Quarta-feira 8 Jan 2014, 14h:10
So this year I’m keeping the reviews even shorter than usual as I’m late already.
A word of caution: as always, these are not necessarily bad albums (unless explicitly noted), just underwhelming ones.
Judging from last year’s Daughter EPs, I would have expected much more of this album. If you want to listen to Daughter, you should just get the EPs and skip this.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
Emmylou Harris – Old Yellow Moon
As with every Emmylou Harris record of the last ten years, this one primarily deals with aging. If that works well (like it does with some of the songs), it’s great. Otherwise, it just seems self-indulgent. It doesn’t help that I find the music to be a tad too monotonous.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
Various Artists – Young Turks 2013
I only mention this album at all because there’s a cool ×× track on there. The other tracks are just uninspiring remixes.
Rating: ½☆☆☆☆
Best tracks
“Over-promise and under-deliver” seems to be Lady Gaga’s motto these days. None of this is in any way artsy. The best tracks are just good pop tunes, everything else seems to be an uninspired mix.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
Every Katie Melua album has always been on the verge of falling into the bittersweet-kitsch trap but there always have been some songs on with enough structure to keep the album from falling apart. This time there aren’t.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Best tracks
There are a few good tracks on this record (the title track is amazing even) but the rest is just so impossibly bland and uninspired that it drags everything down.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
Jack Johnson – From Here To Now To You
I find Jack Johnson’s songwriting too carefree and, frankly, expressionless. He just has nothing to say that is worthy of being said. Or sung.
Rating: ★½☆☆☆
Best tracks
Madeleine Peyroux – The Blue Room
I love Madeleine Peyroux’ husky voice but I couldn’t listen to more than three songs off this album in succession as they’re all too similar.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
William Shatner – Ponder The Mystery
Start with Sally Oldfield’s mysterious and imagination-filled music, take away her magic voice, switch out the instrumentation for samples form a karaoke disc and overlay it with some guy reading meaningless buzzwords, this is what you get. The Star Trek fan in me would have liked to love this but even he had to admit defeat.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Best tracks
Maria Taylor – Something About Knowing
None of these tracks are especially bad but almost all of them are missing some kick. This is the worst Maria Taylor record to date.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
Kate Nash went further along the path she’d taken with My Best Friend Is You. It’s all just too much noise for me.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
Missing the fierce portrayal of feminist values (like on Das Kampflied) here. The stories are not even that funny. At least they still use these exaggerated swiss accents when singing in German, English or French.
Rating: ★★★½☆
Best tracks
Céline Dion – Loved Me Back To Life
This album has so much not clicked with me, I’d even rather listen to Miracle (yes, really) or These Are Special Times (no, not really) than this.
Rating: ★½☆☆☆
Best tracks
Not only the name of this record is odd (in light of the NSA’s PRISM programme), the tracks are too.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
Maybe I’m just romanticizing the days of my youth when HIM records used to mean something to me but I think this is mainly noise.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
Wrecking Ball is actually quite a good song. But other than that the album is full of sensation-hungry songs that don’t really convey any sense of belonging together.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
Kind of surprising but 2Raumwohnung finally managed to produce an album that is void of any songs worth listening to. Hell, it even barely has any good concepts. I’ve listened to the album three times now and, with the exception of Bei Dir Bin Ich Schön, I couldn’t recite a single line if my life depended on it.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Best tracks
Kinda OK, I just don’t know why I would listen to this instead of any other Dido song.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
- Just Say Yes
- Girl Who Got Away
- Day Before We Went To War
- Let Us Move On (Featuring Kendrick Lamar) (Alternate Mix)
A mixture between Joshua Radin and Jack Johnson. Unfortunately, there’s too many of these to be able to stand out.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
Another record primarily dedicated to aging. This time it’s not over-self-indulgence that’s the problem but rather the lack of complex (meaning: interesting) melodies.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
CocoRosie – Tales Of A Grass Widow
This has just one too many filler tracks to be a viable successor to CocoRosie’s previous efforts.
Rating: ★★★½☆
Best tracks
Franz Ferdinand – Right Thoughts Right Words Right Action
With all the hype surrounding this band, I would probably have expected something stronger. No, I don’t know their other albums. That being said, there are some decent songs on there, just not the kind I could fall in love with.
