C arnival Vol. II, Jean's sixth solo album, is yet another mishmash, this one a cosmopolitan hip-pop grab bag full of big-name guests, baffling miscalculations and bursts of inspired songwriting. As usual, one of Jean's greatest assets seems to be Jerry "Wonda" Duplessis, his writing and producing partner. Another of his greatest assets: his guest list. T.I., one of the album's co-executive producers, lends his eloquent drawl to Slow Down; King & Queen comes alive when Shakira starts singing; and Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill), the breezy and delectable current single, gives Akon and Lil Wayne a chance to cry crocodile tears for strippers. Also invited: Paul Simon, Mary J. Blige and Norah Jones, all of whom sing sweetly enough to (nearly) erase the memory of Serj Tankian, from System of a Down, rapping.
As for the host, his shamelessness can be charming. At the end of Hollywood Meets Bollywood (Immigration), a collaboration with the Indian composer Aadesh Shrivastava, Jean seems to be free-associating: "Let's go, Haiti! We everywhere! Caribbeans, stand up! Bring me my elephant! You want to hear me speak Punjabi?"
By contrast, Million Voices, an earnest song from the album's bonus CD, finds him plumbing new depths of lyrical infelicity. Suffice it to say that rapping isn't his forte, either, though he makes a pretty good MC.
S weden exports a lot of high-concept retro-rock, from glam (the Ark) to psychedelia (Dungen) to the garage rock of bands like Mando Diao and the Hives.
On their first albums the Hives apparently aspired to have their raucous, vintage-sounding songs mistaken for tracks from the mid-1960s garage-rock collection Nuggets. Now the Hives have decided to loosen the concept. "If same-ing isn't working, why don't you different instead," Howlin' Pelle Almqvist taunts in Try It Again.
Now the Hives allow songs to stretch past three minutes (but still under four), and occasionally to slow down. They've moved from low-fi, near-mono production to cleaner, deeper-bottomed stereo, adding tinges of metal and power pop to their garage rock. The Hives recorded most of the album in Mississippi at Sweet Tea studios, where Elvis Costello and Buddy Guy have also made albums with the house producer, Dennis Herring, and two songs were produced by none other than Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes. Now and then keyboards and female backup singers join the guitars and drums, while the Hives also reveal that they've heard some Clash, Sex Pistols and Devo.
The Hives haven't gotten any less rowdy. They're still fighting with girlfriends and, often, the rest of the world, and Almqvist still sings like someone who might laugh or run amok at any moment. Without their purist formula, the Hives are inconsistent.
T he debut album from Jordin Sparks sounds like a mirror-image version of the new Britney Spears album, Blackout. Spears had a problem: She needed to figure out how to make the most of her limited-range voice and reputation for debauchery. And Sparks, winner of the sixth season of American Idol, had the opposite problem: She needed to figure out how to make the most of her smooth, unquirky voice and her wholesome reputation.
No American Idol viewer will be surprised to hear that Sparks knows her way around a lightweight love song. Tattoo is her absurdly catchy current single: "You're on my heart, just like a tattoo," she sings, although the line might make more literal sense if she sang, "You're on my tattoo, just like a heart."
It was produced by the Norwegian duo Stargate, and it sounds like a cousin of Beyonce's Irreplaceable, another Stargate production. More often, though, the musical references are unexpected. No Air, with Chris Brown, breathes life into the over-familiar piano line from Coldplay's Clocks. And Permanent Monday is a hybrid so bizarre it's all but impossible to hate.
A couple of inspirational songs are hidden at the end, perhaps to remind listeners of the middling CD this could have been but isn't. If you're so inclined, you can pretend the album ends two tracks earlier, with See My Side, which must be one of the year's prettiest pop songs.
It starts softly and restrainedly, with Sparks murmuring the same note (it's a G) 33 times in a row, accompanied by a chiming music box, a buzzing bass and a few echoey hand claps.
T he acronym came first. That's a helpful bit of background when it comes to Audio Day Dream, the amiably scattershot debut by Blake Lewis, this year's runner-up on American Idol. Apparently ADD - attention deficit disorder, that is - provides a useful model for an artist as effervescent as Lewis. So if the album feels disjointed, even jumbled, that's only natural; check the diagnosis.
In the first few tracks Lewis bops along from flagship pop to lightweight hip-hop to a retro brand of new wave, manipulating his limber voice as needed. Results range from the appealing to the appalling, but on balance this code of eclecticism serves him well. It's as if the process that brought him to prominence stayed with him long after results were in.
Even as he enlists an impressive array of producers - including Ryan Alias Tedder, Mike Elizondo, J.R. Rotem, Sam Watters and BT - Lewis advances a loose but unified style. As unabashedly enamored of 1980s synth-pop as 1990s skate punk, he isn't afraid to sigh or croon. And judging by his songwriting credits on all but one of the album's tracks, he has a capable ear for melody, or at least for hooks that don't overreach.
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached. At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year. “Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind
What first caught my eye when I entered the 921 Earthquake Museum was a yellow band running at an angle across the floor toward a pile of exposed soil. This marks the line where, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1999, a massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake raised the earth over two meters along one side of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層). The museum’s first gallery, named after this fault, takes visitors on a journey along its length, from the spot right in front of them, where the uplift is visible in the exposed soil, all the way to the farthest
The room glows vibrant pink, the floor flooded with hundreds of tiny pink marbles. As I approach the two chairs and a plush baroque sofa of matching fuchsia, what at first appears to be a scene of domestic bliss reveals itself to be anything but as gnarled metal nails and sharp spikes protrude from the cushions. An eerie cutout of a woman recoils into the armrest. This mixed-media installation captures generations of female anguish in Yun Suknam’s native South Korea, reflecting her observations and lived experience of the subjugated and serviceable housewife. The marbles are the mother’s sweat and tears,
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