[Pop]
Natasha Bedingfield
Pocketful of Sunshine
**
Americans will perhaps feel toward British chanteuse Natasha Bedingfield the way Britons feel about American Mormon missionaries who come to their country in search of converts. Clean-cut, sincere and obviously committed to her cause, Bedingfield may prove too insistent and eager to win over the locals’ trust.
With Pocketful of Sunshine—the American version of her second CD, N.B., which was released in the U.K. last year—she hopes to successfully cross over, seeing as her catchy debut, Unwritten, didn’t get much traction here. She has seemingly pulled out all the stops for the occasion, as each song on Sunshine is crammed with as many tightly wound hooks as she can manage. She has even recruited the highly underrated Sean Kingston (the “Beautiful Girls” guy) for her first single, “Love Like This,” which is one of the few inspired moments on an album of mostly filler.
The numerous feel-good jams and empowerment ballads are offensive in their attempts to be inoffensive, and many of the breathless choruses sound as if they were recorded while Bedingfield was running a marathon. Almost each song is chock-full of clichés, lyrically and musically. “Put Your Arms Around Me” sounds as if it were written for a Toyota commercial, while “Happy” makes Bedingfield sound like a poor man’s Dido: “Landlord’s knocking at my door, cussing me out/Got laid off my job the night before.”
On “Freckles” she claims that “those little imperfections make you beautiful,” and she would be wise to take this message to heart. Without any such little imperfections, Pocketful of Sunshine is very hard to love. –Ben Westhoff
[Glam Rock]
Louis XIV
Slick Dogs and Ponies
** 1/2
In the press packet that accompanies Louis XIV’s sophomore album, Slick Dogs and Ponies, vocalist/producer/engineer Jason Hill says his sleaze-glam band “invented a sound” with the album’s addictive first single, “Guilt By Association.” “It’s definitely unlike anything you hear in current music.”
Implied emphasis should be on “current music,” because the San Diego quartet still sounds enamored with the 1970s glitter-glam movement (and hasn’t so much invented as recycled its sound). The taut, danceable “Association” in particular sounds like Bloc Party’s whirling post-punk moments, had that band been fronted by Elmer Fudd.
But misguided confidence and cartoonish vocals aren’t the problem with Ponies. More specifically, Louis XIV just hasn’t done much to distinguish itself as an original act—or shown much musical growth.
David Bowie is the obvious (and blatant) influence again, just as he was on the band’s 2005 breakout, The Best Little Secrets are Kept. Hill still assumes a faint British accent and fey, affected vocals, although for every Ziggy Stardust-era swaggering guitar crunch, Ponies counters with plenty of Hunky Dory-reminiscent spiraling strings and sedate piano (the epic “Air Traffic Control,” sad-clown lament “Hopesick”).
But why listen to Bowie lite, when you can just listen to the real thing instead? And there’s the rub: Louis XIV may succeed with flirty come-ons, like the snappy T. Rex stomp “There’s a Traitor in This Room” or the orchestra thunderstorm “Misguided Sheep.” But Ponies is ultimately completely superfluous, just harmless, sugary fun that’s easily forgotten.
–Annie Zaleski
[Pop-Rock]
Joe Jackson
Rain
** 1/2
Joe Jackson has always sat in Elvis Costello’s shadow, from their days as angry young men in the class of ‘77 to their moves into bitter genre-hopping musical chameleons with classical pretensions. And like Costello, Jackson tends to wind up back with certain musicians when he makes his most rewarding music. In this case, Joe Jackson Band regulars bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton are retained for Rain to create, along with Jackson’s piano, a sans-guitar album that sounds surprisingly like a Ben Folds disc as written by Randy Newman.
Sadly, Rain will not be one of Jackson’s more memorable efforts. There is something lackluster about these songs—the melodies have pleasant moments and a Broadway quality to their construction, but Jackson’s lyrical bite has gone slack. “I’m like a diva with the tragic touch,” he explains on “Too Tough.” But what diva doesn’t have the tragic touch?
And, so it goes on Rain, with Jackson proclaiming on another track that you “Can’t touch the invisible man.” Actually, you can’t see an invisible man. The brutal specificity that once marked Jackson songs like “Friday” and “Sunday Paper” has vanished, replaced by a guy who just wants to complain about “the drug du jour.” He even relies on a poor, Prince-like falsetto on almost every track, an embarrassment even to these songs. –Richard Abowitz
[Indie Rock]
Times New Viking
Rip It Off
*** 1/3
Times New Viking’s official MySpace page lists the band’s members as Hamish Kilgour, Mark Ibold and Brix Smith. In reality, of course, the drummer for The Clean, ex-bassist for Pavement and one-time singer for The Fall have nothing to do with the Columbus, Ohio, outfit, but that didn’t stop the joke (passed along by new label home Matador Records) from being reported as fact by at least one website reviewing Rip It Off.
That’s kinda funny, but in all seriousness, the trio—actually guitarist Jared Phillips, drummer/vocalist Adam Elliott and keyboardist/vocalist Beth Murphy—needn’t have resorted to a half-baked publicity stunt to promote its third LP. The disc’s 16 under-three-minute tracks do that nicely on their own, positioning Times New Viking as a new champion of lo-fi, tunnel-into-your-brain, off-kilter pop yumminess. Think Beat Happening, GBV’s four-track days, Liz Phair’s Girlysound demos and Lou Barlow’s home recordings, and you’re not just in the ballpark, you’re sitting in the right dugout.
If hiss, fuzz and fuzzy hiss aren’t your bag, avoid Rip It Off at all costs. But if you’re profoundly thankful that amateurishness still exists in today’s anybody-can-sound-semi-professional-with-Pro-Tools sonic environment, get down with “(My Head),” “Drop-Out,” “Mean God” and the rest of the buried treasures by Times New Viking, a group doing some really super things even if it isn’t a real supergroup.
–Spencer Patterson
[Folkish]
Hello, Blue Roses
The Portrait Is Finished and I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty
**
The phrase “Hello, Blue Roses” is a line of dialogue stripped from Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, when one character mistakes the debilitating disease pleurosis for figment-pigment flowers. The homophonic Canadian indie duo is laboring under a similar delusion: What they believe to be winsome and endearing is actually ailing.
In theory, the sweetheart act of Dan Bejar (of The New Pornographers, Swan Lake and Destroyer) and Sydney Vermont (of Bonaparte) should be an indie coup: She trips lightly, a folky sprite with a lyre, while he skulks after her, a lovesick monster with a synthesized agenda. But in practice, Vermont dominates their barebones debut album with her acquired-taste voice, a hollowed drop-off soprano in need of a pinch and a tune. And when Bejar attempts harmony, his thorough disinterest in tonality is an aural assault (example: the bristling “Coming Through Imposture”).
Vocal vengeance aside, Hello, Blue Roses do sprout some noteworthy sounds: “Come Darkness” layers windstruments and snaps with plucky Spanish guitar, while single “Shadow Falls” breathes synths and harpsichords like Air. But the superlative track is “St. Angela,” the only song that feels sufficiently finished. The fleshed-out slice of Americana, rife with organs, banjos and plaintive portraiture, is, daresay, downright Tennessee Williams-esque. –Kristyn Pomranz