August 2016 reviews

Highly recommended: Anchorsong, Deerhoof, Anderson.Paak, Glauco Venier

Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: TUNS

Well worth your while: Sharon Jones, The Julie Ruin, The Magic, Nao

As always, these reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Streaming is great for sample purposes, but please find a way to support your favourite artists financially.

Anchorsong – Ceremonial (Caroline)

Anchorsong is the name of the last track on Bjork’s Debut album. Now it’s also the name of a Japanese artist, Masaaki Yoshida, whose eclectic palette would have been right at home on that 1993 record. Call-and-response melodic percussion lines, Spaghetti Western guitar, bells and gamelans that could have been lifted from Pantha du Prince, plaintive strings, kalimbas—at times it sounds like a Moby remix of early Bjork, at others a more worldly Tycho. But mostly it sounds like a curious traveller in search of beauty, propelled forth by insistent rhythms that never let the listener drift off, asleep at the wheel. (Aug. 4)

Stream: "Eve," "Mother," “Butterflies”

Bat for Lashes – The Bride (Warner)

Ah! The Bride. It’s a concept album, no? A peek inside the narrative of a marriage, either an epic love story of perseverance or a psychological torture story, right? The first song is a lovely lullaby about, presumably, engagement, called “I Do.” But from there we go right into “Joe’s Dream,” with the opening line: “There's a tear in my lover's eyes / He's at my window, it's a gloomy night.” Uh-oh! What are we in for? The next track, “In God’s House,” makes it clear: she’s been stranded at the altar, her fiancée dead, the bride-to-be denied even the status of widowhood. For the rest of the album, she goes “Honeymooning Alone,” driving along the seaside, mourning the life that could have been.

Natasha Khan spent two years working on The Bride, both the album and what will be an accompanying film. The British songwriter recorded in rural New York state, and the resulting sound is a combination of the sea-swept gothica of PJ Harvey and David Lynchian smalltown-U.S.A. weirdness. Yet Khan is more conventional than many of her outré influences; there’s also a lot of Sarah McLachlan in here—though the side of that songwriter that we haven’t seen in a very, very long time.

Part of Khan’s charm is her ability to sound so haunting and creepy and yet simultaneously alluring; it’s a lot sexier than a record about a dead lover should probably be. (Aug. 4)

Stream: “Joe’s Dream,” “In God’s House,” “Sunday Love”

Deerhoof – The Magic (Polyvinyl)

It’s been a weird summer. And when the going gets really weird, no other rock band makes more sense than Deerhoof. The California quartet’s delightfully playful absurdism—executed with technical precision, lyrical naivete, and a sonic mashup of Zappa, punk rock and the weirdest parts of the Beatles—were a welcome tonic to soundtrack the Bush years. Deerhoof is always at the very least interesting, but every so often their oddball inventiveness coalesces into a top-to-bottom fantastic album. This is one of those albums. Considering their discography now stretches back almost 20 years, entry points can be hard to find for the uninitiated. So start here. And don’t miss them when they swing back this way again. (Aug. 11)

Stream: “Kate Mania!” “Life is Suffering,” “Plastic Thrills”

Hannah Georgas – For Evelyn (Dine Alone)

Mining the same vibe as Bat for Lashes is Vancouver/Toronto singer Hannah Georgas, whose third album is dedicated to her 98-year-old grandmother—for once, it seems, an artist celebrating someone still alive rather than writing an album-long obituary (see also: The Acorn’s Glory Hope Mountain or the Fiery Furnaces’ Rehearsing My Choir—which they recorded with their grandmother). Georgas doesn’t do so with a plunky ukulele or sad piano ballads (though there is one or two of those): she dives right into the synths found in the studio of producer Graham Walsh (Holy F--k, Operators) and comes out with a hot-blooded new wave record that trumps anything in her promising discography so far. (Aug. 4)

Stream: “Don’t Go,” “Evelyn,” “Naked Beaches”

Sharon Jones – Miss Sharon Jones OST (Daptone)

Sharon Jones was 40 years old when she first had her name listed as lead vocalist on a recording. That was in 1996. She’d sung live with plenty of bands and recorded backup vocals, but paid her bills as a corrections officer and lived with her mother. In the recent documentary Miss Sharon Jones, and in the one new track on its soundtrack (“I’m Still Here”), she says she was always told she was “too fat, too short, too black, too old,” to front her own band—an assertion that is patently ridiculous on every imaginable level. This woman is Otis Redding and Tina Turner reincarnate. If this woman is not a rock star, then that term might as well not exist.

