Pharrell
In My Mind (2.5 stars)
Conventional wisdom says that an album from Pharrell Williams—the attention-seeking half of platinum-producing Midases the Neptunes—would be a musical home run, full of Skateboard P's nerdy-but-innovative beats and self-stroking, I-get-more-sex-than-you rhymes. Dude enhanced Jay-Z's crossover cred, made Britney Spears listenable and practically reincarnated Justin Timberlake—surely he'd knock the ball out of the park on his own joint.
If only.
Few producers have successfully juggled being the man behind both the boards and the mic (DJ Quik and Kanye West are among the best two-wayers). As such, expectations might have been too high for In My Mind. The album gets lost in a pop-rap flux, as if Williams couldn't choose one over the other, so he decided to do both.
Williams strikes out on the pop tip with too much singing. His voice has always been a false falsetto, high-pitched and seemingly in need of a shot of Chloraseptic. If he weren't his own producer, it'd be hard envisioning anyone encouraging him to sing. On the rap tip, the beats are there, but the rhymes aren't. We're so used to the shit-talking Williams that the introspective Williams comes off as insincere. And while Snoop, Jay-Z, Slim Thug and Nelly may be his friends, they don't do Williams any favors with throwaway verses on "That Girl," "Young Girl," "Keep It Playa" and "Baby," respectively. The self-fellating "Number One," with fellow egotist Kanye West, and the annoying Gwen Stefani-laced "Can I Have It Like That" emerge as two of the better songs.
In the end, you have to wonder if Williams was in his right mind when he recorded In My Mind.
THE WHO
WIRE & GLASS (2 stars)
Pete Townshend's 1966 storytelling mini-epic "A Quick One While He's Away" launched a rock-opera revolution that took The Who from Tommy through Quadrophenia with a pit stop at the scrapped Lifehouse sessions (aka Who's Next) along the way. Forty years later, 12-minute suite Wire & Glass—a six-part preview of the band's first new album since 1982—could scarcely feel less auspicious.
At 60, Roger Daltrey still possesses a beefy vocal swagger, but his material, from opening segment "Sound Round" to closing stretch "Mirror Door," never approaches the melodic urgency of The Who's timeless classics. Conversely, Townshend's persuasive songcraft triggers "They Made My Dreams Come True," but his suddenly overnasal, detached singing spoils the promising "Endless Wire."
Overwhelmingly, the disjointed bits of Wire & Glass fail precisely where the cohesive narrative of "A Quick One" triumphed, failing to take the listener on any sort of substantive odyssey. Wire winds up sounding like just what it is: a patchwork of song snippets lacking segues, connected only in the minds of Townshend and his most ardent apologists.
Slayer
CHRIST ILLUSION (2.5 stars)
The best thing about Slayer has always been their purity of vision. While other metal bands have diluted their sounds or broadened their lyrical scopes or gone off in odd, experimental directions, Slayer have stuck to the combination of hard-core and classic metal that they pioneered along with Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax in the early '80s. Reuniting with original drummer Dave Lombardo for Christ Illusion, their first album since 2001's God Hates Us All, Slayer sound exactly how you'd expect them to sound, which will no doubt please their longtime fans.
After nearly 25 years, though, it's getting a little tired. When singer-bassist Tom Araya screams "Hail Satan!" on "Skeleton Christ," he does it with just as much conviction as ever, but it's no longer provocative or exciting. "I need to redefine/All the things I hate today," Araya sings on "Consfearacy," and, indeed, the current political climate has given the band new things to rail against. But the political lyrics are mostly clumsy and cartoonish ("I hate the shit economy/It might as well be sodomy"), and the band is more in its element praising Satan.
The music, too, is unremarkable, although guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman are as precise as ever. There are no standout riffs, just solid, dependable tunes from a band that's never evolved. "I've made my choice: 666," Araya sings on "Cult." We know, dude—now how about choosing something else?