SOUNDCHECK

Deftones


Saturday Night Wrist (2 1/2 stars)

Deftones sound like a band conflicted, and have ever since their excellent 2000 album White Pony. On 2003's self-titled album and the new Saturday Night Wrist, they've continued to explore their art-rock influences along with the hardcore and metal sounds that first brought them to prominence. While far more creative and daring than the likes of Korn and Limp Bizkit, acts with whom they were often grouped in their early days, Deftones are also often frustratingly inconsistent, and never more so than on Saturday Night Wrist.

Songs like "Hole in the Earth" and "Cherry Waves" find a strong balance between heavy guitars and the enveloping drone of singer Chino Moreno's voice, and while they don't hint at much of a progression, they do at least sound like the work of a band that knows where it's going. Better still is the balls-out hardcore of "Rats! Rats! Rats!" with Moreno screaming "Everything is fine" over some of the most intense music the band has ever written.

Even the better moments aren't as immediately memorable as the band's earlier work, though, and experiments like the jazzy instrumental "u, u, d, d, l, r, l, r, a, b, select, start" and the bizarre, synth-driven "Pink Cellphone" (with spoken-word vocals by Giant Drag's Annie Hardy) are more baffling than exciting. Having transcended nu-metal so effectively and early in their career, Deftones set high standards for themselves that they are still struggling to meet.

Sean Lennon


Friendly Fire (3 1/2 stars)

Surely The Beatles are the most influential band of all time. How many times have you read a CD review that described something as sounding "Beatlesque"?

So of course it goes without saying that listening to Sean Lennon's new, second solo album, Friendly Fire is like listening to, well ... you know.

But unlike his half-brother Julian, Sean doesn't sound like his dad. His voice is much warmer in tone and color. Sean's whispery tenor sounds like the other dead Beatle. Friendly Fire sounds like George Harrison going into the studio after gorging on Aimee Mann records produced by Jon Brion. Brion actually plays organ and guitar here.

Think of songs from the newest Paul Thomas Anderson film and you get the picture.

Lennon's first solo album was about falling in love. This one is about the heartbreak that ensues when you find out your best friend slept with your girlfriend. It gets worse. The best friend died in a motorcycle accident before Lennon could talk to him about it. But by the end of Friendly Fire it sounds like Lennon has somehow come to terms with it all. The ex-girlfriend, Bijou Phillips, sings background vocals on the album. That seems healthy, right?

Friendly Fire is no Rubber Soul, but its strings, achingly pretty melodies and lyrical earnestness serve perfectly as the soundtrack for a million twentysomethings starting out today on their psychiatric medications.

Lupe Fiasco


Food & Liquor (4 1/2 stars)

Every few years some new, cocksure, lyrically dexterous rapper is saddled with the near-impossible task of saving hip-hop from its genocidal, blingtastic self, and every time they fail, the list of doomed messiahs reading like hip-hop's ruling class—Jay-Z, Canibus, Eminem, Common, Kanye. So it's somewhat surprising to hear Lupe Fiasco, a bespectacled, introspective Chicago lyricist who, precisely because he lacks a Nero-sized ego, might be the genre's savior. Or, if not hip-hop's savior, then at least a capable physician.

"Kick, Push," a so-sappy-it's-infectious nod to skateboarding, has become a mainstay on radio-station playlists, but it's actually one of Food & Liquor's B-plus tunes. This is hip-hop on a higher level. Lupe's background—nerdy project kid who loves skateboarding, peace-loving Islamic martial-arts master, serial daydreamer watching the world go to hell—informs a completely digestible worldview. In his hands, "American Terrorist," with a melancholy-inducing hook sung by Matthew Santos, feels eerily patriotic, less cut-and-run and more a call for America to take inventory of its sins against the world. But the heavy stuff is leavened by the inspirational ("Sunshine") and the motivational ("Just Might Be OK") and the funny ("I Gotcha"). Most refreshing it that Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor is mostly all Lupe (he could've done without Jay-Z's throwaway verse on "Pressure").

