Audioholic Media

»Album Reviews For Release Date: 06.30.09
by Joshua Krage

It’s an absolute furnace outside, so it’s nice to be indoors, listening to cool music under a nice, breezy A/C vent with a shop fan right on me. This week’s releases aren’t really so hot, but here’s the list anyway:

Ace Hood
Cunninglynguists

Levon Helm, Electric Dirt – from all accounts I’ve read, this second album back from the legendary Band drummer’s throat cancer battle is firing on all cylinders and in top form all around. Sure wish I could find someplace to listen to it…

Jeremih
Killing Joke
Killswitch Engage
KISS – “authorized boot”, whatever that looks like
Maino
Moby

Nouvelle Vague, NV3 – the suave Parisian bossa band adds a few more ’80s tunes to its kitschy cache, this time scoring many original band members (like Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore) to add creedence to their covers, but overall this schtick is kind of wearing on me…

Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night – I generally don’t enjoy much country music, and sometimes I have mixed feelings about ol’ Brad here given how much he courts the middle of the road in his radio hits, but his strong points are overpowering: really solid songs (both on his own and collaborations), great guitar playing and arrangements, and wry, clever lyrics spliced into the usual soppy-wet country singles chart fare. Brad Paisley is an artist that ups the bar of a genre which doesn’t often challenge itself at all, and this new album is another in a career of even-handed compromise and collaboration, encompassing top 40 mainstream hits aplenty but tempering them with above-average playing and composition and a genuine boundary-pushing perspective so many of his contemporaries lack.

Suicide Silence

Rob Thomas, Cradlesong – the Matchbox 20 frontman taking his second solo outing very seriously, stacking the sticky-sweet early-’00s AOR choruses with the kind of heartfelt dramatic lyricism that drove MB20 to stardom. This album has some surprises, particularly in the worldbeat rhythms and electronic flourishes underpinning many tracks, and the vocal section arrangements peppered throughout. Overall it is a solid progression from his solo debut four years back and an enjoyable and satisfying mainstream musical meal.

Tanya Tucker
Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry 25th Anniversary

Wilco, Wilco (the Album) – hearing Jeff Tweedy be cheery is almost unsettling to begin with, given his and his band’s history, both in and out of song. This amazing self-titled (and parenthesed) album, however, is a celebration that takes no effort at all to join right alongside, especially with the amount of boldfaced tongue-in-cheek fun the entire band are having, sometimes at their own expense. The musicianship is superb (excellent contributions particularly from guitarist Nels Cline), the production crisp and head-scratching in all the right ways, and the Tweed-man running the gamut from soul-searching to party-raving to doom-saying to straight-up self-parody, never taking his finger off the pulse of where his band is right now, which is making the best music of their career. Hipsterweb blogs everywhere are tagging this LP as a “year’s best” contender, but still in a low-key sort of way, so take note…

Hopefully some of these will chill you out or heat you up (if that’s your flavor), but as for me, I had forgotten how many good songs are on that Stay Hungry album from Twisted Sister. Dee Snider may have been an over-the-top showman, but the man knew how to write a song and has an insanely high voice to (high-heeled) boot. I’m-a download me “The Price” right now!

P.S. Enjoy a sampling from this week’s new songs on my MySpace page. It’s updated pretty much weekly now…

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