More May 2014 reviews

And Then You Shoot Your Cousin

Highly recommended: The Roots

Worth your while: Nels Cline Singers

These reviews ran in the Waterloo Record between May 22 and June 5. Other May 2014 reviews ran here.

Blondie – Ghosts of Download / Blondie 4(0) Ever: Greatest Hits Deluxe Redux (Universal)

Never saw this coming: Blondie, circa 2014, covering Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”; the first half of this six-minute version is set to a morbid pace and features just piano, Debbie Harry and backing singers. After that, it really gets weird: a guitar and synth interlude then gives way to what sounds like the original backing track with an EDM makeover. By the time Harry starts pleading with us to hit her with laser beams, I’d be shocked if anyone is still listening.

Between that and the head-scratching album title, Blondie are choosing to celebrate their 40^th anniversary as a band in strange style. On this, their fourth album since their 1999 comeback, they seem a tad, well, desparate: this is a double album, the second half of which features the band rerecording all of their greatest hits, without any major reinvention or imagination—so why bother?

The good news is that Blondie’s new originals sound exactly as you might hope they would: much like their 1999 hit “Maria,” this material will fit in seamlessly beside their greatest hits in a live set, even if it errs on the fluffier side, and these recorded versions have occasionally unfortunate nods to Max Martin-style modern pop production. Harry is in fine voice, while the subtle cumbia touches (including accordion) are no more out of place than the reggae that would have coloured earlier material. But between the rerecorded bonus disc, the too-long running length and the seeming inability to trust their best instincts on everything but the actual songwriting, Blondie seems to chasing ghosts rather than forging a future. (June 5)

Download: “Rave,” “Euphoria,” “Backroom”

Nels Cline Singers – Macroscope (Mack Avenue)

Pronto – The Cheetah (Butterscotch)

Rumour has it Wilco is reconvening in September. Its members have hardly been idle. Drummer Glenn Kotche put out his second album of solo percussion; Jeff Tweedy produced Low and Mavis Staples; bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone put out a new Autumn Defense album. Now keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen follows up his 2013 colllaboration with Greg O’Keeffe with a reissue of The Cheetah, an album he recorded at Wilco’s Chicago loft, with O’Keeffe and members of the Chicago Underground Trio, around the time he joined the band in 2001. And Wilco’s lead guitarist, Nels Cline, has put out his third album of 2014 (the only one leading his eponymous instrumental trio, however).

Cline had a prolific career before he joined Wilco; listen to any of his lyrical guitar solos in that band and it’s clear he’s much more than just another sideman. Cline plays guitar solos for people who don’t like guitar; indeed, often it doesn’t even sound like he’s playing guitar. He’s one of the only modern guitarists who can accurately be called Hendrixian: not just for technique or style or capacity for innovation, but for soul—you can feel every note Cline plays. Here he’s joined by longtime drummer Scott Amendola, new bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle), his wife Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto), harpist Zeena Parkins and percussionist Cyro Baptista—all but Amendola are frequently collaborators with John Zorn, the king of the improv scene in Cline’s newly adopted hometown of NYC. Together, they move through somewhat traditional jazz-rock fusion to beatless noise soundscapes and everything in between (sometimes, like on “Hairy Mother,” all in the same song). Playing in a somewhat conventional rock band as a day job has hardly dulled Cline’s creatively restless spirit.

Much like in Wilco itself, Jorgensen takes a back seat to Cline when comparing these two albums. Cline belongs up front; Jorgensen works best in the background. Pronto dips into jazzy textures not unlike a lot of Tortoise-related projects in Chicago in the late ’90s, but Jorgensen’s real love is synth soundtrack work: he admits that the ’80s film and television work of Stewart Copeland and Jan Hammer were big influences when he was growing up. What sets Pronto apart is his tendency to drop a banjo in the middle of a glitch electronic track—something that no doubt appealed to Jeff Tweedy when he was casting about for new bandmates in 2001.

Download Nels Cline: “Red Before Orange,” “The Wedding Band,” “Hairy Mother”

Download Pronto: “Marsella Rambla,” “Tectonics,” “Tardigrades”

Fucked Up - Glass Boys (Arts and Crafts)

“Punk is dad.” This phrase—a play on the early ’80s rallying cry of The Expoited, “punk’s not dead”—has become a popular meme lately, and it certainly applies to Toronto band Fucked Up. Yes, some of them are dads. And even though their very name distances themselves from the mainstream, they’ve won major prizes, receive government arts funding, opened for Arcade Fire and have shown themselves to be essential cultural catalysts in their hometown and beyond. The anti-melodic growlings of singer Damian Abraham may still be repellant to many, but Fucked Up is downright respectable. As they should be: they do great work—outside the studio.

