The Knife: Shaking the Habitual (Mute)

Surrounded and set up by bizarro-world electronic "dance" music as engaging as prime Burial and playful to boot, even the arty stuff signifies‑-sometimes​ as soundscape and sometimes as slap upside the head, as in the scraped cello-I-think of "Fracking Fluid Injection." The one exception, the 19-minute electronic-drone-wit​h-apostrophes "Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized," isn't calming or trancey, just an inoffensive tune-out. Conveniently, however, that one's a bonus track even if neither band nor label advertise it as such‑-available only on a two-CD "deluxe edition" whose sole additional attraction is a comic book satirizing the superrich, who I guess they figure won't think twice about buying it. Poor me recommends the single disc, an hour and a quarter of music that's the opposite of inoffensive‑-an exciting, multivalent Dreijer sibling showcase. Karin provides saving shades of humanity by exercising the vocal cords nature gave her. But Olof's imagination, sense of humor, and bent rebop carry the day. A

They Might Be Giants: Nanobots (Idlewild/Megaforce)​

They're such novelty nuts that trying to get into a groove with them would be like trying to build a go-kart with Legos. They're about individual pieces, not structural strength, and thus always demand a count. My calculation: overlooking the nine subminute snippets‑-most annoying even at that length, with bows to the nine-second "Tick" ("If it wasn't for that tick/We would not be in this predicament/Not be in this predicament that we're in," over and out) and the 24-second closer (she neither killed him nor made him stronger)‑-that leaves 16 songs that pretend to be songs, including one A plus, two clear A minuses, and six close enoughs. One of these is as strong as‑-and more soulful than‑-anything in their catalogue: the 2:04-minute biography "Tesla." Thumbs up as well to "Black Ops," because it's always fun to hear the word "communist" in a song, and "Replicants," because for some arbitrary reason it tickles me. The arbitrarily amusing‑-their specialty. B PLUS

 

 

Jonny Fritz: Dad Country (ATO)

The former Jonny Corndawg doffs his cartoon face but continues to wear his cartoon voice, probably because he owns no other. Object: album that presents him as an ordinary Southern-accented male with an unusually high-strung larynx who goes to bars and forgets the garbage and bathes in the holy pool of the Mount of Venus and catches sick and drives 250 miles to get tossed from your birthday party just like any other fella. And oh yeah, who's got relationship problems so depressing that he thinks calmly about killing himself. Yet even that doesn't stop him from saying what he has to say in under three minutes, with a catchy tune to help the time pass. A MINUS

 

Brad Paisley: Wheelhouse (Arista Nashville)

Two or three great songs and a fair number of pretty good ones‑-I'm especially partial to "Karate," a bash-his-face wife-abuse song that deserves more attention than it's been getting, and "Those Crazy Christians," where Paisley fulfills his God quotient by stating his distance so admiringly it'll do evangelicalism more good than an entire sacred album. But a lot of the time he's trying too hard to say too little or trying too clumsily to say too much, sometimes even with his trusty guitar. And the LL Cool J rap is just a flat-out embarrassment. B PLUS

 

 

Lil Wayne: I Am Not a Human Being II (Cash Money/Republic)

Oh no. He's rhyming about almost nothing but‑-yuck and/or bor-ing‑-sex. Hasn't he heard of artistic growth? Probably he has, actually‑-his star bubble is no more hermetic than anybody else's. In fact, I say it's progress that 11 of the 15 tracks here deploy the P-word the way God intended (as opposed to the p****-a**-n**** form, which I'd as soon he s***can myself). It suggests that, unlike most rappers and related pop lifeforms who brag about sex, Weezy really seems to savor it (especially‑-psst‑-oral--both ways!). Plus his posse cuts are finally showing some savor too, albeit not on the vestigial guns 'n' violence ones‑-the Gunplay collab is easily the dullest music here. Brightest: a pro-sex theme song featuring Drake and Future and called, officially, "Love Me." You want socially conscious themes? Really? A loose-lipped ship-sinker is what he was meant to be. A MINUS

 

Skrillex: Leaving (Owsla download)