Jones got her break by falling in with a group of sympathetic musicians in New York who would come to be the core of Daptone records—members of Afrobeat revivalists Antibalas and ’70s jazz-funk enthusiasts the Sugarman 3, among others. There were many excellent acts on Daptone, but all of them were instrumental. Sharon Jones quickly became the star of the show. As her profile rose, so did that of her band, the Dap-Kings, who were hired to record with everyone from Amy Winehouse (that’s them on “Rehab”) to David Byrne to Michael Bublé to Bruno Mars (that’s them on “Uptown Funk”).

Just as Jones was about to release her fifth and easily her best album, 2014’s Give the People What They Want, Jones was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She postponed the album while she underwent treatment, but came back to triumph and tour—only to have the cancer reappear just as this documentary, directed by Oscar winner Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, Shut Up and Sing) debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. Instead of retreating during this round of treatment, she’s been on the road ever since, fighting as strong as she can. If you thought Gord Downie was brave (which he is), you should witness Sharon Jones in action (check out this April 2016 performance for KEXP in Seattle).

All of which is even more of a reason to celebrate the soundtrack to that documentary, which compiles some of the best tracks of Jones’s 14-year discography. The power of her voice and her band often overshadowed the songs, but that’s not the case here: this is all top-shelf material. The uber fan could quibble about omitting her covers of Janet Jackson or Woody Guthrie or Shuggie Otis, but as a sampling of her five albums and more, this is hard to top—especially with the addition of hard-hitting early singles like “Genuine.” (Aug. 18)

The Julie Ruin – Hit Reset (Hardly Art)

Kathleen Hanna has a lot of baggage. A principal architect of the riot grrrl movement of the ’90s with her band Bikini Girl, a key member of political electropop band Le Tigre in the 2000s, Lyme disease victim, subject of the acclaimed 2013 documentary The Punk Singer: anytime she steps back into the public eye with new music, it’s a major countercultural event. 

Not that she lets that get to her. After her reinvention with the new band The Julie Ruin, whose 2013 album Run Fast was full of themes of perseverance, age and triumphing over adversity, here she sounds more than happy to just make a fun rock’n’roll record with her new pals—one steeped in the bubblegum melodies and enthusiastic punk party music she loves (lots! of! handclaps!), with politics taking a backseat or expressed in considerably more subtle fashion than she’s known for. That said, she can still skewer like few others, like when she lambastes a gushing yet shallow male fan in “Mr. So and So,” who boasts, “I’ll show your autograph to my women’s studies class!”

Is this one of Hanna’s better records? Not really. But baggage be damned. The 47-year-old singer has nothing to prove to anyone, and sounds like she’s having the time of her life. (Aug. 11)

Stream: "Hit Reset," "I Decide," “Rather Not”

The Magic – Night Falling (Hailstone Entertainment)

What a Magical summer it is. There’s the aforementioned Deerhoof album, a new album by the international Toronto pop-reggae sensation Magic!, and now a new album from the Guelph band from whom the “Rude” band stole a name: Evan and Geordie Gordon, who perform and record as The Magic. This Magic makes blue-eyed synth soul with an ’80s bent, with Evan serving as the studio wizard and Geordie the cool-cucumber crooner who slips between his seductive lower range and a falsetto that keeps getting better with age. (He’s now 30, but keen audiences will remember him as a teenager in the Barmitzvah Brothers 15 years ago.) Night Falling was four years in the making, scheduled during time off from the brother’s duties as touring members of Islands. Once a full band, it’s now a duo, but they don’t sacrifice any side of their lush sound, which has nods to Sade, Hall & Oates, Haim and Blood Orange—and you’d never guess it’s a bedroom recording. (Aug. 11)

Stream: “If I Were You,” “Over and Over,” “Season’s Crown”

Whole album here.

Nao – For All We Know (Sony)

Last year, this British R&B singer dropped an EP with the slinky summer bass line on “Inhale Exhale,” announcing yet another bright new light in what is turning out to be a golden era in R&B. That track reappears on her major label debut, as it should, but Nao proves she’s certainly no one-trick pony. Her voice might be girlish in pitch, but there is a command and confidence here that sounds anything but naïve. There are many times here, notably “Bad Blood” (no, not a Taylor Swift cover) she feels like the missing link between Prince and Kate Bush (who, of course, were mutual fans and collaborators). Or, in modern terms, she sits somewhere between FKA Twigs and Miguel. Nao herself calls her music “wonky funk.” Either way, she’s staked out a claim in a competitive field this year. (Aug. 25)

Stream: “Inhale Exhale,” “Adore You,” “Fool to Love”

Anderson.Paak – Malibu (O.B.E.)