Glass Boys is an unusually concise record for this ambitious band: 43 minutes. It suits them well. And yet, they still manage to outstay their welcome. For such an explosive live act, the layers of guitars lack any attack. As always, Abraham writes some fine lyrics—and then does everything he can to make sure we can’t hear them. The band sounds like they’re running on autopilot; there are none of the temporary flashes of brilliance scattered throughout the 2011 rock opera David Comes to Life or 2008’s genre-busting Chemistry of Common Life—both flawed records, but both at least more musically interesting than this one. This is a band usually overflowing with ideas, for better or worse. Here, the only good ideas are the psychedelic Tom Petty-ish guitar solo on “Warm Change,” and hiring Gord Downie to sing a chorus about “the privilege of mass delusion.” J Mascis is on here somewhere; you’d never know it without glancing at liner notes.

So much cultural capital, so little to spend it on. That’s Fucked Up. (June 5)

Download: “The Art of Patrons,” “Paper the House,” “Sun Glass”

Coldplay – Ghost Stories (Warner)

Celebrity rags will be parsing the lyrics here to find out if this is Chris Martin’s divorce album. Who cares? Ever since the musical crime that was their breakthrough single, “Yellow,” nobody has ever listened to Coldplay for the lyrics, and they won’t now, either: “All I know is that I love you so / so much it hurts”; “In a sky full of stars, I think I saw you.”

No, the real news about Ghost Stories, their third album with producer Brian Eno, is that Coldplay sound like they’ve stepped out of the rat race, no longer shamelessly trying to be The Biggest Band in the World. Ghost Stories is a lovely, quiet, intimate album capable of converting crossed-arm skeptics (right here)—if they stay awake, that is. Ghost Stories doesn’t even feature anything resembling a fist-pumping stadium anthem or power ballad until the second-last song, "A Sky Full of Stars"; otherwise, it’s all about Eno’s trademark ambience, Martin’s falsetto and mostly electronic grooves not far removed from U2’s Zooropa—though I’m not sure that’s a comparison their record company wants to hear. (May 22)

Download: “Midnight,” “Another’s Arms,” “Magic”

Royksopp & Robyn – Do It Again (Arts and Crafts)

It’s been four years since Robyn’s breakthrough album, Body Talk, the rare electro bubble-gum pop record that never seems to get old: more than any of her other talents, it’s Robyn’s songwriting that sets her apart from all her peers. Too bad that’s not obviously evident here, a five-track collaboration with fellow Scandinavians Royksopp. The album’s centrepiece, the nine-minute “Inside the Idle Hour Club,” doesn’t even feature her vocals; the strongest song, the sultry, 10-minute “Monument,” complete with breathy sax solo, is far removed from anything she’s done before. But more power to her: the point of any collaboration is to exit your comfort zone. If the rest of this EP sounded like that, instead of a less interesting take on her usual sound, this might have worked. (May 29)

Download: “Monument,” “Every Little Thing,” “Do It Again”

The Roots – And Then You Shoot Your Cousin (Universal)

Can you imagine if Doc Severinsen made Bitches Brew? If Branford Marsalis made Voodoo? Now that the Roots moved on up with Jimmy Fallon to The Tonight Show, they’re more mainstream than ever, and are in a position to cash in big time—and yet they don’t. This is a band that always craved acceptance, to the point where they once installed stripper poles and hired dancers to “inspire” them during the making of 2004’s The Tipping Point, in hopes of conjuring a more commercial sound. So what now? Guest spots from Justin Timberlake, Jay Z and Katy Perry? Maybe even Elvis Costello, with whom they were last heard together on the full-length 2013 collaboration Wise Up Ghost?

Hardly. As we’ve known since 2009’s How I Got Over, their job as Fallon’s musical foils has freed them up to be as weird as they want to be on their own time. That means lots of minor-key piano, trippy beats and Biblical gloom and doom from MC Black Thought.  The guest list is decidedly either close to home (long-time extended crew members Dice Raw and Greg Porn) or avant-garde. Jazz pianist D.D. Jackson unleashes torrents of dissonant clusters over a furious string section on "The Coming," while singer Mercedes Martinez coos soothingly in the background. It’s not John Legend singing on "Tomorrow," even though it sure sounds like it; it’s the considerably lesser-known Raheem DeVaughn. For all its left turns, however, And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is remarkably concise—clocking in at an old-school length of 43 minutes and small change.

