November 12, 2013
After two albums that were as bland as Simon Cowell's wardrobe, Kellie Pickler turned around her career by following the bad-girl path of fellow reality-show alumna Miranda Lambert, which continues on The Woman I Am. On the ebullient breakup song "Ring for Sale," Pickler gets revenge on a cheating fiance by selling her ring. (Lambert would probably shank the jerk.) She also continues to wring vibrant drama from her crazy family; having already sung about the mother who abandoned her and her jailbird father, Pickler cowrote "Selma Drye," country's first great great-grandmother song, about a feisty ancestor who "kept a .38 Special and a can of snuff" in her kitchen apron.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/the-woman-i-am-20131112#ixzz2lI87Y8iG
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Favorable:
November 12, 2013
This was social media in Great Britain in 1963, during the first flash flood of Beatlemania: George Harrison singing "Do You Want to Know a Secret" for Deanne and Jenny in Bedford; Paul McCartney belting "The Hippy Hippy Shake" for a student at the bassist's old grammar school in Liverpool; Ringo Starr stumbling over names on a request card from Yorkshire. That year, the Beatles ran riot over the BBC, even landing a weekly radio series of studio performances, dedications and wisecracks, Pop Go the Beatles – a vigorous innocence and outreach that propels this second culling of the group's Beeb work. The Beatles are enjoying the speed and lunacy of stardom here: tugging their roots forward in Little Richard's"Lucille" and a sparkling cover of Buddy Holly's "Words of Love" a year before they cut it for a record; going deep into their Cavern-era song bag for Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking About You" and Carl Perkins'"Glad All Over." The mounting hysteria of concerts seeps into "Misery," taped at a BBC theater in March 1963; the live audience can barely contain its screams in the middle. You also hear the distance growing: "It's amazing that you can hear us as we're in America now," Lennon cracks in a pretaped chat in early '64. There would be no more dedications to schoolgirls in Liverpool. The Beatles now belonged to the world.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/on-air-live-at-the-bbc-volume-2-20131112#ixzz2lI8p9Wzf
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Middle Of The Road:
November 19, 2013
Seven years after he placed on American Idol, Chris Daughtry and his band are opening up their would-be grunge to more nuance: folk instruments and synths, smoother high notes tempering Daughtry's bellow, "boom-b'boom" vocal-bass hook lightening the gender war in "Battleships." The sound on Baptized somehow links U2 to Rascal Flatts, adding Springsteen stances in "Wild Heart." More unexpectedly, there's also a banjo shuffle where Daughtry chooses Van Halen over Van Hagar, catalogs some of his other heroes and wonders who wrote Hole's songs. "Long Live Rock & Roll," it's called – a defense, perhaps, against anybody claiming guys like him helped kill it.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/baptized-20131119#ixzz2lI9R09sK
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
MIddle Of The Road:
November 19, 2013
Phil Collins has retired, but his legacy endures in the new Hunger Games soundtrack, which channels his recipe for Eighties melodrama: synth strings, croaked vocals, crashing drums. (Even Lorde's cover of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" sounds like she'd rather be singing "Against All Odds.") Apparent Hunger Games superfan Patti Smith does better with the Katniss-worshipping "Capital Letter," and Santigold contributes a blatant cop of "I Know There's Something Going On," a 1982 hit by Abba's Frida – produced and drummed by Phil Collins. Come back, Phil. District 12 needs you.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/the-hunger-games-catching-fire-soundtrack-20131119#ixzz2lI9nRKRP
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Unfavorable:
November 4, 2013
On 2011's The Path of Totality, these California nu-metal lifers threw a Hail Mary and added dubstep wub to their hell-is-all-around thud. Here, the news is guitarist Brian "Head" Welch's return after an eight-year absence, so we're back to clicking bass, Jonathan Davis' serial-killer voice and sheets of guitar. Davis' lyrics can sound, endearingly, as if he's chatting with you at a party ("Passion is sometimes a fucked-up thing for me"). "Never Never" is a power ballad, and "Love & Meth" is not as funny as one might hope, though the brilliantly titled "Paranoid and Aroused" is. How did it take them this long to call a song "Prey for Me"?
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/the-paradigm-shift-20131104#ixzz2lIATWLoX
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Unfavorable:
November 1, 2013
Matt White's blandly reassuring soul pop has been featured throughout Hollywood movies and network TV, most recently on The Bachelorette. No surprise: His pose is wholesome (with a dash of danger), his storylines familiar and his problems solvable in four minutes or less. Standouts on his third album Р"Around the World in 80 Days," especially Рhave more life than his strained falsetto might sometimes lead you to believe, but that's not saying much: Mayer Hawthorne still looks heavy metal by comparison. White's struggle is trying to sound sincere in a genre that rewards clich̩. "I don't want those silly love songs," he sings. "I don't know what they will prove." Then he writes one.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/shirley-20131101#ixzz2lIB160eg
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