While R&B fans spent the first half of 2016 fretting about the arrival of a new Frank Ocean album, this California artist quietly dropped this minor masterpiece in the dead of January. He was the talk of the SXSW festival in March, appeared on one of the best tracks on Kaytranada’s Polaris Music Prize-shortlisted 99.9% in May, and sold out the Phoenix in Toronto in June. Why? Because Malibu is second only to Beyoncé’s Lemonade as a high-water mark for R&B in the last year. 

Paak is no spring chicken. He’s 30 years old, with experience as a professional drummer (for an American Idol contestant) and a Dr. Dre protégé (with several guest appearances on Dre’s comeback, Compton). He was raised on old soul music and California G-funk and his world was turned upside down by Outkast. His first gigs were in a Baptist congregation. He sings with a delicious rasp not dissimilar to Kendrick Lamar’s timbre as a rapper, with layered harmonies akin to D’Angelo and a psychedelic palette worthy of Miguel; on the straight-up funk of “Come Down,” he channels “Payback”-era James Brown. He’s a father and husband who was raised in a violent household and is determined to find the positivity in life. You can hear all of that life experience in Malibu, which announces the arrival of a fully formed artist ready to seize the crown. As an independent artist, he doesn’t have marketing hype behind him, but an album this good doesn’t need it. The music does all the talking. (Aug. 11)

Anderson.Paak is playing the Manifesto festival in Toronto on Sept. 17, on a dream bill with Kaytranada and Daniel Caesar, at Echo Beach. 

Stream: “Come Down,” “Heart Don’t Stand a Chance,” “Am I Wrong” feat. Schoolboy Q

Fatima al Qadiri – Brute (Hyperdub)

"You are no longer peacefully assembled," are the first words you hear on Qadiri’s second album. They’re sampled from a police officer at the 2015 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, which helped kick off the Black Lives Matter movement in the States. Qadiri’s electronic soundscapes are meant to evoke a dystopia—not a fantastical one, but one very much rooted in current realities. As an instrumental artist, she works to evoke these themes with groaning synths that sound like sorrowful choirs, with beats that sound disorienting and dazzling, with eerie melodies that are just waiting for the right sci-fi director to use them in film—though it would be Qadiri doing that director a favour, not the other way around.  The cover art, by Josh Kline, depicts a Teletubby-like humanoid in riot gear, looking like it just woke up to this strange new world with no idea what role it might play. Qadiri doesn’t have answers, just questions, colours, hues. That’s all she needs. (Aug. 4)

Stream: “Blood Moon,” “Oubliette,” “Power” 

Glauco Venier – Miniatures: Music for Piano and Percussion (ECM)

Pianists like Nils Frahm, 33, and Chilly Gonzales, 44, get a lot of attention for reinvigorating the art of neo-classical solo piano, in part because of their age and associated record labels and artists. More power to them, especially if they help open ears to this solo recording by 53-year-old Italian pianist Glauco Venier. Venier is a Berklee-trained jazz player who has primarily performed in a trio format. Here, he was hired to score a documentary about an Italian sculptor, with the intention of grafting on the sounds of “sonorous sculptures” to his minimalist piano compositions. That he’s doing so on the ECM label, home to Keith Jarrett’s legendary ’70s recordings, carries a certain weight among jazz fans. Venier is more than up to the task. Miniatures is meditative and lovely, melodic and gentle, the resonant gongs and bells and other metallic sounds employed tastefully and effectively. If, like me, you’ve had a hectic summer of visits and excess and joy and mourning and too much rock’n’roll and sweaty R&B, here’s your antidote and a perfect comedown. (Aug. 25)

Stream: “Byzantine Icon,” “Prayer,” “Asian Songs and Rhythms No. 40)

2012 on stage

Now that I’ve finally got around to changing my calendar, I’m reminded of my favourite live moments of 2012. I don’t get out much anymore, largely due to parenting but also because of a busier-than-expected second half of 2012, so we’ll just talk about five gigs.