The Roots have always been outliers: as a full live band in a DJ culture; as music historians in a rapidly changing hip-hop world; as egoless musicians able to collaborate with anyone and everyone. Now that Black Thought and Questlove—the only two remaining original members—celebrate 20 years together, they continue to push their artform and solidify a reputation as perhaps the only hip-hop artists in history who continue to improve with age. Actually, never mind hip-hop: how many artists of any genre make one of their best records 11 albums into their discography? (May 29)

Download: “Never,” “Understand,” “Tomorrow”

September 2013 reviews

The following reviews ran in my weekly column for the Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury in September; highlights of the month (Neko Case, Man Man, AroarA, The Julie Ruin) have already been posted as individual reviews.

Belle and Sebastian – The Third Eye Centre (Matador)

The last decade of Belle and Sebastian’s career may not seem to have been that productive—just three full-length records—but this 19-track collection of b-sides and rarities proves otherwise (and die-hard fans will point out that there are still some covers and compilation tracks missing). This was the period when the Glaswegian pop band broke out of their twee image and embraced their omnivorous tastes, resulting in a more muscular sound. Listening here, their b-sides were an excuse to indulge in genre exercises into ska, country, bossa nova, Latino rock’n’roll, surf instrumentals, or hilarious slow-jam odes to S&M. The lyrics are also more ridiculous, like the mid-2000s song about zeitgeist porn, “Suicide Girl,” or singing about “eating a falafel of peace” in a song called “The Eighth Station of the Cross Kebab House.”

The hands-down highlight is a previously unreleased remix of “Your Cover’s Blown” (the original appeared on a 2004 EP), in which Glasgow DJ Miaoux Miaoux sounds like he invited Nile Rogers and Daft Punk to have their way with the backing tracks; the band obviously loved the reinvention; it was the surprise hit of their summer tour this year, and they made a video for the new version. It’s not a typical remix with a thumping bass thrown under it; the three-part, six-minute suite opens with a mid-tempo soul clap, segues into a pulsing disco number at twice the speed, then settles in for a gentler reprise. It’s one of the most satisfying moments of the band’s entire career; meanwhile, the rest of this naturally uneven collection proves that even their off days are solid. Long live their life pursuit. (Sept. 12)

Download: “Your Cover’s Blown (Miaoux Miaoux Remix),” “Suicide Girl,” “Heavin in the Afternoon”

Black Joe Lewis – Electric Slave (Vagrant)

It’s been 20 years now. Can we admit that grunge sucked? Nirvana still holds up, naturally, but most everything else sounds like it was merely paving the way for Nickelback. That’s why Black Joe Lewis is here to steal rock’n’roll back from the soulless and the sexless and brings some of its lineage back. Bo Diddley, the Stooges, the Cramps, the Dirtbombs: meet your latest offspring.

He’s not the only one, of course. Jack White’s done a fine job of it in the last 15 years (Lewis tapped White’s engineer, Stuart Sikes, to record this album). But Lewis is all bluster and bombast and heavy as hell, possessing the most convincing rock’n’roll scream recorded in recent memory, with the riffs to match, a thunderous rhythm section and a punchy three-piece horn section who rarely dare to solo. Lewis’s guitar playing is sloppy and raw; he’s not here to blow you away with his chops, he just wants to play like a wrecking ball.

He also wants to party, as he outlines on one of the most exciting singles of 2013 not made by Daft Punk. It’s titled, of course, “Come To My Party.” Note the emphasis on his own party—he doesn’t want to be a part of someone else’s idea of cool (“Oh, come on man / fuck that shit,” he taunts on “The Hipster”). And he’s not doing this for the little girls to understand; like Jon Spencer before him, he wants a full-grown woman: “I don’t want no young girl / I want one who’s 30 years old / knows what she wants!”

Black Joe Lewis plays rock’n’roll with his rules, on his terms, his way. It’s the right way. (Sept. 12)

Download: “Come to My Party,” “Dar Es Salaam,” “The Hipster”

Elvis Costello & the Roots – Wise Up Ghost (Universal)

These are not strange bedfellows. It makes perfect sense for the onslaught of verbosity that is Elvis Costello to team up with hip-hop’s greatest live band, the Roots. Both parties have an infinite musical curiosity outside their comfort zone. Costello has long needed a band to both kick his ass and allow his never-ending verses room to flow. “Just because you don’t speak the language, doesn’t mean you can’t understand,” he sings, and of course this is not a hip-hop album per se. And really, hasn’t he been rapping ever since “Pump It Up” and “Watching the Detectives”?

