The Strokes
First Impressions of Earth (3 stars)
Like any anointed saviors of rock 'n' roll, the Strokes inspire reactions in the extreme. Their debut album Is This It was hailed as the second coming of the Velvet Underground, while follow-up Room on Fire was dismissed as a third-rate rerun. But the reality is that both albums were simply solid. Catchy, yes. Unadventurous, sure. But mostly just solid.
No doubt, Strokes zealots who hold up the moppy-haired Manhattan quintet as the Doors or Nirvana of their generation will gush over this third disc, First Impressions of Earth. And hipsters who gushed over the band five years ago when no one else had heard of them will slag the new LP, many without bothering to hear it.
Truth be told, though, First Impressions is another competent yet unspectacular effort. A shade less catchy than Is This It. A hair more adventurous than Room on Fire. But mostly just solid.
A few of the disc's 14 tracks stand out. First single "Juicebox" emits an energy missing from much of the band's cooler-than-thou fare. "Ask Me Anything" features singer Julian Casablancas backed only by a haunting mellotron. And the lyrics in "On the Other Side" hint that the group's stance may have shifted from indifference to defiance: "I'm tired of everyone I know/ Of everyone I see on the street and on TV ... I hate them all/ I hate myself/ For hating them."
Mostly though, First Impressions glides by much like its predecessors, inspiring neither awe nor contempt from listeners able to judge it, and the Strokes, on merit alone.
Mary J. Blige
Breakthrough (4.5 stars)
For most of her career, New York-bred hip-hop soul queen Mary J. Blige has used pain to fuel her music in the same way slaves channeled the desperation of their captivity into Negro spirituals. So the question on Breakthrough, her newest release, centers on whether she could still drive home soul-stirring music with her drama tank on empty.
The answer is yes.
All the classic Mary J. Blige-isms are there: throaty, bordering-on-scratchy voice; hip-hop posturing (she raps on several songs and can hold the flow); and feminist defiance (particularly on the declarative, liberating "Enough Cryin.") What's different is that this Mary J. Blige is wiser about love, smarter about picking mates and deeper in love with herself, which allows her to love deeper. More than any song, "Take Me As I Am" sets the tone of the new Blige: "Yes she's older now/ Yes, she's wiser now/ A disguise now/ She don't need no one tellin' her what to do and say/ No one tellin' her who to be."
Top to bottom, this is Blige's most thematically complete album. On "Baggage," she encourages patience from her mate—it takes time to heal past hurts. "Be Without You," an ode to true love, finds her inhabiting a space she rarely was in when she dated the likes of TLC backup dancer turned bad-boy singer KC of Jodeci. "Good Woman Down" has a hook that could be used as a liberating screed for women everywhere: "Take what I been through to see that can't hold a good woman down." Toni Tony Tone expat Raphael Sadiq adds a lilting Prince-ish quality to "I Found My Everything."
Nice to see that Mary has grown up.
Queens of the Stone Age
Over the Years and Through the Woods (2 stars)
When sun-baked California guitarist-singer Josh Homme broke wide open with the stoner-heavy riffs from Kyuss, he sounded like just another Black Sabbath disciple trying to explode shiny bursts of desert catchiness alongside his bass-loaded beats. Following that cult period, Homme ditched the stoner tag and embraced his inner metal with Queens of the Stone Age. Former superstar quickie members notwithstanding— Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan and Foo Fighters main man Dave Grohl—Queens has evolved into more (or less) than a heavy metal band. They have become an alternative band. The kind of alternative that rated high marks in Spin's reviews section in the early '90s. And it shows all over the band's fifth release, the live DVD and CD Over the Years and Through the Woods.
If you are fan of the band, it's a blast, I guess, to listen to Homme insult an audience member, as he does after the disc's opener, "This Lullaby." But the heaviness and metal are gone from QOTSA's tunes. Homme's band now just plays songs that fizzle out with strange, tuneless tunings. He may be shooting for some kind of grown-up art-rock, but it sounds like lame jam-band noodling to me.
Jamie Foxx
Unpredictable (3 stars)
By most accounts—chiefly the banking kind—winning an Academy Award is one helluva career booster. Since taking home the hardware for his breakout performance in Ray, Jamie Foxx has been ubiquitous. Having kept his vocals warm by crooning hooks for the likes of Twista, Kanye West and Ludacris, it was only a matter of time before he re-entered the music game.
Yes, re-entered. Unpredictable, his second full-length album, comes 11 years after 1994's thoroughly forgettable Peep This and just a year after career-defining roles in Collateral and Ray. Given the timing—he's white-hot; people who didn't know Jamie Foxx from Redd Foxx now do, thanks to the Oscar—why not release an album?
Here's why: Like good acting, good music requires work. Not to say that Foxx can't sing; he can, as evidenced by his soulful gliding on "Love Changes" with Mary J. Blige, and the Twista-blessed "DJ Play a Love Song." Problem is that Unpredictable is completely predictable.
Foxx tries to get his R. Kelly on with songs like "Warm Bed," "Can I Take U Home" and "Three Letter Word" (sex), but he comes off as a poor man's Keith Sweat. Collabos with Blige, Kanye West and Common are fine—if overhyped—but why put gangsta rappers Snoop and the Game on a love song, "With You"? If you're gonna have trite subject matter, you better sing like a Grammy winner. Unfortunately, Foxx only does so in spurts.