1. Tuneyards (The Phoenix, Aug. 1). My favourite album of 2011 sounded even better after a full 18 months on the road. Merrill Garbus has never lacked confidence, but as a huge fan who had seen her before, I didn’t expect to be so blown away yet again. The new choreography from the horn section was also a nice touch. Joyous, visceral, and completely cathartic. 

2. Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo (Harbourfront, July 13). There was a time when much of my Toronto summers were defined by Harbourfront’s music programming. That’s less true now, but every so often a show like this comes around that reminds me what a gift the free venue is to the city. These Beninese legends from the ’70s have put out over 100 albums, of which I’ve heard maybe two. They live up to their name, as every track had an astounding number of rhythmic layers that added up to a feverish dance party perfect for a hot summer night on the water.

3. Fanfare Ciocarlia / Lemon Bucket Orchestra (The Hoxton, Sept. 21). Speaking of old guys who can still get it up, this Balkan brass band blast through blistering tempos that leave most men one-quarter their age gasping for air. Most men, that is, who aren’t in perfectly simpatico Toronto openers Lemon Bucket Orchestra.

4. Corb Lund (Danforth Music Hall, Nov. 23). When Corb Lund puts out a beginning-to-end great album, as he did this year with Cabin Fever, you almost have to worry that some of his earlier classics will get squeezed off the set list. But with so many two-minute miracles scattered across his discography, Lund and his crack band almost suffer from too much of a good thing. Throw in a mid-set political tangent, including the rural vs. oil company prayer “This is My Prairie” and a cover of Geoff Berner’s “That’s What Keeps the Rent Down,” and you have a full evening’s worth of entertainment.

5. The Magic (Great Hall, Aug. 10). When you’ve been a live band for five years gearing up to release your debut, damn straight you’re going to be tight. But just for kicks, why not stage the show as a ’70s TV taping with a raunchy MC in drag, played with aplomb by Keith Cole, who hectors unsuspecting members of the studio audience? What could easily have been a silly mess was instead a polished performance, with lead vocalists Geordie Gordon and Sylvie Smith inducing libidinous squeals from the eager crowd.

Runners up: Toronto Symphony Orchestra – War of 1812 (Luminato, June 17); Bahamas / Joel Plaskett / Geoff Berner (Hillside Festival, July 27-29); Leonard Cohen (Air Canada Centre, Dec. 4); Willis Earl Beal (Drake Hotel, April 30); Bidiniband (Dakota Tavern, Jan. 28)

June '12 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury in June.

Cadence Weapon – Hope in Dirt City (Upper Class)

The former poet laureate of Edmonton resumes his rap career after moving to Montreal, and delivers a tour de force of storytelling and genre-jumping. He’s no longer the 19-year-old outlier overachiever he was on his debut album; now he’s an album artist at the ripe old 26, having relocated to a bohemian paradise where he “walks down St. Laurent avec les filles de roi.” The MC born Rollie Pemberton has little competition in Canadian hip-hop—outside of Drake, with whom he shares a default position of a laid-back, laconic flow. Except unlike Drake, Cadence Weapon is in love with language rather than just himself, spitting more lyrical head-turners in one verse than most MCs’ entire tracks.

Pemberton’s skills as an MC were never in doubt; here, he proves to be an impressive singer as well, and a rapper with more varied flow than he’s shown before. Cadence Weapon is no longer just an abstract MC: he’s a punk rock howler on the climax of “Jukebox”; he’s a soul singer and shouter on “Conditioning”; he’s a slow-jam crooner on “No More Names.” He’s also an effective character actor, as on “Hype Man,” a comical role-playing narrative about the fractious relationship between an MC and a member of his entourage; it’s funny not just for its skewering of a well-worn convention in hip-hop culture, but because it applies to all sorts of power dynamics (think Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute on The Office).

That’s not even the most compelling part of Hope in Dirt City. Musically, Pemberton pays homage here to go-go funk, punk rock, Southern bounce, icy electro, R&B balladry and anything else he can find. Several tracks are constructed as rock songs, with killer bass lines and intense climaxes, and yet never veer into dreaded rap-rock crossover territory. "There We Go" is an intoxicating, icy electro ballad with a lurching, sparse beat and ominous synths, suggesting Pemberton has been hanging out with some Mutek festival folk in his newly adopted city of Montreal; the title track, on the other hand, sounds like a whole other Montreal influence: Corey Hart. Seriously, this is some Boy in the Box shit—and even more seriously, trust me when I say I’m probably one of the few people who mean that as a compliment.