Both parties tone down their excesses to meet in the middle; even if Costello wasn’t involved, it’s also a fine Roots album—obviously with drummer ?uestlove at the forefront, with punctuation from a punchy horn section and textural keyboard flourishes colouring every groove. The band doesn’t just complement Costello: they push him to try new approaches with his vocals, and it actually works—not an easy thing to do with an old dog who’s been guilty of overextending his vocal palette in the past. “Wake me up with a slap or a kiss,” he sings; the Roots do both.

Costello has done his share of full-on collaborations throughout his career, but this is the only one that scores a direct hit: this has needed to happen for a long, long time. In fact, it’s only the second album he’s made in the past 22 years that’s worth listening to. (Sept. 19)

Download: “Walk Us Uptown,” “Sugar Won’t Work,” “Tripwire” 

Peter Gabriel – And I’ll Scratch Yours (RealWorld)

In the 1980s, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne and Paul Simon all brought African music to Western ears; the first two gained respect for setting up record labels to put out albums by their collaborators and inspirations, while Simon was seen as the mainstream sellout who broke the cultural boycott against South Africa.

Which is why it’s interesting that Gabriel covered Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble” on his 2010 covers album, Scratch My Back, and why it’s even lovelier to hear the normally apolitical Paul Simon cover Gabriel’s “Biko,” a lament for a slain anti-apartheid activist. (Not that there’s any political risk in doing so, over 20 years after apartheid’s demise.)

Three years after this album’s promised arrival—Gabriel kept holding out for David Bowie, Neil Young and Radiohead to cough up their contributions, to no avail—the companion to Gabriel’s all-covers album arrives, containing considerably more interesting arrangements of Gabriel’s back catalogue than what the man himself did with solo-piano renditions of his favourite artists on that album.

That tone is set immediately by David Byrne’s spirited version of “I Don’t Remember,” which sounds more like a ditzy old man at a disco than the paranoid narrator in the original. Bon Iver delivers a lovely “Come Talk To Me.” The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt sets “Not One of Us” in a strange synth world populated by either munchkins or the cast of Freaks. Joseph Arthur strips “Shock the Monkey” down to what could be an outtake from the Daniel Lanois and Neil Young sessions. Arcade Fire phone in “Games Without Frontiers,” and Regina Spektor does a rote version of “Blood of Eden.” Lou Reed—why does anyone invite him to open his mouth anymore?—moans through the sludgiest version of “Solisbury Hill” you’d never care to imagine (in which he changes one line to read, “My friends would think I was a slut”).

The highlight, hands-down, is Randy Newman, who has a blast recasting “Big Time” for a New Orleans jazz piano setting, bringing to life the playful absurdity of the lyric, which was somewhat lost in the original. Finally, Feist and Timber Timbre inhabit “Don’t Give Up” (and flipping the genders on the Kate Bush duet), a song that seems almost impossible to remove from its original production and vocals.

Everyone else makes you want to go back and listen to Gabriel himself; Feist, Newman and Byrne transform the material completely. (Sept. 26)

Download: “I Don’t Remember” – David Byrne, “Big Time” – Randy Newman, “Don’t Give Up” – Feist and Timber Timbre

John Legend – Love in the Future (Sony)

Frank Ocean leave you scratching your head? The Weeknd bum you out? Fear not, as not all modern R&B is abstract, bleak and twisted. John Legend returns with his first album of original material in five years, to remind us that there are still some acts for grown-ups left in R&B. Never mind Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z’s tuxedo shtick; Legend is the real class act.

With production by Kanye West and some assists from Q-Tip, Rick Ross—and, um, Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers?—Legend puts some swagger into smoothed-out soul. Legend is a loverman without any irony or hidden malice; it’s near impossible to find someone this earnest and this squeaky clean who’s not a complete cheeseball (sorry, Usher).

If Legend’s gentlemanly manner seems retro, the music is not: he may be inspired by the likes of Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye and Roberta Flack, but Love in the Future is decidedly modern; having Kanye on board assures that outcome. “Made to Love” is a soaring, majestic track drenched in atmospherics, house music backing vocals and a raw, hand-clapping rhythm track.

It’s true Legend’s voice is a stunning instrument—but that’s almost a given for R&B royalty. His songwriting and lean arrangements are what really sells his sizzle, especially on the solo piano ballad “All of Me,” which surely has Coldplay’s Chris Martin weeping with envy, not to mention Adele, Elton John, Phil Collins and, I don’t know, Air Supply. If this instant classic doesn’t become a wedding-dance staple in the near future, then Legend might as well give up now. (Indeed, he wrote it for his new bride, at their Italian wedding, where Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones looked on.) (Sept. 26)

Download: “Made to Love,” “All of Me,” “Save the Night”

Janelle Monae – The Electric Lady (Universal)

Everyone loves Janelle Monae. What’s not to love? She has an astounding voice, great ambition, eclectic taste, she’s a snappy dresser and drop-dead gorgeous.