Rating: ★★★½☆
Best tracks
I’m a sucker for musicals and showtunes. But this I don’t get. Yes, the voices are perfect and yes, the orchestra must have been gigantic. But I’m not moved by any of it.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Best tracks
Translating these songs to swiss german is a good idea and well executed here but Sina’s duet partners are mostly not up to the job.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
- Chumm Lee Wärs Doch La Sii (Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off) (Featuring Michael Von Der Heide)
- Schnee (Featuring Adrian Stern)
- Ich Schwöru (Featuring Büne Huber)
- Schi Mägunt Mi Nit (Featuring Steff La Cheffe)
Released 3 years after Teena Marie’s death, this album was completed by her daughter. I’m on the fence with this one as I actually enjoy it more than I thought I would. Still, it’s not really a good fit, genre-wise.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
The surprise Beyoncé album released late this year received fairly positive reviews and was given credits for lyrical and musical experimentation. I do like the feminist messages (though there’s something about Beyoncé’s brand of feminism that doesn’t sit right with me) but I don’t hear the musical experiments. On the contrary: musically, this album is exactly what I would have expected after 4. Some songs are abysmally overloaded, others are just bland pop. I must admit, though, that I haven’t yet watched the videos.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Best tracks
Suzzy Roche & Lucy Wainwright Roche – Fairytale And Myth
While I liked Lucy Wainwright Roche’s solo record a lot, this collaboration with her mother strikes my as largely uninspired.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
From my first impressions I’d thought this could be something for me but repeated listens have not managed to pull me in.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
One of the cheesiest records of the year. Maybe Dave Stewart’s a good musician but he just has no taste whatsoever.
Rating: ★½☆☆☆
Best tracks
- Never Met A Woman Like You
- Lucky Numbers (Featuring Holly Quin Rah)
- Every Single Night (Featuring Martina McBride) (Radio Edit)
- You And I (Featuring Ann Marie Calhoun/Laura Michelle Kelly)
Various Artists – The Great Gatsby OST
Falls horribly short of the other great soundtrack releases this year.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
- Crazy In Love (Featuring The Bryan Ferry Orchestra) (Kid Koala Version)
- Love Is The Drug (Featuring The Bryan Ferry Orchestra)
- Heart’s A Mess
- Back To Black (Featuring André 3000)
Donna Summer – Love To Love You Donna
An album full of bad remixes. Skip this!
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Best tracks
I don’t think I’ve ever not liked a Morcheeba album on first listen. That is until I heard this one. A closer listen didn’t help either.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Best tracks
Suffers from the same shortcomings as the Katie Melua album: it’s missing some punch.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
Horribly disappointed. The first single “Home Again” promised so much that this album failed to deliver: soulful renditions, tearjerking melodies and interesting piano arrangements, reserved percussion.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
This seems to be just interleaved electronic noise.
Rating: ★½☆☆☆
Best tracks
Elvis Costello – Wise Up Ghost
Dito but with analog noise.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Best tracks
Love some of the songs on here but ultimately most songs seem to be incapable to combine vocals and instrumentation into a coherent sound.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
I had incredibly high hopes for the new Sting album. Unfortunately only the prerelease single “And Yet” managed the fulfill them, every other track is a mess of slow vocals accompanied by sparse instrumentation.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Best tracks
I’m glad it’s just one Eels album this year but even on this one, many tracks are downright boring. It’s like Mr E has too many lyrics floating around in his head and not enough tunes to deliver them to.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
This is hands down the worst Britney record I’ve ever heard. Seriously, every single song here is worse than From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Best tracks
Scout Niblett – It’s Up To Emma
I’m trying again this year to become friends with Scout Niblett and have to admit it’s almost working the second time around as long as I gloss over the heavy guitars and the reverb. But that doesn’t work so well for extended periods of time.
Rating: ★★★½☆
Best tracks
Yes, it’s THE Donovan, you know, from the ’60s. Unfortunately he mostly sings about women. In a very objectifying way. Sometimes even in the third person. And he calls them “girl”. I’m sorry, but I can’t take this seriously.
Rating: ★★★½☆
Best tracks
Laura Marling – Once I Was An Eagle
The ever-enigmatic Laura Marling. It’s clear that after the wonderful A Creature I Don’t Know there had to be another incoherent inaccessible mess. Even worse than I Speak Because I Can.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks
Phildel – The Glass Ghost – EP
Not at all a bad record but falls short compared to The Disappearance Of The Girl. But for a holiday-themed record it’s still great.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Best tracks
2nd prize for the most botched bubblegum-pop album of the year. Like Britney’s new album, Selena Gomez tries to “save” it by overlaying everything with an annoying beat, that instead of covering up the sloppy songmaking, manages to accentuate it.
Rating: ★½☆☆☆
Best tracks
Two voices not made to sing together try it anyway. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Skip this.
Rating: ★½☆☆☆
Best tracks
- Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?
- Barbara Allen
- I’m Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail
- Roving Gambler
I think if I spent more time with this, I might like it but as it stands, whenever I hear a tune I think “church choir” and turn away, disgusted.
Rating: ★★★½☆
Best tracks
Willie Nelson – To All The Girls…
An album full of duets with accomplished female artists. I don’t really know why this album does nothing for me. Willie Nelson has one of the few male voices I actually like but I find even the duets with idols of mine like Brandi Carlile, Norah Jones or Emmylou Harris bland and uninspiring.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Best tracks