The only time any one recognizable genre during the course of a whole track is the dub reggae vibe of "Small Deaths." Otherwise, anything and everything is fair game and filtered through pitched snare drums, old synths and—in a stint of seemingly stunt casting—the wailing tenor saxophone of Pemberton’s uncle Brett Miles, an Edmonton session player who lets loose in ways that haven’t been heard in hip-hop since the trumpet solo in LL Cool J’s "Going Back to Cali." Miles isn’t interested in jazzy interludes; this saxophone is out to steal the entire show, which he almost does.

For a record with broad reach, Hope in Dirt City is remarkably concise, clocking in at 11 tracks in under 40 minutes. Cadence Weapon is going for the gold and makes every sonic second here count. (June 14)

Download: "Jukebox," "No More Names (Aditi)," "Conditioning"

Neneh Cherry – The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound)

Take a tough lady known for both hip-hop singles and smooth pop and stick her in front of a free-jazz band to sing covers—it sounds like a terrible idea, but Neneh Cherry pulls it off with aplomb.

Best known for her ’80s hit "Buffalo Stance" and her 1996 #1 single "Seven Seconds," Cherry has been largely silent, staying at home in Sweden, for the past 16 years. Here, she teams up with her fellow countrymen The Thing, featuring abrasive tenor saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten—three guys you wouldn’t expect to make a pop record. Which this isn’t.

The Cherry Thing sounds like neither side of the pop/jazz divide; instead, it’s a perfect meeting of the two. Cherry is an astounding, compelling and charismatic singer who always toyed with inflections in pitch, which suits a jazz context perfectly. The rhythm section here is impeccable and can do anything; it’s Gustafsson you would think would be the odd man out here, but the powerhouse player is incredibly sensitive to Cherry’s leads, cedes the spotlight easily, and never bullies any of his bandmates, though it’s his presence that provides the welcome tension driving the whole project.

The choice of material is almost incidental; this combination of players is fascinating in and of itself, no matter what they get up to. There are two originals—one by Cherry, one by Gustafsson—and covers of MF Doom, the Stooges, Ornette Coleman and Cherry’s stepfather, Don Cherry. An interpretation of “Dream Baby Dream,” a song by early electro-punk pioneers Suicide, and later covered by Bruce Springsteen, they take what was originally a monotonous, trancelike, ominous dirge and turn it into a swinging, almost inspirational number without making it hokey—no small feat. On the other hand, they maintain all of the menace of the Stooges’ song “Dirt,” where Gustafsson’s solo absolutely slays. (June 21)

Download: “Cashback,” “Dream Baby Dream,” “Dirt”

The Magic – Ragged Gold (Half Machine)

Magic doesn’t happen overnight. So even if this Guelph group sounded fully formed right from their first gigs five long years ago, it’s taken that long for their debut album to gestate. Long-frustrated fans will be happy to know that it was worth the wait.

The Magic is the brothers Gordon, Geordie and Evan—sons of folk singer James, members of Islands, and members of at least a dozen Guelph bands between them, including Geordie’s teenage years in the Barmitzvah Brothers. Anyone who saw that delightfully amateurish thrift-store band will be amazed at Geordie’s transformation into a crooning pop idol—the confidence was always there, but his vocals have improved tenfold and are now delivered with swagger and strut. His falsetto on “No Sound” is priceless—as is Evan’s baritone and the judicious use of vibraslap.

Ragged Gold shows no sign of the scruffy indie rock, noisy punk or folk music the brothers have been involved with before: The Magic is now a clean-scrubbed, ready-for-the-world international pop sensation on par with Robyn, Santigold or their old friend Diamond Rings. The sound owes much to the 1980s, though not in the way most youngsters grab an old keyboard and start hitting preset buttons.

The Gordon brothers’ fascination with the ’80s (their birth decade) involves a time when schooled studio musicians made simple pop songs much more complex than needed be. If you’ve ever played in a cover band and had to, for example, learn an entire set of Michael Jackson covers—as the Gordons did as part of Guelph’s “prom band,” King Neptune and his Tridents—or analyzed the work of Hall & Oates or Toto, you’d know that even though breezy pop melodies were always front and centre during that era, the instrumentalists compensated for the lack of showboating solos by executing tasty little tricky bits in the background. Ragged Gold is full of those tasty bits, as well as bona fide potential hit pop songs, impeccable production, solid grooves and backing vocals by Sylvie Smith, who takes a lead turn on “Call Me Up.”