Except that her music sounds a step above mediocre Broadway musical territory (Rent comes to mind more than once). To be sure, there are some solid grooves here, like the one buried beneath the collaboration on the title track with Solange, but the soul of the material gets squeezed out by unnecessary layers of overproduction, and Monae’s overachieving, pitch-perfect vocals that render everything she does oddly sexless. Mind you, that worked for Whitney Houston, whose music was far less interesting, so it may well be the key to Monae’s success. Listening to her duet on “Primetime” with Miguel—an artist who manages to maintain his personality amidst big production—exemplifies the gap between them.

Thankfully, the one moment where she really lets loose is on the duet with Prince, who brings out the best in her while lighting off some guitar pyrotechnics in the background (which are more impressive than the ’80s bag of tricks attempted by her own guitarist on every other track). She also scores on the giddy “Dance Apocalyptic” (a worthy follow-up to her breakthrough single, “Tightrope”), and the ultra-cheese operatic ballad “Look Into My Eyes,” which evokes the least cool comparison possible: Barbra Streisand. 

If Monae is disappointing, it’s only because she promises so much. And so by the time The Electric Lady concludes with the limp cruise-ship reggae of “What an Experience,” your time would have been better spent listening to albums by any of her collaborators. (Sept. 19)

Download: “Dance Apocalyptic,” “Givin Em What They Love (featuring Prince),” “Look Into My Eyes”

The Sadies – Internal Sounds (Outside)

The hardest working band in Canada—and perhaps beyond—the Sadies maintain a relentless touring schedule on top of backing up numerous other artists in the studio. And in the first 10 years of their existence, they were incredibly prolific in the studio as well. Now guitarist/producer Dallas Good wants to slow down, and make every album matter. 2010’s Polaris-shortlisted Darker Circles was the first payoff, a sea change where the Sadies stepped up their game as songwriters and arrangers, not just a brilliant assembly of musicians.

Internal Sounds continues that path, brilliantly encapsulated in opening track “The First 5 Minutes.” Unfortunately, about half of Internal Sounds comprises variations on that song, to lesser effect. Only on the runaway-train groove of “Another Tomorrow Again” do they really pick up steam again; “Story 19” starts out as a psychedelic, mid-tempo country song before culminating in a “White Light/White Heat”-ish Velvet Underground climax; the acoustic “So Much Blood” is one of the most haunting songs the Sadies have ever recorded.

The real surprise is the appearance of Buffy Sainte-Marie on the closing “We Are Circling,” a three-minute drone with the refrain, “This is family … this is celebration … this is sacred.” That’s true anytime the Sadies are in a room together. (Sept. 26)

  

Download: “The First 5 Minutes,” “So Much Blood,” “We Are Circling”

December '11 reviews

These reviews appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury this month.

Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow (Fish People/EMI)

Compared to her last album, the disappointingly conventional 2005 album Aerial, 50 Words of Snow sounds much like the Kate Bush that her fans cherish, the iconoclast who has influenced several generations of boundary-pushing performers.

Opening track “Snowflake” is instantly familiar, in part because it sounds like it could have appeared on 1985’s masterpiece Hounds of Love, but also because it consists of little more than a relentless piano riff that—while beautiful—doesn’t change over the course of nine minutes (making it one of the shorter tracks on this seven-song album). As the rest of the album unfolds, it becomes apparent that even though Bush is still in magnificent voice, still writing outside of any pop music convention, still sounding gorgeous, her songs simply don’t match the rest of her talents.

In many cases, they’re unintentionally funny. Granted, intention is difficult to gauge, but 50 Words for Snow is such a sombre, po-faced album that one can only assume it’s deadly serious. There’s a song written in the first person as a snowflake, a song about Yeti, and a song about dreaming a sexual encounter with a snowman (and his “ice-cream lips”) who, of course, ends up melting in her bed.

Then there’s the extremely literal title song: Bush strings together 50 poetic synonyms for snow—i.e., “swans-a-melting,” “vanilla swarm,” “icyskidski” and “whippoccino”—while she intermittently urges on the male narrator (played by actor Stephen Fry) with lines like, “Come on, Joe, just 22 to go … just like the Eskimos … let me hear your 50 words for snow.” Bush has always had a playful side that’s helped her realize her best work; this song, however, is asinine.

