tomorrow

At least two new posts. Sorry for the lag!

Cassie — “Me & U”

Released: 12.16.05 Peak: #3 Coolly intricate, vibrant yet disengaged, “Me & U” sounded like someone had smuggled an uncharacteristically popwise Junior Boys track onto R&B radio. The architect of that minimal electro skeleton was Ryan Leslie, a Harvard grad turned music biz hustler, and its seductive core was Cassie Ventura. Amidst that track’s swelling keyboard [...]

Best Albums 2005 (1-5)

5. Fiona Apple — Extraordinary Machine Jon Brion’s vestigial day-glo chamber-pop streaks the re-recordings of Apple’s bent showtunes more stubbornly than internet demo-collectors notice, and Mike Elizondo retooled a better version of her than the perpetrators of 2005′s dumbest pop controversy admit. Her acid whimsy indomitable even when questioning her own desires (“I think he [...]

Madonna — “Hung Up”

Released: 10.17.05 Peak: #7 Madonna may never understand why we love her–not because she’s willing to confess on a dance floor, but because she’s willing to dance in a confessional. Still, a superstar cannot thrive solely on disco brilliance; without her ever-mockable pretensions and affectations — yes, even posh accent and Kabbalah dabble and double [...]

Miranda Lambert — “Kerosene”

Released: 10.3.05 Peak: #61 Reality TV has long since proven its uselessness as an A&R tool, failing to dredge up not only talent but even reliable sales figures, and overall contributing just slightly more to pop music than Pat Boone. Apparently Nashville Star second-runner-up Miranda Lambert wasn’t cut out for glorified karaoke. Voters passed over [...]

Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley — “Welcome to Jamrock”

Released: 9.12.05 Peak: #55 A throwback in more ways than one, and maybe only a Marley could come on this pop, this old-school, and still sound hard and timely. Or, rather, two Marleys, since brother Stephen produced “Jamrock,” running a Zap Pow bass line underneath Sly and Robbie’s World Jam riddim. Despite sounding like a [...]

James McMurtry — “We Can’t Make It Here”

Released: 9.6.05 Peak: Did not chart In the ’00s, blaming blinkered God-fearin’ hicks for all of America’s problems became the acceptable liberal alternative to blaming welfare moms, the ingrained impulse to lash out any which way but upward proving itself the most bipartisan element in U.S. politics. If nothing else, “We Can’t Make It Here” [...]

Best Albums 2005 (6-10)

10. Wussy — Funeral Dress Chuck Cleaver of brilliantly bent ’90s Cincinnati alterna-flops Ass Ponys and his on-and-off-again younger gf Lisa Walker take lyrical turns here, hers milking metaphysics from the concrete, his etching the everyday into the abstract. Their guitars split the difference between jangle and drone, wading among waves of death and depression [...]

The Legendary K.O. — “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People”

Released: 9.6.05 Peak: Did not chart What was I saying about protest songs again? If Iraq demanded a pop response in keeping with precedent — wars create anti-war songs — the Katrina disaster demanded a response because it was unprecedented. Not entirely, of course — as the resurrection of Randy Newman’s “Louisiana, 1927″ reminded us, [...]

Keyshia Cole — “I Should’ve Cheated”

Released: 8.2.05 Peak: #30 Keyshia Cole is hardly the most underrated female R&B star of the ’00s. Still, despite her hair’s strawberry tinge and her three-season reality show, she’s among the least recognizable for pop fans–her voice doesn’t project the consistent, distinct personality that makes for a star. And her music is the better for [...]