Usually when a band takes five years to make an album, the end result is overcooked and bloated. But Ragged Gold is stripped down to its essence, like every good pop record should be: every synth zap, every clipped backing vocal, every sax break, every funky 16^th-note rhythm guitar track is perfectly in place.

It’s going to be a Magic summer. (June 28)

Download: “No Sound,” “Night School,” “Door to Door”

Men Without Hats – Love in the Age of War (Curbside)

It’s been over 20 years since Men Without Hats had a hit single (the grungy, long-forgotten “Sideways”); about 30 years since they were catapulted out of Montreal’s electro/punk underground onto radios around the world with “The Safety Dance.” Singer Ivan Doroschuk is now leading a new trio under the old name; no doubt he’s using equipment acquired in recent decades, though there’s nothing here that would sound out of place on 1982’s Rhythm of Youth—and yet nothing about the songs here or Ivan’s own vocals sounds remotely stale. (With one exception, that is: “The Girl With the Silicon Eyes.” Enough said.) His commanding baritone still oozes charisma, and he writes direct, no-nonsense pop songs with the energy of a young punk, filtered through electronics beefed up by producer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie, best known for his work with Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails.

Men Without Hats are often treated as a punchline, remembered as a one-hit wonder with a silly video involving a dancing dwarf. Behind the scenes, however, they eschewed the excesses of the ’80s starmaking machine and helped develop their hometown music scene into the artistic mecca it is today. More importantly to the everyday listener, their records, though certainly guilty of some dated filler, nonetheless featured a string of strong songs that rival any other hitmaker of the day.

Here, Ivan goes for all killer, no filler. It sounds like he’s been hoarding 11 hidden hits, waiting for the appropriate time to make a momentous comeback. The truth is that he spent most of the last 10 years raising a child in Victoria, and he wrote this album on the back of a bus with the Human League last year on an ’80s oldies tour, on his first outing as Men Without Hats since their heyday. Maybe that spontaneity and being on the road inspired these songs’ directness. Or maybe, sitting on that bus, he realized that he didn’t just want to be an oldies act—and Love in the Age of War is far, far better than anyone would ever expect. He’ll never shake the shadow of “The Safety Dance,” but Ivan is not going to stop trying. (June 7)

Download: “This War,” “Head Above Water,” “Live and Learn”

Metric – Synthetica (Metric Music)

You know that great pop album that U2 have been trying to make for the past 20 years, since Achtung Baby? Metric just did it. And, unlike U2, they achieved it without sounding like they’re trying impossibly hard to do it.

The soaring melodies, the anthemic songs, the epic scope inside a five-minute song, the Edge-influenced guitars that bleed into synth textures, the slightly clever platitudes and one-liners that straddle the line between profound and pointless—all you could ever want in a rock’n’roll record that sets its sights for the back rows of stadiums.

For the songwriting team of vocalist Emily Haines and guitarist James Shaw, their long-promising chemistry was finally firing on all cylinders by the time of 2009’s Fantasies. They’re still on a roll here, where every track is a potential hit or future classic. It’s instrumentally that Synthetica really shines: Shaw’s guitar sounds are increasingly textural, while Haines’s synth sounds are harsher than ever; it’s hard to tell who’s playing the lead on the fuzzed-out, droning “Dreams So Real,” but the buzzing, dirty sound is a perfect counterpart to Haines’s sweet and sour vocals.

The rock songs are divine, but the Robyn-ish bubblegum of “Lost Kitten” and “The Void” work just as well without distracting from the po-faced seriousness pervading the rest of the record, which seems set to score a sci-fi film about, you know, the alienation of modern life and such. (Much of it, in fact, is not unlike the Arcade Fire contribution to The Hunger Games soundtrack—and for two bands that once had nothing in common, there’s a lot of Synthetica that sounds like it’s trying to one-up The Suburbs.)

Haines is writing about lives in stasis, lives once full of promise now facing defeat and monotony: “Is this my life? Breathing underwater?” The power of songs and the power of girls are two apparently ancient concepts to the idealistic narrator of “Dreams So Real,” who resigns herself to singing: “I’ll shut up and carry on / a scream becomes a yawn.”