That leaves Elton John, of all people, to save the day. He shows up as a duet partner on "Snowed in at Wheeler Street," a story about star-crossed lovers throughout history. It sounds like an odd pairing—although Bush scored a hit in the early ’90s covering “Rocket Man”—but John relishes the role and sings his ass off, giving the song his all and emoting in ways he hasn’t really done in over 30 years. It’s an inspired moment in both of their recent discographies (which might not be saying much), and that track alone is enough to suggest that Bush’s best days might not be so far behind her after all. (Dec. 1)

Download: “Snowed in at Wheeler Street,” “Snowflake,” “Wild Man”

Couer de Pirate – Blonde (Grosse Boite)

Montreal’s Béatrice Martin was kittenish and coy on her fey debut album in 2008, but now this cat has grown claws. The young francophone pop singer has gained considerable swagger on this, her second album, as she struts through swinging-’60s throwbacks that owe as much to British pop of the period (think Petula Clark) as well as Parisian yé-yé and Lee Hazlewood productions. Her voice, while still girlish, is rarely if ever cutesy—Duffy, please take note. Engineer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Godspeed You Black Emperor) and arranger Michael Rault (a young Edmontonian who records raw retro rock under his own name) help Martin expertly dress up her songs in lovely colours without ever sounding ostentatious. Sam Roberts drops by to sing a duet—in French, of course, as Martin sticks to her native tongue throughout. Anyone who’s ever fallen in love in or with Montreal will find plenty to love here, but the real success of Blonde is that it is much more universal than that. She’s already got a Top 10 album in France, but there’s no reason a language barrier should stop her from conquering the rest of the world. (Dec. 1)

Download: “Adieu,” “Danser et danse,” “Les amours dévouées”

Pink Floyd – Discovery (EMI)

Pink Floyd’s back catalogue has been a cash cow for at least the last 35 years; most famously, 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon holds the record for having the longest run on the Billboard charts (25 years), and has already been remastered and re-released twice before. It appears again, of course, in this deluxe box set—merely a small component of extensive Pink Floyd reissues this autumn—which coincidentally came out around the same time that legendary major label EMI announced that it was being broken up and its parts sold to Universal and Sony. On the heels of endless Beatles repackaging and a new blockbuster from Coldplay, Discovery is EMI’s swan song.

No one really needs to own yet another copy of Dark Side, Wish You Were Here or The Wall, each of which are also being re-released individually in ridiculously expanded packages meant only for the fan who thinks he has everything. And certainly no one needs the three albums that followed The Wall (or, I would argue, even The Wall itself, one of the most wretched albums in the rock canon), though of course they are included here.

The real appeal—other than a lovely 60-page booklet detailing the band’s artwork and imagery through the years—is having all the pre-Dark Side material assembled together; it comprises half of this 14-album, $200 set (less than $15 an album, including doubles, in case you want to break it down). Some of it holds up better than the rest—Atom Heart Mother in particular is revelatory, Meddle is merely muddling, the Barbet Schroeder soundtracks are trifles—but it’s gratifying to hear Floyd in such a playful, exploratory mode, making music that can conceivably be executed by four creative people in a room.

Naturally, it all sounds fantastic; Pink Floyd is nothing if not an audiophile’s band, and this doesn’t disappoint. And albums like Ummagumma still manage to sound remarkably fresh and devoid of cliché; it’s somewhat mindblowing, in today’s culture, to imagine an album this far out there could ever sell platinum (which it eventually did). It’s a welcome contrast to the often-bloated, super-serious, rock-operatic blowhards they became.

Come for the acid, leave for the cocaine. (Dec. 8)

Rihanna – Talk That Talk (Universal)

Rihanna wants to be all things to all people: pop star, dancehall queen, raunchy electro diva, arena-rock power balladeer. She’s a perfect chameleon, and with her cool, collected and compelling voice she soars above the armies of fembots and divas she shares space with in the Top 40. Yet on Talk That Talk, she merely alternates between feel-good, inspirational pop music for the whole family—“we all want love!” goes one track suitable for a Disney movie—and then lurid, hypersexual strip-club soundtrack material that’s about as artful and seductive as a 30-second clip on a free porn site.

Rihanna scores best when she amps up the Eurodisco techno on Lady Gaga-style club bangers like “We Found Love,” or takes a left turn by rewriting the song “Intro” by downbeat British band The XX. Though it’s entirely based around a sample of the original, Rihanna uses it as carte blanche to insert her own melody and soaring vocal. Rather than a ripoff, it sounds like an inspired collaboration—and not a terribly surprising one, as The XX, despite their minimalist moodiness, has always professed their love for modern American R&B.