There aren't even three new songs on this for-fans-only EP‑-just two, totaling nine minutes, plus "Scary Bolly Dub," a reggae remix of "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites," already available X3 on the debut EP of the same name. But messing with songs is what he does, and until that "Oh my God" hook he found officially displaces Gary Glitter in the American heart, I say he should keep on messing. Nor are the new compositions screwed-and-chopped liver. "The Reason" subjects that potentially pleasurable human faculty to the sensory scrutiny it deserves. And "Leaving" promises the vulgar new vistas chill-out ambience deserves. A MINUS

 

 

Rilo Kiley: RKives (Little Record Company)

Seven of these 16 outtakes etc. were recorded along with Rilo Kiley's reflexively underrated 2007 swan song Under the Blacklight‑-the one where Jenny Lewis & Co. consorted with chart-proven beatmaker-producer Mike Elizondo. Another three accompanied their underachieving 2004 succès d'estime More Adventurous‑-the one where they were so vulgar as to risk Warner Bros. distribution. And near as I can hear, all that marks these terrific songs as outtakes etc. is that they're slightly less produced and dramatic. Lewis's melodic facility, vocal ductility, psychological acuity, and verbal dexterity never peak as high as on UTB or MA while maintaining an altitude that few song bands ever reach. May I recommend "Let Me Back In," about wanderlust; "A Town Called Luckey," about 30 as middle age; "Bury, Bury, Bury Another," about work, love, and death. May I recommend the greasy Too Short cameo on the "Dejalo" remix. May I recommend the handclapped closer "The Frug": "And I can do the frug/I can do the robocop/I can do the Freddy/I cannot do the smurf/And I can hate your girl/I can tell you she's real pretty/I can take my clothes off/I cannot fall in love." A

 

Rilo Kiley: The Execution of All Things (Saddle Creek '02)

Beloved of her cult, in part simply because it's early but also because it's mild, this is where Jenny Lewis begins her run as one of the '00s' hardest-hitting songwriters. Really, mild she's not. Her great subject is triumph over depression, exemplified by the magnificent "A Better Son/Daughter," where she's on the march long before she's made forthright her m.o. Even "My Slumbering Heart," which describes dreams any man worth sleeping with would be proud to lie there and listen to, hints at the nightmares of everyday life. Insofar as that man is partner Blake Sennett, however, he is admittedly kind of mild. A

 

 

Wu-Block: Wu-Block (E-One)

The auteur provides the guacamole-canoli-par​olee on this Ghostface album in disguise, but Jadakiss himself sums it up: "Crack spot stories/To Allah be the glory" ("Drivin Round," "Take Notice") ***

 

Ghostface Killah: Apollo Kids (Def Jam)

Living off his past, but it's quite a past and a damned decent living ("In the Park," "Purified Thoughts") ***

 

Action Bronson: The Program (free download)

Four songs about sampling and not all that much food ("Mr. Songwriter," "Amuse Bouche") ***

 

The Man With the Iron Fists (Soul Temple)

Less outrageous and fulfilling than the flick, more outrageous and fulfilling than most soundtracks (Pusha T/Raekwon/Joell Ortiz/Danny Brown, "Tick, Tock"; Ghostface Killah/M.O.P./Pharoa​he Monch, "Black Out") **

 

4two7: Internal Dialogue (3sixty5)

Hip-hop bizzer starts his own album, develops brain cancer, dispenses with tumor, and finishes his own album, which evinces the balanced confidence his backstory deserves ("Butta on Ya Muffintop," "I Lov the Way") **

 

Illuminati Congo: All Eye See (Nyahbanga)

Skank-prone Chicago stay-positives mix genres, beats, races, moods, live-vs.-sampled, and martial disciplines ("Get My Bruce Lee On," "Machete") *

 

Inspectah Deck/7L & Esoteric: Czarface (Brick/Fly Casual)

Anti-mixtape features foldout of the comic-book supervillain it invents and celebrates, also some professional-grade hip-hop ("Savagely Attack," "Rock Beast," "Let It Off") *

 

Action Bronson: Rare Chandeliers (Vice)

Never a good sign when a spoken-word sample IDs the album in more than name only ("Rare Chandeliers," "Demolition Man") *

 

 

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba: Jama Ko (Out Here)

