B DJ Khaled featuring Jay-Z, Future and Beyonce
"Top Off"
Epic
During the past few years, DJ Khaled has grown into several new roles: Snapchat celebrity, occasional motion picture scene stealer, singing competition judge, father of the year. Less heralded, though, is his job as host for Jay-Z and Beyonce collaborations, a position that boosts his profile and also eases pressure on the superstar couple, so they can give away gifts rather than build houses of their own.
"Top Off" is the first single from the forthcoming DJ Khaled album, Father of Asahd, and once you swipe away the numbing hook and pseudo-verse from Future, there, plain as day, is an impressive Jay-Z/Beyonce duet. Jay-Z raps about the injustice of Meek Mill's incarceration, then suggests he'd kill George Zimmerman "with my own hands." Not everything is so weighted though: Jay-Z would like to impress you with his watches, and Beyonce will encourage you to have a good time, but "If they trying to party with the queen, they gonna have to sign a nondisclosure."
-- JON CARAMANICA
The New York Times
B+ The Breeders
All Nerve
4AD
It has been 25 years since The Breeders released their classic Last Splash, with its alternative rock favorites "Cannonball" and "Divine Hammer," but the band's influence can be felt in current artists such as Waxahatchee and Courtney Barnett. Drug problems and intra-band squabbles caused the dissolution of the group, and three subsequent Breeders albums featured Kim and Kelley Deal with different lineups. All Nerve, however, reunites the guitar-playing Deal sisters with their Last Splash bandmates, bassist Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jim Macpherson. It's a surprisingly solid return to form.
Opener "Nervous Mary" sets the tone: a slow, minor-key melody is suddenly interrupted with serrated guitar chords and emphatic drums, and the Deal sisters' unison vocals will sound immediately familiar to any '90s-era MTV fans. Fortunately, All Nerve sounds vital rather than facilely nostalgic: the stop-start "Wait in the Car" is sharp and raucous, the buzzing "Howl at the Summit" (with Barnett on backing vocals) is heavy and triumphant, the Amon Duul cover "Archangel's Thunderbird" is an oddball rocker. Turns out Last Splash wasn't one.
Hot tracks: "Nervous Mary," "Wait in the Car," "Howl at the Summit"
-- STEVE KLINGE
Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)
B Vance Joy
Nation of Two
Atlantic
The Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy delivers an exciting sophomore effort with this 13-track collection in which he proves he isn't too cool to play a little ukulele, banjo or the guitar-ukulele hybrid called a guitalele.
Joy had a breakout hit with 2013's ukulele-led "Riptide" and was the opening act for Taylor Swift. The sensitive strummer links up with several veteran songwriters -- including three tunes with Dave Bassett and three with Dan Wilson -- for an album of very personal love songs. Joy wrote or co-wrote each song and contributed to the cover art.
The standout track is the alt-rock anthem "We're Going Home," but other beauties include the ukulele-led "Saturday Sun," the slow-burning "Alone With Me" and the achingly beautiful "I'm With You."
If you yearn for music by Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers and early Ed Sheeran, these are your jams -- earthy, folky and honest. Joy's co-writers tend to elevate his songs into something a bit more substantial, whether it's with a brass section or strings. The four tunes he is credited with writing alone are clearly the weakest, but also the most personal.
Hot tracks: "We're Going Home," "Alone With Me," "I'm With You"
-- MARK KENNEDY
The Associated Press
B+ Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet
Landfall
Nonesuch
Nearly everyone who lived through Superstorm Sandy in 2012 has a story to tell about it. Laurie Anderson enlisted the Kronos Quartet and set hers to music.
Landfall started as a performance piece, but it holds together as an album as well, though visuals probably enhanced more expository pieces like "CNN Predicts a Monster Storm" and "The Electricity Goes Out and We Move to a Hotel."
The 70-minute piece runs from the start of the storm, which Anderson weathered in lower Manhattan with her husband, the late Lou Reed, through its aftermath, with the foreboding sounds of hovering helicopters.
The centerpiece is the haunting epic "Nothing Left But Their Names," where Anderson discusses -- in a distorted, lower-pitched voice -- a variety of now-extinct species, leaving unasked the question of what humans' impact will be.
There are lighter moments, finding humor in "We Learn to Speak Yet Another Language," where she talks of being "in a Dutch karaoke bar trying to sing a song in Korean," while making the point that the world is now very small.
She nimbly moves from the universal implications to the personal in "Everything Is Floating," as she talks about going to her flooded basement and finding her keyboards and countless keepsakes ruined. "All the things I'd carefully saved all my life becoming nothing ... but junk," she declares, as the music turns from blustery to serene and mournful. "I thought how beautiful, how magical and how ... catastrophic."
Recognizing that duality is what makes Landfall so special. She finds beauty in even the darkest of disasters, a discovery that can be applied to everyday struggles as well as this very specific one.
Hot tracks: "Nothing Left But Their Names," "We Learn to Speak Yet Another Language"
-- GLENN GAMBOA
Newsday (TNS)
Style on 03/20/2018