The tarty tracks are also the weakest here, though they’re obviously the subject of more media scrutiny. Rihanna’s played the bad girl more than once before—last time we heard from her, she was wielding whips and chains—and now she’s into genderbending, urging you to “suck my cockiness, lick my persuasion,” or singing, “Let me grab my dick while you sit on top / do it right there while the whole world’s watching.” Somewhere, Prince is blushing—and more than a few parents of tweens are scrambling for the off button. (Dec. 1)

Download: “Where Have You Been,” “Drunk on Love,” “Roc Me Out”

The Roots – Undun (Universal)

This veteran hip-hop group will try to convince you that Undun is a concept album about one man’s urban struggles and the choice between an honest life and the criminal element. Don’t hold your breath for a Broadway musical, however; there’s precious little to distinguish this from the other 12 albums in the Roots’ discography, thematically or musically. That said, it comes on the tails of their late-career high, 2009’s How I Got Over, where they proved that taking a gig as a house band on a late-night talk show actually reinvigorated them creatively. And yet while that album worked on a variety of levels, Undun finds the Roots returning to well-crafted albums that are easy to respect but hard to actually like. There are more guest vocal hooks this time around, and a short four-song classical suite to close the album, but mostly the appeal remains in ?uestlove’s drumming and production aesthetic—which isn’t enough to carry an entire record on its own. (Dec. 15)

Download: “Stomp,” “The Other Side,” “Make My”

Sigur Ros – Inni (XL)

If there’s a proper heir to Pink Floyd in the last decade, it’s Sigur Ros. Exploratory, fragile, bombastic, obsessed with the science of sound, and—on their best days—mind-blowing, this Icelandic band have released five albums of varying quality; every one has its high points, but mostly they each feel overwhelming and a bit overproduced. It’s odd, then, that this two-disc live album (the soundtrack to an acclaimed concert film directed by Arcade Fire collaborator Vincent Morisset) doesn’t feel bloated in the least.

Recorded in 2008, Inni features just the core four members of the band—no strings, horns or other window dressing (and barely any crowd noise). And yet the music consistently sounds massive, even at its most minimalist. This band has the ability to convey volumes with the sparsest arrangements of notes; when the tension erupts, it’s positively thunderous. What keep it grounded are the small moments of imperfection amidst the otherwise epic constructions: a feedback squall, a whimsical accordion line, singer Jonsi warbling off-mic. Even though they’re a seasoned band, nothing here sounds rote or bled to death; Inni is full of vitality, and a snapshot of a band at the height of their powers. This is the definitive document of Sigur Ros. (Dec. 8)

Rae Spoon – I Can’t Keep All of Our Secrets (Saved by Radio)

When someone close to you dies, nothing makes sense anymore. Black is white, up is down, and somewhere in the middle of it all you can hopefully find some sort of clarity and insight that leads you to a greater truth. Rae Spoon wrote this, his sixth album, in just such a state, and the result is his strongest work to date.

Spoon is often found between states. Once a solo country singer from Calgary, who identifies as a transgender man, Spoon spent time in Berlin before settling in Montreal and transforming into a full-on electro artist with a singer/songwriter’s heart. Here, his strong, boyish voice is put to work over arrangements that old-timers will think are reminiscent of New Order, and youngsters will think sound like Diamond Rings; unfortunately, they don’t have a lot of teeth to them to work as actual club songs, which leaves the material in a tentative state between reflective ruminations of loss and a desire to bust out on the dance floor.

Either way, these are the finest melodies he’s penned to date, and so the disembodied, in-between state of the material works in its favour. On “Are You Jealous of the Dead?” there is enough reverb on his voice to sound like he’s singing from the other side; the song itself starts out as a fractured bossa nova before becoming an electro anthem. “Curse on Us,” which is set to a sort of techno reggae backdrop, is improbably one of the strongest tracks here.

