Opinz

Lucinda Williams – Little Honey

Little Honey is not the most unique alterna-country-roots-rock record ever made (and it’s less “alt” or “rock” than it is “country”), and that’s about the best that can be said about it – the album is best at it’s grittiest (“Real Love”, “Honey Bee”) but unfortunately those moments are few and far between; the album consists too much of the droning, depressing song variety (“Plan to Marry”) to be interesting, even including the stripped-down country blues take on AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top” (complete with gospel background vocals). More »

Beach House – Devotion

Duo Beach House’s guitar and keyboards-fueled second album is no pop music revelation, but listen to tracks like “Gila” and “Heart of Chambers” and try to tell me that Devotion isn’t absolutely top-notch chill-out music: pretty, heartfelt stuff that somehow manages to sound both lighter than air and as deep as the ocean.

More »

The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely

One of the more perfect homages to classic rock created recently, Consolers of the Lonely channels the ghosts of Led Zeppelin and The Who without sounding like they’re ripping them off or trying to cannibalize their legacies while at the same time building off the back-to-basics-but-carefully-experimental vein of The White Stripes’ Icky Thump of last year; there’s plenty of pumping guitar rock (“Salute Your Solution”, “Hold Up”), soaring horns (“Many Shades of Black”), and frantic traditional-ly tales (“Carolina Drama”) – the whole thing is rough and ragged and the more bombast they try to cram into the songs the better they sound. More »

David Bowie – Hunky Dory

On one of the most doubtlessly solid collections of his career, Bowie fully indulges in his theatrical tendencies as he touches on every topic and style that interests him, and shifts effortlessly between psychedelic folk, proto-funk, and orchestral pop; Hunky Dory isn’t as bold or experimental as the works that would come to define Bowie’s career, but it’s sound songwriting and warmth are undeniable.

More »

Fireman – Electric Arguments

Calling Paul McCartney’s latest album “experimental” is too easy…it’s also inaccurate, as a good chunk of the disc is as mainstream/pop-oriented as anything Sir Paul does under his own name – but that doesn’t take anything away from the superior musicianship of the album that hasn’t shown up in his work in a number of years – this could be his most innovative and diverse output since “The White Album” and it shows from the opening single “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight” (which is probably the truest experimental music here) to the lazy guitar and blues-infused vocals of “Two Magpies” and the stompalong, singalong gospel-twinged fun of “Light from Your Lighthouse”. More »

Britney Spears – Circus

Circus sounds like a rush release aimed at erasing whatever it was Britney Spears (or her handlers) was trying to do at the time with Blackout (which actually did a good job of moving forward away from the teenybopper stuff she could never seem to get away from and was a very strong pop album) since she reportedly had little to do with the whole project and it was a credit to the producers more than anything – Circus is indeed a “comeback album,” but the problem is that she appears to be adamant in coming back on her own terms this time, and it’s a step backward from Blackout…much less of a dance-oriented album and a more well-rounded but outdated and meandering one, which is a problem because if Britney Spears has a strength, it’s dance-oriented music. More »