It’s funny, then, that after singing “we should never meet our heroes,” that Haines invites Lou Reed to appear on “Wanderlust.” On one hand, it’s an inspired nod to the counterculture icon who was central to Andy Warhol’s Factory, the birth of glam rock and punk, all key influences for Metric. On the other hand, when you invite the Lou Reed of today to be a backup vocalist, it essentially amounts to an old man muttering in the background. Even U2, for all their Lou Reed worship, has never done that.

Maybe Metric shouldn’t meet their heroes, then, and instead focus on making albums as good as this one for the modern age. (June 21)

Download: "Breathing Underwater," "Clone," "Synthetica"

Scissor Sisters – Magic Hour (Universal)

Disco legends Donna Summer and the Bee Gees’ Robin Gibb passed away within days of each other last month, prompting much nostalgia for the genre they helped define.

But disco itself is not dead—or if it is, no one had dare break that news to Scissor Sisters. On their fourth album, Scissor Sisters still specialize in falsetto harmonies, lush strings and synths and a sworn allegiance to late-’70s R&B and disco. Modern techno elements sneak through but don’t strangle the soul out of the source material; unlike, say, Madonna’s desperate attempts to sound current, Scissor Sisters bridge generations of hedonistic dance pop with ease. They’ve also got the songwriting skills to transcend the nightclub: they can dumb down one moment with a song called “Fuck Yeah,” then switch to cabaret mode and try and outdo Rufus Wainwright (not hard to do lately) on “The Secret Life of Letters”—a task the band pulls off, though bandleader Jake Shears is clearly trying to cop Wainwright’s vocal style as well; he pulls it off, but he’s always far better in falsetto. (June 7)

Download: “Baby Come Home,” “Self-Control,” “Only the Horses”

Patti Smith – Banga (Sony)

Ever since her 1996 comeback album Gone Again—written after the death of her husband, guitarist and co-writer Fred Smith, and which also included an eulogy for Kurt Cobain—Patti Smith has been the High Mistress of Mourning. At first glance, that hasn’t changed on Banga, where the subject matter includes Amy Winehouse, the Japanese tsunami and recently departed Last Tango in Paris actress Maria Schneider. Seeing as how her recent records have been more admirable for their intentions than the actual music, Banga should be approached cautiously.

Except that this, Smith’s seventh post-comeback album, is frankly the first since Gone Again that isn’t a chore to sit through. Indeed, Banga is anything but a funereal experience. Instead, Smith writes powerful anthems, touching ballads, wickedly weird detours, and retains her rep as one of the few true poets working in a rock format.

Who else would improvise a 10-minute track about a blind Italian painter, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Columbus’s discovery of the New World? Okay, admittedly, that one is for diehard fans only, although it works far better than it should. But who else opens her album with a dramatic piano chord and the opening line: “We were going to see the world”? And who else reads 19^th-century Russian novels while on a Mediterranean cruise with avant-garde filmmaking icon Jean-Luc Godard and ends up writing punk rock songs about dogs that sound as vital and stirring as anything on her 1976 debut album?

As evidenced by her detailed liner notes, Smith doesn’t put pen to paper unless she’s been inspired by a particular event, person or serendipitous encounter with an antiquated cultural artifact. That makes Banga sound like it’s going to be little more than an academic exercise, which it most definitely is not. Smith and her band—who have been with her for 35 years now—still tap into the visceral inspiration that first drew them together, and play with the experience of veterans who only ever try to act their age, drawing from jazz and folk textures to fuel their vision of rock’n’roll. On top of that, her voice sounds fantastic.

Coming on the heels of her award-winning memoir Just Kids, Banga shows Patti Smith to be not a diminished legend in danger of being taken for granted by even her own fans: she is still a powerful, vital artist who shows no sign of fading away. (June 14)

Download: “Amerigo,” “April Fool,” “This is the Girl”

Cassandra Wilson – Another Country (EOne)

In case skronky sax underneath jazz vocals is not your thing (no pun intended), Cassandra Wilson has returned with a butter-smooth collection of laid-back, sultry songs she co-wrote with Italian guitarist Fabrizio Sotti. Recorded largely in Florence (which explains the cover of “O Sole Mio”), and driven largely by Sotti’s flamenco and bossa nova stylings—and with accordionist Julien Labro hovering gently in the background—Another Country has an old-world charm to it that suits Wilson perfectly. This is her 18th album, and though she’s faced plenty of competition from younger jazz singers in the last 10 years, she sounds better than ever. (June 21)

