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.
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
The consensus on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair race is that Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) ran a populist, ideological back-to-basics campaign and soundly defeated former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), the candidate backed by the big institutional players. Cheng tapped into a wave of popular enthusiasm within the KMT, while the institutional players’ get-out-the-vote abilities fell flat, suggesting their power has weakened significantly. Yet, a closer look at the race paints a more complicated picture, raising questions about some analysts’ conclusions, including my own. TURNOUT Here is a surprising statistic: Turnout was 130,678, or 39.46 percent of the 331,145 eligible party
The classic warmth of a good old-fashioned izakaya beckons you in, all cozy nooks and dark wood finishes, as tables order a third round and waiters sling tapas-sized bites and assorted — sometimes unidentifiable — skewered meats. But there’s a romantic hush about this Ximending (西門町) hotspot, with cocktails savored, plating elegant and never rushed and daters and diners lit by candlelight and chandelier. Each chair is mismatched and the assorted tables appear to be the fanciest picks from a nearby flea market. A naked sewing mannequin stands in a dimly lit corner, adorned with antique mirrors and draped foliage
The election of Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) as chair of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) marked a triumphant return of pride in the “Chinese” in the party name. Cheng wants Taiwanese to be proud to call themselves Chinese again. The unambiguous winner was a return to the KMT ideology that formed in the early 2000s under then chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) put into practice as far as he could, until ultimately thwarted by hundreds of thousands of protestors thronging the streets in what became known as the Sunflower movement in 2014. Cheng is an unambiguous Chinese ethnonationalist,
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