If Malcolm X were alive today, it's a safe bet he'd have Food & Liquor in his iPod. It's that good.

AKRON/FAMILY


MEEK WARRIOR (4 stars)

As if that slashed band name weren't outré enough, Akron/Family opens new album Meek Warrior sounding like a band intent on shedding the back half of the "freak folk" tag attached to the Brooklyn foursome after two acclaimed 2005 releases. Nine-plus-minute leadoff cut "Blessing Force" begins as a rhythmic rock sortie, morphs into a pseudo-gospel spiritual, then assumes a Zappa jam stance before concluding with a barrage of free-jazz fireworks. Nope, no folk there, but it sure is freaky, as is the seven-track disc's other lengthy cut, "The Rider (Dolphin Song)," a squealing, proggy number The Boredoms and King Crimson could both feel proud spinning.

Fun as an entire album of that vigorous experimentation might be, the Akron boys reel it in somewhat for the remainder, teetering between the acoustic airiness of Bert Jansch and Nick Drake and the naturalistic, field-recording aesthetic of Davenport and Wooden Wand. Even when Meek Warrior recaptures the folky backdrop of past efforts it remains utterly unique, drawing on unconventional harmonies, untethered time signatures and unidentified foreign vocals as a reminder that labels simply cannot define the Akron/Family experience.

HYBRID


I CHOOSE NOISE (3 stars)

Pity the survivors of the progressive dance music boom of the late 1990s. I know I do, whenever I hear a hackneyed trance-rock pastiche out of Paul Oakenfold or Moby. These guys are still doing well in Europe, I guess, which would explain why they don't know that they're dead.

A few artists from the era have skirted obsolescence. Underworld and The Chemical Brothers may each have a good record left in them, and Hybrid seems to be in no trouble of drying up, judging from the potency of I Choose Noise. The two things that set the Swansea, England, progressive break-beat duo apart from their peers still sound utterly amazing: the group's drum sound (a nice, meaty thwak that hits the ear like the business end of a two-by-four), and their string arrangements—yes, string arrangements, that's right. The best of Hybrid's sweeping compositions play like the title of the band's aptly named second album: Morning Sci-Fi. I Choose Noise works as the third volume in that series. It's not groundbreaking, but the band's 1999 debut Wide Angle (and its magnificent club hit "Finished Symphony") remains ahead of its time, and the dance world simply hasn't caught up. A few tracks here—particularly the gorgeous instrumental "Just For Today" and the rollicking Perry Farrell collaboration "Dogstar"—approach the debut's giddy heights, and while I Choose Noise doesn't soar as high as the band once did, at least they're still flying.

SPARTA


THREES (3 stars)

"Hollywood Records is where bands go to die," an alt-weekly music editor recently mused. Her claim is certainly backed by the inclusion of Jesse McCartney, Indigo Girls and Atreyu on the Hollywood roster. But with their focused third release (on as many labels), Sparta look to buck the death-sentence trend.

The El Paso, Texas, four-piece follows the trail fellow Hot Topic stalwarts Green Day blazed before them—reinvention via the release of an arena-rock contender peddling political calls-to-action over generic interpersonal angst and snotty frivolity. Pleasantly surprising, then, that Threes boasts more intensity and lyrical maturity than American Idiot or even Sparta's own two previous efforts. Credit former Denali/Engine Down guitarist Keeley Davis with expanding the band's already progressive sound; unfortunately, what is new territory for them is already well-trod, playing like a collection of U2 B-sides with fewer monster hooks and about half the bombast, all rounded out with paranoid noodlings bearing the undeniable influence of Radiohead.

Threes isn't exactly an advancement in musical evolution. It's just uncompromising enough, however, to ensure that Sparta will remain standing long after legions of flash-and-fade post-punk pretenders are struck down by the impending screamo apocalypse.