Opeth - Watershed (2008, Roadrunner Records)

3 out of 5

Opeth is a band that I used to make fun of, not for what they are or what kind of music they play, but rather, because of a kid that I knew that listened to them. And that's unfair. Because they're actually kind of good...sometimes....and this record is good....sometimes....

Watershed is Opeth's second record for Roadrunner, ninth overall, and first without longtime guitarist Peter Lindgren and drummer Martin Lopez, and I don't want to say it's apparent, because apparently frontman Mikael Akerfeldt has always been the primary songwriter, but there is something different happening here.

The record starts with "Coil," which sounds like a Medieval ballad, and not a very good one, before moving on to the first of the album's 7+ minute songs (6 of the 7 songs on the record are, actually), "Heir Apparent," which is definitely heavy, and has some great parts, but some, like the last 1 1/2 minutes, seemingly come out of nowhere. And, when you're writing a nearly 9 minute song, you want some coherence.

And speaking of nearly 9 minute songs, the next track, "Lotus Eater," is probably the best on the album, blending the band's progressive music-nerd sound with the cleanly sung/articulately growled vocals that they've steadily used more and more on each album. But, about the halfway mark, there's a full-on folk music breakdown that kills the pace of the song, even though it is followed up with an amazing carnival-funk from hell solo/interlude. But, from there, we go to "Burden," a big, slightly epic, slightly awesome and slightly boring, Jethro Tull-ish song (and I like Jethro Tull) that fades out to the sound of guitars being detuned while playing the same riff for a good minute, and "Porcelain Heart," despite starting with a doomy-riff and slo-mo blast beats (and re-visiting that riff throughout), ends up just being 60-75% dull tights-and-tunics folk. I know it seems like I'm hating on folk, which I don't, at all, it just feels completely out of place in this instance.

I want to like this record, I really do, because I really like some of it, and I even gave it plenty of chances, seeing how long it took me to get into their last record, Ghost Reveries, but when it comes down to it, this album isn't great, even if parts of it are.

=james

A (Slightly) Dynamic Duo of Reviews

Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008, Atco)
3 out of 5

Why is everybody hating on poor Scarlett? This album isn't nearly as bad as everyone says it is. How much of that has to do with fact that it's 9/10ths Tom Waits songs? Probably a bunch (though the lone original here, "Song for Jo," is actually a really enjoyable paean to youth). Is it that after her entirely un-charming singing in Lost in Translation and on-stage with the Jesus & Mary Chain, she has too much to prove? Probably; Zooey Deschanel, the other hip young actress with an Indie-influenced record out this year, had already kind of won us over in Elf (as everyone and their mother has mentioned at this point).

But, needless to say, it's not as bad as you've likely read elsewhere. Producer Dave Sitek made one of the wisest production choices of the year in burying Johansson's vocals in the mix (we'll see if Metallica can top that later this year with a better drum sound than St. Anger), and getting David Bowie to sing back-ups on a couple of the songs (including first single, "Falling Down") is another check in the "Win" column. The "Green Grass" here, with its spooky carnival vibe and echo-laden production makes it sound a bit like an episode of Scooby-Doo meets Lost in Translation, and "Fawn," the only track without vocals (insert sigh of relief) is a brilliantly noisy combination of the E-Street Band and a Gospel song, but "Anywhere I Lay My Head" isn't close to being as good as Bomb The Music Industry's version (off of 2006's Goodbye Cool World) and "I Don't Want to Grow Up" doesn't even rifle through the Ramones' trash, though the song is so ridiculously appropriate for them, I don't know if anyone else could ever do it justice. The aforementioned reverb-y production does kind of make the already languid songs blur together a bit, and most of the criticisms of Scarlett's voice (that she can't carry a note, that she's slightly tone-deaf, etc.) would hold up in a court of law, and as engaging listening, you could do a lot better. BUT, as vaguely familiar background music? You could to a LOT worse.


Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch (2008, Warner Bros.)

3 out of 5

Why does everybody love this record so much? Is it because it's Tom Petty? Well...yeah. The first single, "Scare Easy," is almost as good as any of Petty's solo (or with the Heartbreakers) work, and "Oh Maria" is a country-boy rock ballad in the vein of the Allman Brothers. It's just, the rest of it isn't really as good. You can hear the age in everyone's voice (particularly those that aren't Petty, who's always kind of sounded like he's looked: skeletal and sharp), and "Crystal River," is phaser-fried 70s slowdance rock (think Nazareth in the rec hall scene in Dazed and Confused), but moreso, kind of boring, especially at 9 1/2 minutes long.

