Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star r
"I wake up/Check my phone/Jump in my whip/And off I go," Jake Bugg sings on "Kingpin." It's a song about the lush life of a drug dealer with a steelback giddyap that connects Eddie Cochran to the Smiths' "What Difference Does It Make?" And that knack for yoking today's restless energy to yesterday's jangle is what makes the 19-year-old U.K. chart-topper likable. Bugg's debut was at its best giving '62 Dylan and Buddy Holly a cocky Oasis charge, and the Bugg Man backed it up by calling fellow roots lovers Mumford & Sons "posh farmers with banjos." Dude has balls as big as Rickenbackers.
On Bugg's second album, Rick Rubin oversees an expanding sonic palette and a tougher sound; the punk-fired "What Doesn't Kill You" and grungy country rock of "All Your Reasons" push up against MacDougal Street serenades like "Pine Trees," an alienated epistle that could've been cut in a winter cabin. At times his folkier moments can be a touch too comfy. He's best when he pushes at the confines of his throwback sound: "Kitchen Table" stretches out with soul-jazz keyboard tickle and real-life post-breakup lyrics that don't try to play the London tough guy or woodsy troubadour: "I've not been seeing you for some time now and still you choose to hold my hate/But after how I handled it you're hardly to blame." It's just a 19-year-old kid, being honest.
November 18, 2013 THE WANTED - WORD OF MOUTH
The Wanted are a boy band with a man's disposition: They drink, they get into arguments, and they tend to see women as passive creatures waiting around in heels to be redeemed or get their hearts broken. They cloak their casual misogyny in trying to look sensitive, alternating rakish club pop like "Walks Like Rihanna" with post-Coldplay ballads in which everyone gets a chance to brood. In either case, the sound is big and lead-footed, using gang choruses to remind you to have fun and string sections when things stiffen and get sad. The truth? The promise that they're gonna pour their love all over you is twice as charming – and half as creepy – as the one that they're gonna keep you safe.
2/5 stars
Various Artists
New Orleans Funk 3: The Original Sound of Funk Soul Jazz
7
New Orleans music has gotten its due in recent years, thanks to everything from archival MP3 blogs (Home of the Groove is excellent) to Treme. Here, expert excavators at U.K. label Soul Jazz focus on NOLA's visionary nutters. Soul shouter Eldridge Holmes explains the "good way to make whoopee," a sitar creases Lee Dorsey's "What You Want," and although she's "in a world of trouble" with her man, Betty Harris sounds as merry as a funeral parade.
Polica
Shulamith 3/5 stars
November 18, 2013
On some level, Poliça – led by singer Channy Leaneagh and producer Ryan Olson – couldn't sound more like they were from Minneapolis. On their second album, the followup to 2012's buzzy Give You the Ghost, these kids blend distant, white-on-white melodic minimalism with early-Prince electro burp-'n-grind. Leaneagh gets into bad love on the surprisingly rock "Very Cruel" and complicated love on the thunderous "Matty," while, on "Tiff," Bon Iver main man/fellow Midwesterner/Kanye collaborator Justin Vernon shows up to backstop lines like "Have the bullet/ He has the gun." Apparently, America's Portishead can be found skinny-dipping in Lake Minnetonka.
Daughtry
Baptized
19/RCA
November 19, 2013
Seven years after he placed on American Idol, Chris Daughtry and his band are opening up their would-be grunge to more nuance: folk instruments and synths, smoother high notes tempering Daughtry's bellow, "boom-b'boom" vocal-bass hook lightening the gender war in "Battleships." The sound on Baptized somehow links U2 to Rascal Flatts, adding Springsteen stances in "Wild Heart." More unexpectedly, there's also a banjo shuffle where Daughtry chooses Van Halen over Van Hagar, catalogs some of his other heroes and wonders who wrote Hole's songs. "Long Live Rock & Roll," it's called – a defense, perhaps, against anybody claiming guys like him helped kill it.
The Flaming Lips
Peace Sword
Warner Bros.
November 18, 2013
This six-song EP sounds like a warm cocoon shedding itself. The title track – a very Lips-ish slice of made-of-stars melody and Wayne Coyne's voice multitracked to infinity – was written for the film version of the classic science-fiction novel Ender's Game. But since no prog act worth its stash turns down a chance to be inspired by sci-fi, the Lips secreted five more clouds – tunes "inspired by" the movie, including the vaguely martial "If They Move, Shoot 'Em" and the wonderfully titled 10-minute "Assassin Beetle – the Dream Is Ending." Also, the lyrics may have plot spoilers: In the immortal words of Public Enemy, consider yourself...warned!
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