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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Reviews

music-and-concert-reviews-you-wont-see-anywhere-else

  • John Legend’s Evolver: Can the Crooner Get Down?

    Photography by sry85.
    Photography by sry85.

    When it comes to smooth, mature soul music, John Legend is the man to beat. The protege of Kanye West, Legend (born John Stephens) has amassed strong sales, five Grammy Awards and critical kudos for his first couple of albums, Get Lifted and Once Again. He’s become known as the R&B singer you can take home to mom, a piano man in the mold of Lionel Richie and Brian McKnight. However, he’s also got a more pronounced hip-hop vibe and a wink-nudge, sly sexuality that’s a refreshing change from the crassness found in most R&B and hip-hop lyrics these days..

    Legend’s third album, Evolver, has been talked about as a departure. The spacy 80s synths of the bouncy first single Green Light certainly isn’t what you’d normally expect for the buttoned-up crooner, but a rap from the irrepressible Andre 3000 and the fun groove makes the song swing.. With Evolver finally in stores and online, two questions need to be asked. 1) Is the entire album a departure for John Legend, and 2) Can he make it work?

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  • Duffy’s Rockferry: Meet The Poor Man’s Amy Winehouse

    Two years ago, no one would have ever thought that a female British soul singer with retro stylings would ever break ground in the American market, with the somewhat odd exception of Joss Stone. Two years, two million album sales and one helluva hot mess later, Amy Winehouse proved all the doubters wrong. Once Amy’s Back to Black hit, the floodgates opened and a slew of Brit female singers started making waves on these shores. There’s the jazzy flavor of Adele, the more hip-hop styled vibe of Estelle, and the young Welsh singer we know as Duffy, whose album Rockferry is the most similar to Amy’s smash breakthrough. Musically, the albums both sound like they could have been recorded in 1966, using live instrumentation and featuring girl-group harmonies and sweet melodies. You could play both albums right after Dusty in Memphis and there’ll be some kind of continuity. That, however, is where the comparison ends.

    Back to Black had a very tangible feeling of foreboding and sadness. There was a lived-in quality to Winehouse’s voice, a sense that she was living the pain of the lyrics she was singing. Duffy sounds a lot more green and chirpy. Not that it’s a bad thing. Taken for what it is, Rockferry is an admittedly decent album. However, in light of the massive rocking of my world that took place with the introduction of Amy Winehouse, Duffy sounds like a pale imitation, or as I said in an article on a friend’s blog, Duffy sounds like Amy Winehouse with the soul sucked out.

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  • Single Life (Short Version): G’N R & Eminem

    Two of the most anticipated singles of the past couple of years have hit radio waves over the past few days. What’s the verdict?

    Guns ‘n Roses Chinese Democracy:

    A day that many of us thought would never come is fast approaching: “Chinese Democracy” hits stores on November 23rd, after a fifteen-year wait between Guns ‘n Roses albums. Although G’N R are stiffing retail by making this album available at only Best Buy stores, there’s no doubt that fans will beg, borrow and steal if they can to get their hands on this release.

    The first single is the title track, and…it’s not bad!! Axl is in full snarl mode, the guitar (played by whom, I dunno) is G’NR-like, and my only qualm is that the song has no chorus. Even the band’s most aggressive stuff (like “You Could Be Mine”) had a singable quality to it, and this song is fairly deficient when it comes to pure ear candy. Nevertheless, the fans will eat it up, and Axl can rest easy and make us wait another fifteen years to put out an album.

    …and am I on crack or does the beginning of the song remind you a little bit of “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness?

    Chinese Democracy – Guns N Roses

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