Champagne Symphony

It's always great when you get a song that's consistently great from beginning to end, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.  Sometimes you get songs where a certain section clearly stands out from the rest. Here's a few from this year: The Chorus of Kanye West's Bound 2 : The soul sample that occupies the rest of the song is soul only in name.  It approximates College Dropout-era Kanye with none of the warmth and, well, soul that made those tracks great.  The chorus is the exact opposite.  It uses the electronic music technique of putting a soulful male voice over a bass-heavy beat to create something emotive and genuinely soulful. The 3rd Minute of Youth Lagoon's Mute : Most of the song is nothing but warm, hazy fuzz, but, for about a minute, Trevor Powers cuts through that fuzz with a soaring, uplifting melody that Bono would be jealous of. The Pre-Chorus of Vampire Weekend's Unbelievers : One of two things this year that absolutely blew me away

Rating: 6.3 This seems to be the year of great marketing and mediocre music.  Following the example of Justin Timberlake, Daft Punk, and Kanye West, Jay-Z has put out an album that's far more notable for its marketing campaign than for its content. I can't believe Samsung's already paid Jay-Z $5 million for this. He doesn't deserve it. Never mind The Blueprint 3 , this album doesn't even beat out Kingdom Come . Why couldn't Samsung have thrown a few million dollars in Vampire Weekend's direction? I suppose I'll just pretend this is delayed compensation for American Gangster . Anyways, about the actual music: Jay-Z turns in a pretty good rap on "Jay-Z Blue," but, otherwise, he's just cruising along. There's none of the focus and the joy that he brought to almost all his verses on Watch the Throne . The hooks are also pretty uniformly awful. Jay-Z's never been particularly good with writing hooks, and, without Kanye aroun

Rating: 6.6 Up until now, Kanye's always made music like The Beatles: high quality, palatable, and not particularly emotionally resonant. Yeezus is a completely different beast. It's somewhere between the Sex Pistols and early Nine Inch Nails. It's got brutal, simple electronic sounds and a punk mentality.  Kanye's apparently moved past Common and thrown his lot in with Chief Keef. I don't think he could've done anything more misguided. Look at it this way: Kanye's Strengths: Writing and finding great melodies Layering sound Kanye's Weaknesses: Drum programming Rapping (all of it - lyrics, flow & rhyming) Yet, for some reason, he's roped in Rick Rubin to remove everything that plays to his strengths and focus entirely on his weaknesses. It's like asking a drum 'n bass producer to cut out the low end and make a Brian Eno album. There's no way you're gonna get good results. Now, I will admit that, if you are looking for

Rating: 8.2 As comebacks go, this is about as brilliant and joyous as they get.  It's not U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind , but it's not too far off.  At this point, over 40 years since Bowie hit the big time with "Space Oddity", all of his contemporaries have essentially become tribute bands to themselves. Yet here we have the Thin White Duke, at the age of 66, making music that is strikingly modern. Sure, it doesn't push any boundaries, but it slots comfortably alongside TV on the Radio and St. Vincent's recent releases. The sound is classic New York: elegant, cerebral, nervy, and reserved. It's well played and well recorded from beginning to end. The recording of the drums is nothing short of phenomenal.  The quality definitely drops off about halfway through, but, by then, there's already enough top notch material to make this the best Bowie album of all time. (I know, I know, that's sort of blasphemous, with Hunky Dory , Zi

Rating: 8.9 The National have made a career writing knotty songs about the realities of leaving youth behind and settling down. On first listen, all of their albums sound similar, but further listens reveal that each one has a unique mood and personality. I see their albums as a progression through the stages of grief. Alligator is denial. Its songs have a drunken energy that the band has never recaptured. It is unique in having songs with conspicuous hope ("Lit Up", "Mr. November") and warm romance ("The Geese of Beverly Road", "Looking for Astronauts"). This is an album about knowing that you're not as young as you used to be, but going out and drowning that knowledge in alcohol and ephemeral love. Boxer is anger. There is a focused aggression here, thanks in large part to Bryan Devendorf's drumming, which is is absolutely brilliant throughout and a clear notch above his work anywhere else. It lashes out against the realities ad

Rating: 9.5 A year and a half after Drake released the phenomenal Take Care , we finally get another brilliant album. If you don't already know, Vampire Weekend are a group of four Columbia grads who got famous making the follow-up to Graceland that Paul Simon never got around to. (In less obscure terms, they made joyous, literate, moderately complex music with a clear African influence.) Here, on their third album, they've continued to move away from those roots and expand their sonic palette to great results. The drums maintain the simple, joyous bounce they've always had, but the instrumentation layered on top is now much more varied and emotive. The band still has a tendency to shoot for the mind rather than the heart. A lot of times, they will create something interesting and pretty without zeroing in on a clear emotional goal (ex. the obnoxious background vocals on the chorus of "Ya Hey").  However, on songs like "Don't Lie" and "H

Rating: 6.7 Seven years after gracing us with two of the greatest pop singles of all time ( My Love & What Goes Around...Comes Around ), Justin Timberlake's finally put out some new music. Thank god too. I was pretty tired of having Justin Bieber as the sole claimant to the now permanently vacated throne for the King of Pop .  If nothing else, the marketing blitz that's being put on for this album has been something to behold.  Music publications everywhere are tracking his every move, and he seems to be appearing on every single TV show, all at once. Now for the music.  It's certainly interesting.  The average song is 7 minutes long, and the song structure is all over the place.  However, it feels more like lazy editing than grand ambition.  Most of the songs don't even have enough good melodic ideas to fill out a standard 4 minute track, let alone the 7 minute behemoths here.  Just as an example, the chorus to "Let the Groove Get In" is sung 60 tim