Soundbites
LAX
The Game
Sometimes it seems that the best way to evaluate the Los Angeles rapper the Game is by the names he drops. Over two strong albums he has been a charismatic and sometimes mischievous rapper, but the question remains: Is the Game more than the sum of his proper nouns?
On LAX, his third album, for the first time he's a joyless name-checker; it's as if the letters of his album title were all in lowercase. Almost everything here, from the boasting ("Money") to the baiting ("LAX Files," "Cali Sunshine"), is pro forma. Worse, the Game, never a fluid rapper, sounds positively lumpy, as if he were delivering verses while running up a steep flight of stairs, or as if the last few years of pugnacity have finally left him winded.
One Kind Favor
B.B. King
The bluesman B.B. King's latest album, One Kind Favor, is part throwback, part twist. The songs on One Kind Favor were current when King's career got under way in the 1940s and 1950s, among them "Sitting on Top of the World" and lesser-known gems like "Get These Blues Off Me" from T-Bone Walker.
Clearly spotlighted up front, never having to strain, is King himself, addressing the blues eternals of love, hard times and death — sometimes all three, as in Howlin' Wolf's "How Many More Years."
One Kind Favor was produced by T Bone Burnett, who has lately been cultivating the death-haunted sides of rockers like John Mellencamp and Robert Plant. King isn't gloomy about mortality. His voice reveals sorrow, then fights it off with raspy shouts, while his guitar is his modest but indomitable ally, with its finely focused tone and its terse, targeted phrases.
Forth
The Verve
It's been 11 years since British band the Verve unleashed its hit anthem "Bitter Sweet Symphony" onto the world.
Then, in 1999, the band broke up.
Forth, the rock group's first album since reuniting last year, is a musical conundrum — a slight return to form but also horribly meandering.
Lead singer Richard Ashcroft, who jumped into a solo career post-Verve, and talented guitarist Nick McCabe are back with 10 tracks that ricochet from catchy indulgence to plodding balladry.
The album's first four songs, from the melodically rocking "I Sit and Wonder" to the dance-centric "Love is Noise" and soulful "Rather Be" are a reminder the Verve can churn out worthy tunes.
However, later songs such as "Numbness" induce just that. "I See Houses," trudging along on a piano refrain, and "Columbo" are aimlessly experimental. The album's lyrics overall succumb to a litany of cliches.
Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams
Solange
Over the past five years, Solange Knowles has gone through some serious changes.
After releasing her debut CD Solo Star, she got married at 17, gave birth, and later divorced — all as big sister Beyonce grew into one of music's biggest stars.
But now Solange is ready to carve out her own space with Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams.
Solange recruited a number of top producers for the project, including Cee-Lo, Mark Ronson, Pharrell Williams and Raphael Saadiq. But her work with producer Jack Splash (Alicia Keys, Estelle) is the highlight of her sophomore record. On the funky "T.O.N.Y.," Solange and Splash create a rhythmic, suave tune that will have fans of old-school R&B and contemporary soul replaying it over and over again.
