hard Candy
WEA
Steve’s Rating: 5/10

Next in the line up of this month’s big releases is Usher’s ‘Here I Stand’. Usher’s got to have one of the easiest gigs in show business: he’s cute, he dresses well and he sings about making sweet, sweet love. His music is cloying, rhythmic and melodic, and his alto voice is distinctive. There’s no denying his musical ability or his charm. However, it’s the choices he’s made as an artist that mar his work.

This album is a fairly standard selection of Hip-Hop/R&B ballads, with collaborations with the usual suspects, including Jay-Z, Dr Dre, Jermaine Dupre, Beyonce Knowles, among others. Perhaps the sheer number of other genre artists working on the album helps explain why it sounds so much like everything else out there, including everything else Usher has done, since 1994.

Initially, when I started listening to ‘Here I Stand’, I thought I was in for something different. The appropriately-titled “Intro” sounded different; more bluesy, more Soul than Hip-Hop. But then “Intro” faded out and “Love In This Club-Featuring Young Jeezy” started its arrhythmic throbbing, and I settled in for more of the same, leaving me feeling cheated of what I thought could have been a wonderfully original album.

There’s nothing distinctive on this CD; the collaborations with the rappers feature the usual beginning, middle and end of the song rap outbursts, which make the usual references to drinking expensive drinks, hot bisexual women, and all the other usual hip-hop make-out music clichés. Typically, Beyonce tries to outsing Usher during their collaborations; on “Love In This Club Part II” she succeeds, mainly in proving that her ego is exponentially greater than her talent.

As good a singer as Usher is, I had higher hopes for this CD.

Usher: Here I Stand
Jive
7/10

Death Cab For Cutie isn’t my one of my favourite groups. They always struck me as too tame, their particular brand of indie folk rock too mild for my tastes. So I was surprised by the pensive, clever lyrics and heartfelt songs of ‘Narrow Stairs’, their seventh album in eleven years.

The music is topical and referential, with maybe a few too many asides to Jack Kerouac, but the common themes of post-relationship-breakup-relationships tie the album together quite well. There’s a lonesome, cosmopolitan melancholy to the music that evokes the BritPop alternative rock of Morrissey. No more is this more apparent than on songs like “No Sunlight”, which sounds like it was recorded for 1991′s ‘Kill Uncle’.

But as reminiscent as this album is of the former Smiths’ Frontman’s solo work, ‘Narrow Stairs’ manages to stay original, while maintaining listener interest. The lyrics are poetic and personal, as well as enchanting; each consecutive listening I found myself marvelling over a particular turn of phrase or an insightful lyric on each song. The imagery of the music is unmatched.

I’m a convert to Death Cab For Cutie, thanks to this album. Pick up ‘Narrow Stairs’; it’s more than worth it.

Death Cab for Cutie: Narrow Stairs
Atlantic
Steve’s Rating: 9/10

By far, of all the albums I’ve listened to this month, I am most in love and obsessed with Portishead’s first album in 12 years.

Appropriately titled ‘Third’, it being their third album, it’s probably one of the most long-awaited, much-anticipated album in music history.

In the late 1990s, after the release of two of the most intense trip-hop/techno-jazz CDs put out by an artist or group not Massive Attack, Portishead announced they were taking a break, and then vanished like those kids in the Blair Witch Project.

In 2005 Portishead started appearing again, doing the occasional show and dropping vague hints about a forthcoming new CD…after almost three years of cock-teasing, they announced in October of 2007 that their third album would be out at the end of April.

The-for lack of a better term-”jazz noir” element of Portishead’s two previous studio albums are for the most part absent from ‘Third’. However, this album still manages to be a return to form with an updated sound; Beth Gibbons’ voice is still haunting, desperate, an Ertha Kitt for the Digital Age; the musical accompaniment dips its toe in electronic waters, without getting blown as far off course as Radiohead did.

The music on ‘Third’ retains much of Portishead’s psychedelic sensibilities and the eerie darkness of its two older siblings. The sound is distinct from its predecessors, though not so alien that it clashes with what has come before.

My only complaint is the strange beginning of the opening track, “Silence”, which opens with an anonymous voiceover that sounds like an ancient radio broadcast by some long-forgotten Latin American dictator. The most comfortably familiar sounding tracks on this album, namely “Hunter”, “We Carry On”, “Machine Gun” and “Threads”, are spaced far enough apart to encourage listening to the whole album. My personal favourite on ‘Third’ is “Small”, a track that plays like the epilogue of an epic romantic tragedy. Having talked about all that is good about this album, I must also admit that there is one track that I absolutely hate, “Deep Water”. This one mars what would otherwise be a better-than-perfect return album. It’s a folksy almost bluegrass-sounding ukulele piece…Skip track 7 and you’ll be happier, IMHO.

That being said, I still cannot recommend this album enough. I have already listened to ‘Third’ so often in the month that I’m sick of it…while craving it so badly that I know I’ll listen to it at least once a day for a long while, yet. I emphatically urge you to go out and get this CD…it will surprise you, and it will make for intense listening.

Portishead: Third
Mercury
Steve’s Rating: 9/10

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