The Lost Tapes isn't essential Can, in all honesty. Rather, the boxed set offers a deep-listening experience for those fans who have memorized the band's classic albums: Monster Movie, Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days, Soon Over Babaluma. The tracks -- all previously unreleased, all dating from the 1968 to '77 zone -- aren't demos per se, more like finished songs that are good but not great (thus explaining why they were lost). The most revealing stuff is the live material. As both "Mushroom" and "One More Saturday Night" prove, Can were significantly more greasy and gritty when onstage.
The Lion The Beast The Beat is The Nocturnals' third and most cohesive album for Hollywood Records. On it they reconcile their roots in jam-band earthiness with the slick pomp required of pop albums for major labels. "Turntable" and single "Never Go Back" (co-written by Black Key Dan Auerbach) are four-to-the-floor AOR not far removed from the country/hair-metal hybrid Shania Twain and her ex, producer "Mutt" Lange, pioneered. The record's balladry is no different. Melting Journey into Bonnie Tyler into Stevie Nicks, "Stars" bleeds bombastic heartbreak perfect for high school slow dancing.
When a band releases an album of re-recordings (something Everclear did with 2011's oddly titled Greatest Hits), it's usually a sign they're cooked. But lo and behold, Art Alexakis and whomever he's jamming with nowadays prove the exception. On Invisible Stars, the singer/songwriter demonstrates he still has insightful stuff to say and hooks to unleash. One of the best examples is "Be Careful What You Ask For," a Cali bro's cheeky but honest admission to his wife that he's a failure: "I'm sorry we are living in the car/ This isn't what you wanted when you gave me your heart."
Here we have America’s cuddliest psychedelic rockers teaming up with everyone from Bon Iver to Nick Cave to Yoko Ono to Erykah Badu for a deeply weird, profoundly disturbed head trip. The brash, deranged “2012 (You Must be Upgraded)” sets the tone -- Ke$ha and Biz Markie, together at last! -- and from there its all avant-garde freakouts and nuclear-campfire hippie jams with titles like “Helping the Retarded to Know God.” This is a lot to deal with, yes. Maybe start with the Jim James-assisted “That Ain’t My Trip,” -- a narcotizing delight for the opening line alone.
No point in struggling to determine whether Living Things is a return to form or a bold new direction, because its both simultaneously. The album is badass rap-metal, U2 arena anthems, jiggy electro-pop and dancing-on the-ceiling brostep all at once. On paper, such a smash-it-all-together approach sounds impossible to make work, yet the group pulls it off. Linkin Park is all over the map on "Lost in the Echo," "Lies Greed Misery" and schizoid-freaker "Victimized," and they're the better for it. The only misfire is "Roads Untraveled," and that's because it's too comfortable in its own skin.
A reputed player who makes sensitive songs about wanting to “Love Somebody” in a salty, sardonic falsetto is hard to take seriously. But let’s try, and not just because Adam Levine & co.’s fourth album has already spawned two huge hits. At once savvy and self-mocking, Overexposed has its finger on pop’s pulse (disco beats, dubstep breaks), even as it stamps M5’s lite, melodic funk all over it. Is it a cynical masterpiece? A string of chart-aimed singles? A claim of ownership? Cuts like “Daylight” or the dirty jazz-inflected “Wasted Years’” suggest these flash artists might just be sincere.
If you're a fan of nonsensical Neil, as in the one who dabbles in disco or uptown blues for no discernible reason other than enigmatic perversity, then Americana is for you. It's a tribute to folk standards and pop classics, yet Crazy Horse's approach can only be described as sonic buggery: bummer feedback, plodding grooves, zombie chants. It's all rather morose, especially "Clementine," on which Young reverts to the blue lyrics about kissing her "little sister." Neil and the Horse close with none other than "God Save The Queen," which is neither a folk standard nor a pop classic. So weird.