I swear I thought the third album by Youssou N'Dour’s ngoni man of choice might be the best ever to come out of Mali even before I got to the notes. There I learned that recording began on the day Kouyate's friend the president was overthrown by the military, and that two songs celebrate anti-Islamist heroes of 19th-century Mali‑-a martyr whose refusal to leave his animist faith inspired his Muslim protector to fight to his own death for it and a soldier who drank beer in the sanctimonious face of the Muslim cheikh who'd persuaded him to fight for a faith he refused to obey to the letter. From the title party anthem on out, the mood and message are inclusive not just because sharia law proscribes music altogether but because Timbuktu anti-clericalist Khaira Arby gets a track, because the Taj Mahal cameo is the most irreverent Malian blues ever recorded, because every song is fired by Kouyate's political and philosophical passion. Two melodies reach back centuries. Strong-voiced frontwoman Amy Sacko delivers the word. And although the ngoni is a mere lute, Kouyate gets more noises you want to hear out of his strings than any two jam-band hotshots you can name. A

 

Bombino: Nomad (Nonesuch)

Producer Dan Auerbach joins in only as the bassist on "Niamey Jam." But with an American bassist on half the tracks and a German drummer doubling Bombino's own guy half the time too, this is the hardest-rocking of the hard-traveling Tuareg guitarist's three distinct albums. It does sweeten as it proceeds, as befits the "nostalgia" two first-ever translations cite‑-a nostalgia anybody whose homeland is a war zone has earned. The lyrics are very simple. My favorite, in its entirety: "This era/The era of young girls/Their way of loving/Works in a different way/Prayers to you, my brothers/Better to be sensitive/For our girls/Those of this era." A MINUS

 

 

The Lovin' Spoonful: Greatest Hits (Buddha '00)

So what happened to John Sebastian, anyway? Was it the drug busts, the drugs themselves, group hassles, mob-based management? All these and more, but listening back to this slight improvement on Rhino's Anthology, I infer something more fundamental. Figure the reason no one was better at translating the flowery optimism of the middle '60s into folk-flavored pop song‑-"Do You Believe in Magic," "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice," "Daydream," "Summer in the City," "Rain on the Roof," just look at those titles‑-was as much spirit as talent. Figure he was so eager, so well-meaning, so fun-loving, so warmhearted, such a simpleton, that when the times demanded cynicism this John‑-unlike natural-born reprobate Phillips or designated reality principle Lennon‑-didn't have it in him. The three-four-five dogs among this album's 26 selections barely slow down its historical mission of evoking the balmy upsurge to the Summer of Love like no other body of music. A MINUS

 

The Lovin' Spoonful: Do You Believe in Magic (Buddha/BMG Heritage  '02)

The great originals‑-keynoted by the title song, which commenced their 1965-66 run of seven straight top 10 singles‑-are all on the best-of. But on their debut album the filler was prime too, because unlike the Dylan-chiming Byrds, their folk-rock revved a jug-band strain that was plenty lively to begin with. Their "Blues in the Bottle" owed the Holy Modal Rounders and contended with them. And on the best bonus track, Will Shade sneaks away from Beale Street to mastermind the Hollywood Argyles. A MINUS

 

 

Kate Nash: Girl Talk (Have 10P)

I'm proud when Kitty wets her undies and Kacey screws Mr. Acceptable, but prouder, frankly, when this likable size 12 lets her voice crack all over the big fat scarewords "feminist" and "sexism" on an album that gets dissed for its simplistic songwriting as if that wasn't the point. There are a few duds, and not everything is in the mode of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre‑-she ends with an a cappella lament finished off with a full orchestra. A lot of it is, however, including one called "Rap for Rejection," and should some jerk claim it's rejection that fuels her militance, she has the balls to leave the cad's gender unstated and write one called "Sister" that opens another possibility. Too bad the grungy "Under-Estimate the Girl" was consigned to YouTube. Check it out. A MINUS

 

Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni)

Drums shake her confusion free and burgeoning, 'tho still strummed drone and strainéd syntax drag her down, and ere her sister stun the fragile leaves of their esteem, she'll test her wings and bring the bolewood to the shattered oak that truly needs it. Radio grows big in her imaginings, as she swan dives inside the confines of her car horn house, and sometimes we believe we care, what happens in the tuneful drywall of her shambling dreams. A MINUS