Adele - 25: ALBUM REVIEW

She's back. The most soulful white girl in the world has returned with another megaton bomb of a pop album that, like it or not, is making huge waves, just like 21 before it. After four years of writers' block, baby raising, wondering whether or not to quit the music industry, and generally keeping to herself, world-wide phenomenon Adele has bestowed upon her millions of fans a follow up album that delivers well on those four years of waiting. 

Adele is unique among pop stars in that she seems to have no haters. You see music elitists rolling their eyes and scoffing left and right at all of Adele's contemporaries, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, etc. etc. You know the bunch. But Adele, even though she is as 100% pure, major-label-certified pop as the rest of them, has always commanded a certain respect. Maybe it's because of her humble attitude to fame and fortune, never flaunting her fame as a badge of greatness. Maybe it's how classy and not hypersexualized her image is, giving her a rare dignity in today's pantheon of celebrity superstars.

Appears on cover of Rolling Stone + Doesn't wear makeup = Babe

Most of all, though, I think the sheer power and beauty of Adele's voice is what grabs the world's attention and demands to be recognized. It's in this regard that 25 delivers the most. Adele and her producers know that everyone is coming to this album to hear one of the most talented vocalists alive, and through each of the eleven tracks on this album, that's what they get. 

"Hello," her record-breaking lead single, opens the record with skeletal instrumentation that leaves Adele and the listener alone to talk about what's been going on. Nothing impedes Adele from getting up close and personal with you, not unlike the stark closeness of the album art. You're never quite sure who she's singing to: a lover? Her past self? The music industry? It's that sort of mysterious pain that has made songs like "Rolling In the Deep" and "Make You Feel My Love" so infectious.

This familiar emotional ambiguity is simultaneously Adele's great strength and her great Achilles' heel. She certainly has an incredible knack for writing sad, soulful break up songs and this album would be dead on arrival without them. Only Adele can make songs like "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" or "I Miss You" so downright compelling. But, at some point, it's just what we've heard again and again. 

Her album titles, while not accurate in describing her age, as I once thought, have always brought the assumption that we're hearing about the specific events of this woman's life at a specific point in time, like each album is a numbered page in her personal diary. One can't help wondering, then: Is she really having these same experiences that she had on page 21, so to speak? page 19? I can't take it seriously when, on "Million Years Ago," Adele laments over some very dramatic, simplified Spanish guitar picking, "I miss it when life was a party to be thrown, but that was a million years ago." How can her life be that bad now, in the prime of a healthy marriage with a beautiful son and a thriving musical career, even with a short dry spell? Indeed, she has stated that her life is in "the best place ever." Why slather this new album with the same drama of a past life?  

Adele with her husband, Simon Konecki

But, again, it's evident that these sort of emotions and painful past experiences are what fuels her songwriting brilliance, so it's sort of a two-edged sword. You can't have a brilliant Adele ballad without the pain. 

And maybe that's the beauty and elegant message to her music. There is no beauty without pain. No rainbow without rain. No "Send My Love" without "Million Years Ago."  

My main gripe aside, Adele delivers exactly what we wanted to hear: one of the most solid pop albums you'll hear this year. In fact, you won't hear a better opening to a pop album this year than the first four tracks of 25. All over this record, we see a talented musician stretching herself with mature, beautifully produced music that is meant, first and foremost, to communicate sincere emotions. That's rare in today's sales-starved industry, and, just like Adele Atkins' stellar voice, deserves respect.

And yeah, probably some Grammy nominations, too. 

OVERALL SCORE: 7.4
Adele – 25
1. Hello 2. Send My Love (To Your New Lover) 3. I Miss You 4. When We Were Young 5. Remedy 6. Water Under the Bridge 7. River Lea 8. Love In the Dark 9. Million Years Ago 10. All I Ask 11. Sweetest Devotion	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

Grimes - Art Angels: ALBUM REVIEW

Grimes' new album is here and, just like 2012's Visions, is making waves. Grimes is the nom-de-music of Montreal-based weirdo pop singer-songwriter and producer Clair Boucher. This is her fourth album, but really it feels like her sophomore effort, because Visions was just that monumental in establishing her as a musical presence. While its album art and album title looked it belonged to your local grindcore band, Visions sported some of the better pop music of 2012, putting Grimes' trademark freaky, reverb-heavy, stripped-back brand of electropop on the map.

While I do think Visions was at least a litttttle bit inflated by hype, it's certain that this new-and-improved record, Art Angels, would not exist without it. If Visions had not done so well, we might not be hearing from Grimes at all anymore. Especially after we saw Grimes scrap what was reportedly an album's worth of songs in the wake of negative reception to 2014 single "Go" (although Claire insists she was simply narrowing down the tracklist).  Some may scoff at an artist for being so neurotic, but to me it definitely paid off.

Well... she certainly knows how to pick eye-grabbing artwork.

Art Angels feels concise (for a Grimes record), immediate, and triumphant, like this is the record she's been trying to show the world. Claire sounds like she's having the time of her life on every song on the album, whether she's wailing like a banshee on "SCREAM" or contentedly proclaiming in pop simplicity, "I'm high on adrenaline, that's right, that's right" on "Artangels." Through the 14 tracks and 49 minutes of this LP, Grimes creates her own little futuristic world-city of music, somewhere in the cyberspace between Tokyo and New York, where the lights are bright, language is no barrier, and robots and humans dance 'til their bones break in freaky, cyber dance clubs.