At a time in America's history when atheists and Christians wage a culture war, leave it to Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys to call a truce with an album titled That's Why God Made the Radio. An ode to the spiritual joys of pop music, it's the group's most enjoyable since 1977's Love You. Then again, the competition (Summer In Paradise? M.I.U. Album?) isn't stiff. The best tunes, the title track and "Shelter" among them, feel like variations on The Raspberries' 1974 chestnut "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)," itself an amalgam of the best moments of The Beach Boys' 1965 masterpiece Today!
It's difficult to believe Strange Euphoria is the first box set dedicated to Heart, one of classic rock's most celebrated acts. Luckily, longtime fans won't be disappointed with its unorthodox programming. For many of their biggest hits (including "Barracuda," "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You") Heart chose to include demo and live versions. These are definitely cool to hear. So are the myriad recordings from the Wilson sisters' other projects, namely Ann Wilson & The Daybreaks and The Lovemongers. This more acoustic-flavored stuff shows off West Coast folk-rock's profound influence on them.
Now in their fourth decade, The Offspring have never been big on tinkering with their style. This means they're more or less stuck in the SoCal-punk-meets-arena-rock thing they helped define in the '90s. This really doesn't matter, so long as the group keeps churning out catchy tunes, which they do -- in spades. Not surprisingly, the record's best moments, among them "Secrets From the Underground and "The Future Is Now," are amped-up examinations of integrity, angst and restlessness. Another keeper is "Dividing by Zero," which features a Zeppelin-on-amphetamines shuffle and killer wah-wah.
With guest appearances from Television's Tom Verlaine and longtime co-conspirator Lenny Kaye, the pre-punk pioneer's 11th album features the blend of styles and spoken word poetry Smith is known for. While lead single "April Fool" is a fairly straightforward pop song, it's the cultural mining and left-field ethos of "Fuji-San," opener "Amerigo" and the title cut that veteran fans will be after. Her cover of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" is creepily appropriate in the '10s.
So this may not be the Smashing Pumpkins of the '90s, but Oceania may be one of Billy Corgan's finest works since that fateful decade. The Pumpkins circa 2012 include another furious drummer (Mike Byrne), another female bassist (Nicole Fiorentino) and another Asian-American guitarist (Jeff Schroeder). But the album still has all the Pumpkins hallmarks: quiet-loud bursts, dense dream-prog arrangements and Corgan's angsty introspection transmitted via that nasally wail. Schroeder's scorching guitar is what really makes these songs roar, while sparkling synths add to the celestial bombast.
By searching out South African musicians and collaborators, Paul Simon reconnected with both his audience and the joy of making music. This life-affirming album saw Simon abandoning confessional lyrics while maintaining a personal vision. Such fine songs as "Boy in the Bubble," "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" and "Graceland" have lived on long past any controversy the album once encountered. In addition to several process-revealing demos, the 25th anniversary edition of Graceland contains a nearly 10-minute chat with Simon who revisits key moments in the music's storied genesis.
The irony underpinning the title track, a middle finger to the computer age, is how the tune sounds as if it was recorded in a digital studio, the kind that just about every major-label artist nowadays uses. But hey, Walsh has never let contradiction stand between him and a rock anthem for the common man; after all, an ordinary average guy he clearly is not. Further clouding his cognitive dissonance is the fact that Analog Man feels not like a throwback to the solid state '70s but to the new wave '80s. It exudes that crisp production that bands like ZZ Top and Loverboy used to sport.
Fiona Apple perfectly sums up the visceral power of her music right at the onset of her fourth album: "Every single night's a fight with my brain/ I just wanna feel everything," she yowls, her tongue twisting each syllable with the force of a bullet. Throughout, it's this vicious self-combat that bleeds out as erudite rhyme ("orotund mutt" with "moribund slut") and metaphor ("I could liken you to a werewolf the way you left me for dead/ But I admit that I provided a full moon"). Meanwhile, the skittering percussion and free-jazz flow sound as wild as the battle in her brain must feel.
