Simply Red
Simplified (3.5 stars)
A jazzy Latin flavor infuses all of the 12 tracks on Mick "Red" Hucknall's 10th album, a dramatic departure from a British artist who, 20 years ago, was mistaken for a black singer because of his deep, rich tones. Opening with "Perfect Love," and accompanied by Cuba's Danae, Hucknall proves that the passing decades haven't affected that voice, as he presents a variety of new material and old, reconfigured favorites.
The classic "Holding Back the Years" gets stripped down and slowed down, offering up a melancholic, Spanish-like strumming with Latin percussion and soft horns providing the equatorial background. Hucknall follows it up with "More," another hit from his A New Flame.
Opening with a descending piano scale, "A Song For You" is a hearkening back to the torch songs of yore, and you can almost see the cigarette smoke swirl out of the speakers as Hucknall sings of a love that has passed the test of time. Later, "Sad Old Blue" evokes a finger-snapping stroll through dark streets worthy of Frank, while the entire excursion comes to a fitting close with Hucknall's take on "Every Time We Say Goodbye."
Though he sometimes descends too far into cruise-liner schmaltz, as on "My Perfect Love," you have to forgive Red the sentimentality as a small cost to pay.
Ashlee Simpson
I Am Me (2 stars)
If Ashlee Simpson's debut was all about trying to be a glossier version of Avril Lavigne, her second album, I Am Me, finds Jessica's beleaguered younger sister trying just as hard to be Gwen Stefani. The guitar-driven pop of her first album is still dominant, courtesy of producing mastermind John Shanks, but the more interesting tracks are the ones that deviate from the established formula, including the funky, danceable "L.O.V.E." and the new wave-y "Burnin Up," which could easily be a Stefani single.
Elsewhere, the rock-oriented songs are predictably bland, lacking the passion and musical chops that Kelly Clarkson and Pink have brought to their own rock makeovers. Shanks, who's worked with respectable artists such as Sheryl Crow and Melissa Etheridge as often as he's abetted teenyboppers Simpson and Hilary Duff, is the unsung hero of Simpson's career, taking her thin voice and trite lyrics and wrapping them in appealingly accessible pop tunes.
But there's no excuse for "Catch Me When I Fall," a drippy, whiny ballad inspired by Simpson's Saturday Night Live lip-synching debacle, and the few catchy moments on the rest of the album aren't enough to overcome Simpson's essential inessentialness.
Danger Doom
The Mouse and The Mask (4.5 stars)
With names such as Danger Mouse (noted producer Brian Burton) and MF Doom (kinetic MC Daniel Dumile), inspiration drawn from the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim series, and careers predicated with working on the fringe (Burton's copyright-violating Grey Album melded Jay-Z's Black Album and the Beatles' White Album; Dumile's multiple comic-book personae, puerile humor and dexterous wordplay), Danger Doom: The Mouse and The Mask is an appropriate name for their collaboration.
The result—with all due respect to Biz Markie—might be the most fun you've had with hip-hop in a long time.
Burton and Dumile bring out the best in each other over 14 generally nonsensical, thoroughly comical and immensely satisfying tracks. Backdropped by Burton's thick, ethereal, almost RZA-esqe beats, Dumile raps with verve and nerve: doting on Judy Jetson's underwear on "Space Ho's," getting his Donald Trump on in "Mince Meat" (he's after "Daffy Duck bucks, Porky Pig paper, Bugs Bunny money") and rhyming borin' with urine on the ode to whizzing, "Vats of Urine."
As expected, there are liberal splices of inane skits and cartoon characters (Space Ghost and the crime-fighting Aqua Teen Hunger Force). But it's the guest collabos that shine brightest: Ghostface Killah is as enthused as he's been in years on "The Mask"; hip-hop conscience Talib Kweli adds a backpack vibe to "Old School"; and "Benzie Box" finds sugary-crooning Goodie Mob expat Cee-Lo doing his thing.