The whole record is much more country-influenced that Petty's other work (a plus), and, unlike one would guess from Petty's pale countenance, it's easy to tell this band is from Florida (by way of California). Maybe Petty's tenure as the voice of "Lucky" on King of the Hill put him back in touch with his Southern roots. But, "Six Days on the Road" is right up there with the utter ridiculousness of "East Bound and Down" as one of the all-time cheesiest songs about trucking and/or running from the law (are there any that aren't?), and "Queen of the Go-Go Girls" is a painfully awkward-sounding ode to a stripper.

This record definitely doesn't make one wonder what could have been (Mudcrutch is the band that Petty was in in high school and before he went on to form The Hearbreakers), but it's a worthy detour into a sound that's clearly influenced Petty, but that doesn't necessarily always show up in his other work.

=james

Madonna - Hard Candy (2008, Warner Bros.)

3 out of 5

Striving for relevance or artistic reinvention? Well, with Madonna it's never really been that easy. Some might argue that Madonna has always been relevant, and some might argue that this is absolutely not a reinvention. After all, what have most of her albums been if not dance records?

So, despite the fact that half of the songs here mention "Madonna" by name (and she sings "My name" in one of the others), and despite the incredibly obvious and prominent production by celebrity hit-makers Pharell Williams and Timbaland, it's not that hard to tell who this is. We've been listening to Madonna's voice for the last 25 years (how crazy is that?) so one would hope we'd be able to pick it out by now. The problem is that from the sound of them, a lot of these tracks could have just as easily been sung by that other bottle-blonde pop-princess produced by Pharell, Gwen Stefani (for the sake of this review, let's pretend that Britney Spears doesn't exist...she seems to stay out of trouble better that way).

That said, the aforementioned production really steals the show, as it has with most of the other artists that Pharell and Timbaland have worked with. And a lot of it is great. But, this whole record is full of the typical bass-and-brushes beats that are uniquely poised to piss of the neighbors at even a reasonable volume, and not necessarily in a good way, either. It's actually one of the biggest detriments to the record, even in songs where the melody is in the forefront.

Speaking more specifically of the songs themselves, most of them are pretty good if you can get past the beat beating. Almost every song is about dancing or sex (or dancing as a substitute for sex), and each song has a decidedly engaging rhythm. "Dance 2Night" combines 70s Funk and Disco with very Madonna-friendly 80s synthesizers, and "She's Not Me" is really just straight up Studio 54 with slightly updated beats. The first single, "4 Minutes," even with its oddly flatulent (Madonna is in her 50s....), electronic marching band sound, is incredibly catchy, if annoying at times (especially Justin Timberlake's post chorus rap-scat ending with "mud-on-AH?" and the ever-repeated "tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock"). And speaking of annoying, "Give it 2 Me" (who named these songs? Prince?) sounds like a bunch of ravers took a circus hostage with their glow-sticks. Not to mention Madonna's plea to "Get stupid, get stupid, get stupid, don't stop" isn't nearly as entertaining as the pre-NBA-appropriated cry of the Black Eyed Peas' "Get Retarded."

But, by far, the worst songs on the record are the first track, and almost title track, the vaguely-Japanese-sounding "Candy Shop," which has some of the worst lyrics and rhymes I've heard in a long time ("Come on into my store, I've got candy galore"), and the late-album "Spanish Lesson," wherein Madonna gives a "sexy" lesson in Spanish words and phrases. At least she's not singing in a faux-British accent, though her faux-Spanish isn't much better.

Thankfully it's followed-up by the best song on the album, "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You," one of the best songs Timbaland has ever had a hand in, which combines water-drop beats with plaintive piano, folky finger-plucked acoustic-guitar and a surprisingly non-cheesey (or at least, not too cheesey) thunderstorm breakdown. Okay, I can't really say that. It's incredibly cheesey, but the rest of the song makes up for it.

The next, and final song on the record, "Voices," (with the line, "Who is the master and who is the slave?") kind of raises another point in the "theme" of the record and that's that it all has a vaguely BDSM tone, something that Madonna's "sexy-boxer-in-dominatrix-boots" outfit on the cover doesn't help with, and neither does this picture that made the internet rounds, recently:

I guess we know who wears the pants in that relationship (or at least the pants that have a bedroom prosthetic attached), even if on this record, it seems like Pharell Williams and Timbaland are wearing the pants. But maybe that's just because Madonna's taken them off to be provocative.

=james