Download: “No More Blues,” “Almost Twelve,” “When Will I See You Again”

Bobby Womack – The Bravest Man in the Universe (XL)

When Damon Albarn assembles a Gorillaz album, there is usually such a dizzying array of guests that they get lost in the shuffle. Which hip-hop icon or ’70s punk pioneer or African superstar is going to show up now? It’s easy to forget Albarn not only enlisted veteran soul singer Bobby Womack for 2010’s Plastic Beach, but he also took him out on the road for an arena tour. While other Gorillaz have viable careers to turn to, Womack could use another break at the age of 68. Albarn gave him one.

Womack’s voice is weathered and world-weary—30 years of cocaine addiction will do that—but the man has got soul to spare and he’s ready to share: “Gather round me, boys and girls / I once was lost, but now I’m found.” Womack, for those that don’t know, has a CV that reads like a history of soul music, including gigs with Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Marvin Gaye. He also wrote for the Rolling Stones and played on Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds.”

But this album isn’t a retro revival or a history lesson: instead, Albarn sends Womack floating in space, an earthly anchor to synthy sci-fi dub, chillwave and psychedelic hip-hop instrumentals. The effect is entrancing, not unlike reggae great Horace Andy’s work with Massive Attack—and a lot better than what co-producer (and XL CEO) Richard Russell achieved on Gil Scott-Heron’s 2010 album I’m New Here. Unlike that misfire, nothing here sounds like oil and water.

And yet there are times when Albarn and Russell aim low: a potential pop song like “Love is Going to Lift You Up” could easily have been given a techno boost or transformed into a George Michael inspirational anthem, but they keep it spare and simple—perhaps too simple, because the drum machine’s basic rhythm doesn’t do the song justice, and there’s not much more to the arrangement than that and the hook. Conversely, “Jubilee (Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around)” mines Womack’s rich gospel past and sets it to a similarly rinky-dink synth backing, though this time it sounds more like the inspired music that Third World musicians create with cheap electronics (like the compilation of shangaan music Albarn’s label, Honest Jon’s, put out), rather than just a deficit of creativity.

The only other minor misfire is “Dayglo Reflection,” a duet with Lana Del Rey—and it’s not her fault. The song features a recurring sample of an old man discussing the depth an elder singer brings to material, “Because he lives life and he understands what he’s trying to say a little more.” This is offensive for two reasons: a) we already know that—we’re listening to a Bobby Womack album, for cryin’ out loud!; and b), it sounds like an unnecessary slap to Womack’s considerably less experienced duet partner, forcibly reminding us of all those ridiculous authenticity arguments that surrounded the release of her debut album. Can’t we just sit back and enjoy the song?

It’s been a good summer for the senior citizens, as the Dr. John/Black Keys collaboration proved last month. But even that was about recreating past glories, where The Bravest Man in the Universe purposely portrays a man out of time and place. (June 28)

Download: “Stupid,” “Whatever Happened to the Times,” “Nothin’ Can Save Ya”

Neil Young – Americana (Warner)

Young feels compelled to release an album a year, whether or not he has any songs worthy of releasing. On the surface, this looks like a cheap and easy, crowd-pleasing move: dipping into old chestnuts from folk traditions like “Oh Susanna,” “Oh My Darling Clementine,” “Tom Dooley,” etc., and jamming them out with Crazy Horse, his self-described “third-best garage band in the world.” What could go wrong?

Young being the contrarian he is, he doesn’t give us the pleasure of hearing traditional melodies from our childhood: in a longstanding folk tradition, he takes most of these well-worn rhymes and sings almost entirely new songs. Sometimes it’s entirely incongruous: surely “Gallows’ Pole” should not sound like a jaunty country romp. Occasionally, it’s inspired: he takes “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” back to its roots as an African-American spiritual, and renames it “Jesus’ Chariot.” Often it’s innocuous—does the world need another version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”? In at least one instance, it’s downright awful, as when he butchers the ’50s doo-wop classic “Get a Job.”

It can also be so weird that it works: Young apparently got swept up in Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee fever—why else, other than as a cheeky way to close an album called Americana, would he give a garage-band workout to “God Save the Queen”? (Note: not the Sex Pistols’ song, but the actual British national anthem.) (June 7)

Download: “God Save the Queen,” “Jesus’ Chariot,” “Wayfarin’ Stranger”