To some, the overt feel-good pop vibes of Grimes' world may seem banal. But just when the LP seems to be slowing into another lookalike club jam, Grimes' incredible charisma comes to the rescue. She programs in a beat of glitches on the otherwise tame "California" that keeps the tune feeling fresh. On "Venus Fly," just after the chorus has worn out its welcome, she breaks things down into a veritable rave. And on the absolute banger "Kill V. Maim," Grimes hops vocal techniques like she's Mike Patton or something, doing cheerleader chants, desu-style anime squeals, and guttural screams.

Her charisma isn't enough to cover up the blandness of a few tracks on the album, like "Realiti" and "Belly of the Beat"; actually, more accurately, these songs suffer because Grimes is, for whatever reason, holding back her infectious personality. If she let it go rampant on every song on the album, like it does on "Kill V. Maim," Art Angels would be in my top 5 albums of the year. As it stands though, I have to patiently listen through the duller rocks until I get to the next gem that sparkles.

Overall, Grimes did not disappoint on this album and if nothing else showed the world that her originality and musical fearlessness were not just a stunt for critics to clap at in 2012 but a vibrant part of her very being.

OVERALL SCORE: 8.2
Grimes – Art Angels
1. laughing and not being normal 2. California 3. SCREAM 4. Flesh without Blood 5. Belly of the Beat 6. Kill V. Maim 7. Artangels 8. Easily 9. Pin 10. Realiti 11. World Princess part II 12. Venus Fly 13. Life in the Vivid Dream 14. Butterfly	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

City and Colour - If I Should Go Before You: ALBUM REVIEW

Another review at the request of a friend!

In fact, my friend's request was the first time I had heard of City and Colour, the recording alias of singer-songwriter Dallas Green. After doing my homework, I found that I had heard of Dallas Green's original band: Alexisonfire. They were one of those post-hardcore bands everyone listened to in middle school and high school, along with Thursday, Underoath, Silverstein, etc. That genre has never been my cup of tea, so I never kept tabs on Alexisonfire, its albums, or what became of its members.

You can bet, though, that I will be keeping tabs on City and Colour from here on out, after listening to this gorgeous new album, If I Should Go Before You. I was totally blown away by the difference stylistically between this and anything Dallas wrote in Alexisonfire. The latter is simplistic, needlessly grimy and rough, melodramatic. If I Should Go Before You is tender, thoughtful, heartfelt, and beautifully rendered.

Of course, to long time fans of Dallas Green's work, the fact that City and Colour is a complete 180 from Alexisonfire is old, old news. But, Dallas has delivered these fans another surprise. City and Colour's last two albums have generally been acoustic, being spiritual cousins of Fleet Foxes or Iron & Wine. On If I Should Go, Dallas plugs these folk roots into the amplifier and goes full electric, delivering one of the most sonically beautiful rock records you'll hear this year.

Look at him, going all Bob Dylan 1965 Newport Folk Festival on us

Opener and lead single "Woman" displays all of the qualities that make this album so gorgeous. For starters, the production is top notch. There's heaping amounts of reverb on this track, but it's used deliberately and doesn't wash out the rest of the album (like some other people...) The instrumentation has a very classic feel to it, very easy on the ears, emotional. And on top of everything are Dallas Green's soaring tenor melodies. It's really the main attraction here. In fact, the instrumentation seems to primarily exist to provide a backdrop as pretty and colorful as Dallas' voice. This is especially the case with title track "If I Should Go Before You" and "Lover Come Back." The latter actually hyperfocuses on Dallas' voice, which indeed does its job, but unfortuately, on this track, leaves everything else high and dry: not much going on instrumentally or lyrically to write home about.

Which leads me to my gripes. While this is an incredibly sonically beautiful album, it certainly has flaws. The biggest of these to me is Dallas' lyrics. Let's take "Lover Come Back" and look at its chorus:

"I sing lover come back, lover come back to me
Won't you ever come back, ever come back to me
How could I have been so foolish to let you leave
Lover come back, lover come back to me."

There are at least one hundred songs with these exact same lyrics. The lyrics only go uphill from here, but not by a whole lot. At best, Dallas pens lyrics that are honest and serve to get one of his good hooks stuck in your head, like the chorus of one of my album favorites, "Killing Time." "I'm running from the shadow of my former shadow's life." An evocative image for sure, but it's no poetry.

My other main gripe is intrinsically tied to the main appeal of the album: it's very, very safe. Dallas seems to take very minimal risks stylistically. While, yes, again, the alt-country rock is a fresh sound for City and Colour to be trying on, it's only fresh because he's never done it before. Hundreds of other artists have picked this genre clean, and Dallas doesn't leave the middle road much at all. Of course, that's deliberate. If I Should Go wouldn't have the nostalgic, classic feeling it has if it wasn't so deeply rooted in Americana tradition like it is. You've heard, for instance, "Map of the World" before without even listening to it. But that doesn't mean it's not highly enjoyable or well-executed, and we have Dallas Green's stellar musicianship to thank for that.

It's the strange paradox of taking the middle of the road: You can't go wrong, but you can't take your listeners anywhere they haven't been before. In the musical atmosphere of 2015, though, when a good rock record is hard to find among the droves lining up to hop on the indie bandwagon, it's nice to see someone return to tradition. And it's downright exciting to see someone like the former clean-vocalist for a post-hardcore band do it.

OVERALL SCORE: 8.1
City and Colour – If I Should Go Before You
1. Woman 2. Northern Blues 3. Mizzy C 4. If I Should Go Before You 5. Killing Time 6. Wasted Love 7. Runaway 8. Lover Come Back 9. Map of the World 10. Friends 11. Blood	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.