Nothing is predictable about Rae Spoon at this stage of his career. While it’s a shame that a tragedy is what brought this fine work out of him, it’s inevitable that it will open even more creative and commercial doors. (Dec. 15)

Download: “Curse On Us,” “Ocean Blue,” “When I Said There Was an End to Love I Was Lying”

Kreesha Turner - Tropic/Electric (EMI)

While the new Rihanna record gets attention for its potty mouth and little else, Edmonton singer Kreesha Turner hopes to sneak up from behind and capture some of the same musical terrain on pop radio. Turner is still getting mileage out of her 2008 single “Don’t Call Me Baby” (that is, based on the number of times I still hear it in grocery stores and banks), and there’s nothing here remotely as catchy. Apparently she had four albums’ worth of material before settling on these 10 tracks; one has to wonder what it would take to be rejected from this record. That said, Turner is a far better singer than most pop moppets, and half the tracks on this album—split into two short discs labelled Tropic and Electric—draw from Caribbean and South American influences, filtered through Top 40 production values. That means there’s plenty to work with for remixes, even if the songs themselves are slight. (Dec. 15)

Download: “Rock Paper Scissors,” “I Feel My Darling,” “Love Again”

U2 – Achtung Baby (Universal)

Achtung Baby, now 20 years old, carries the most mythology of any U2 album: the earnest stadium rock band reinvents themselves in Berlin, embraces new sounds, stop taking themselves so seriously, and hit the road with a revolutionary stage show that has yet to be topped by anyone. In Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel Freedom, the album also becomes the soundtrack to a sexual awakening for two teenagers who later embrace capitalist excess; they lose their virginity on a pile of $20 bills while listening to “Zoo Station,” and later on “Mysterious Ways” somehow alludes to self-mutilation as well as seduction. Fill in your own metaphor.

The new anniversary reissue contains plenty of distractions: there are no less than five versions, from the basic disc itself to a two-disc set with outtakes and remixes to a ridiculous package involving six CDs, four DVDs, four vinyl records and, of course, Bono’s “fly” shades. There’s also a documentary about the album by an Academy Award-winning director, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

What about the album itself? Devoid of context, it is indeed a classic: 12 nearly flawless tracks that stand the test of time, many of which are still staples of U2’s record-grossing tours. It’s the rare mainstream success that is as intriguing sonically as it is full of accessible pop songs.

It’s hard to contextualize, however, without remembering 1991. U2 was not a band you danced to. U2 was not a band that ever used much more than bass, guitar and drums. And until then, Bono was perhaps the most earnest man in rock’n’roll, one who wouldn’t be caught dead singing “baby” nine times in a row in each chorus of a song (as he does here in “Ultraviolet”).

The first 30 seconds of opening track “Zoo Station” do sound like they would have been a game-changer in 1991—not for music in general, but certainly for a stadium rock band. Otherwise, there’s nothing revolutionary about Achtung Baby. Most of Larry Mullen Jr.’s beats sound like they were lifted from the Stone Roses. The Edge does develop his signature guitar sound further, but it’s not so drastically removed from his earlier work. On the whole, it’s not as if U2 turned their back on rock’n’roll, or at least the version of it they’d already been developing.

The second disc of outtakes contains some gems: b-sides (“Salome”), experiments and embryonic versions of songs that made the album. But it’s certainly not essential: the remixes are either pointless (minor tweaks of the original) or dated (not in a good way), and the covers, excepting The Velvet Underground’s “Satellite of Love,” are otherwise terrible ideas (Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black,” CCR’s “Fortunate Son,” Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”).

Is Achtung Baby a great album? Yes. Is it an important album? Not really. But as the old American saying goes, when a legend becomes fact, print the legend. (Dec. 8)

Amy Winehouse - Lioness (Universal)

The cynic has to wonder how quickly this was assembled after Amy Winehouse’s tragic death this past summer. Indeed, it includes her final recording—a duet with Tony Bennett for his September release, Duets II—but much of this material comes from various points from the last nine years, with a lot of it reminiscent of her pre-Back to Black breakthrough. In other words, there’s little of the spark, the vitality and the sass that made that one album an instant classic.

Any time a major star passes away prematurely, everyone ponders the possibilities and what-ifs. Lioness doesn’t offer any hints, other than suggesting that maybe Back in Black was the result of a time and place—and a producer, Mark Ronson, who has little to do with the tracks here—and not necessarily Winehouse herself, her astounding voice notwithstanding. Her voice and the arrangements are often better than the material here, but even the covers are hit and miss. On Carole King’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” she again teams up with the Dap-Kings—Sharon Jones’s backing band who were integral to the sound of Back in Black—and achieve the impossible, breathing new life into a song that’s been covered to death in the last 40 years. However, she stumbles through “The Girl from Ipanema”—complete with awkward scat solo—and is clearly out of her league on the Bennett duet. On a newer original such as “Like Smoke,” she takes a back seat to verses by Nas, who raps circles around her lacklustre vocals.

For a lioness, this is incredibly tame. (Dec. 15)

Download: “A Song for You,” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” “Our Day Will Come”