Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace [2007]
Posted by admin on May 28th, 2008
It’s not quite right to say that the Foo Fighters only have one sound, but why does it always feel like the group constantly mines the same sonic vein? Even on 2007’s Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace — their sixth album and first with producer Gil Norton since their second, 1997’s The Colour and the Shape — the Foos feel familiar, although the group spends some palpable energy weaving together the two sides of their personality that they went out of their way to separate on 2005’s In Your Honor, where they divided the set into a disc of electric rockers and a disc of acoustic introspection. Here, the Foos gently slide from side to side, easing from delicate fingerpicked folk (including “Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,” an Read the rest of this entry »
An Australian collection available on the Shock label, The Very Best of Al Green collects 20 tracks from easily Green’s best era: the ’70s, when he was in his finest voice and Willie Mitchell gave him an assortment of bedrock rhythm tracks. The 1975 original Al Green’s Greatest Hits is still one of the best compilations ever released (especially in its expanded form), but this one does much the same job, with almost all of the hits anyone would expect: "Call Me (Come Back Home)," "Let’s Stay Together," "I Can’t Get Next to You," "Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)," "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)," and "I’m Still in Love with You." The sound quality is excellent as well, though this item doesn’t pop up very much. 
In an admirably daring move, Goldfrapp’s second album, Black Cherry, takes the duo in a very different direction than its instant-classic debut, Felt Mountain. Instead of just serving up more lush electronic torch songs — which certainly would’ve been welcome — Allison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory continue in the direction that their cover of Olivia Newton-John’s "Physical" suggested, adding digital-sounding synths, electroclash-inspired drum machines, and more overtly sexual lyrics to their music. While their artistic risk-taking is commendable, unfortunately the same can’t always be said for the results: Black Cherry sounds unbalanced, 
If you’ve heard the Billboard Hot 100 number one single "Low," a DJ Montay-produced track featuring T-Pain, you know the deal: Flo Rida is not a new female member of the Ruff Ryders, but a male rapper with a husky but not imposing voice who has obvious pride for the state he calls home. On Mail on Sunday, he shows flashes of virtually every point in the history of Florida hip-hop, from Miami bass, 2 Live Crew, and Poison Clan to Trick Daddy and Rick Ross. Though Flo Rida has his own identity — for all the tough talk and the automotives fixation, he does come off as big-hearted, and he could just as easily make an R&B album — and covers more bases than what is typical from other mainstream-yet-street rap albums of 2007 and 2008, he’s not nearly as distinctive as any of his predecessors. 
" The Time Of My Life"
Sweetness rules on Colbie Caillat’s debut, Coco, which is perhaps only appropriate for an album bearing that name, but the record doesn’t play like a toasty mug of chocolate on a winter’s day, it’s a sugary lemonade on a breezy summer afternoon. It’s light and comforting, a familiar blend of sunny pop and singer/songwriter tropes that flirt with cliché but never sound hackneyed — a lighter, brighter spin on Norah Jones that sounds like an ideal soundtrack to a few hours in a cozy coffeehouse or a montage on Grey’s Anatomy, whatever comes first. If that gives the impression that Caillat is a little calculated — and if her music-biz heritage (her dad co-produced Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Tusk) gives the sense that 
More than one fan called The World Is Saved a perfect winter album upon its release, and that’s a good assessment even above and beyond its striking cover photo, showing Stina Nordenstam standing in snow at night. Nordenstam’s move over the years from polite, jazz-inflected pop to something far more unusual and haunting — even while retaining many of the same musical elements she started with — has been its own underappreciated tale, and The World Is Saved is a striking new chapter, as befits an album that begins with the line "They put a needle once in my spine." Nordenstam’s ear for her own vocal gifts might well be the key to her work, using everything from close microphone singing to distanced, echoed 
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