Ken Tucker reviews the new album from Daft Punk, Random Access Memories:

I freely admit that, until the new Random Access Memories, I wasn’t much of a fan. I could appreciate the craft and imagination that went into creating the French duo’s mixture of electronic genres — techno, house, disco — but the mechanical repetitions and heavily filtered vocals didn’t turn me on in any other way. But now, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have come up with an album that exposes the human side of their musical impulses. It’s the equivalent of removing the helmet-masks the pair invariably wears in public performances. Random Access Memories is a collection filled with music that suggests mad romance, heartache and an embrace of the past that’s never merely nostalgic or sentimental.

Image courtesy of Sony Music

Kevin Whitehead reviews Sarah Vaughan, Divine: The Jazz Albums, 1954-1958:

A lot of jazz singing is about consonants—the percussive attacks the music swings from. With Sarah Vaughan, it’s also about the way she rolls out her vowels, reveling in a held note like Miles Davis. Later her vibrato could get excessive, but in the mid-’50s her taste and control were a marvel. That much is clear from a new anthology of Vaughan on EmArcy, Divine: The Jazz Albums 1954-1958 (Verve Select). (In that period she was made pop albums with strings, and some of the same tunes.) It’s six albums-plus on four CDs, recorded live or in the studio, with bands big and small. All but one session is sparked by another bebop institution, drummer Roy Haynes. He has a springy beat, using brushes, and doesn’t overplay.

Sarah Vaughan had a gallery of vocal timbres, gravelly to silky, round or strident, white-gloved or blues-drenched. Her pitch range was operatic, and her low notes have uncommon power. She drew inspiration from great soloists and gave it right back

Image via vainsmith

Ed Ward on the live albums that revived Jerry Lee Lewis’ career in the mid-late 1960s:

The resulting album, Live at the Hamburg Star-Club, is 37 minutes long, and, because it features a man playing as if his life depended on it in front of a rioting crowd, is widely considered one of the greatest live rock and roll albums ever. Smash decided not to release it. Instead, until it got an official U.S. release in 1980, imported copies were eagerly sought out. What Smash did instead was to record another show, this time with Jerry Lee’s regular band, in July in Birmingham, Alabama. The set list is almost identical, but with a bit more country.

Above, Jerry Lee Lewis performing on Shindig in 1965. If this doesn’t make you want to get up and dance on out of the office and into Friday night then we don’t know what will.

David Edelstein on the cast of J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek Into Darkness:

The movie doesn’t hold up to post-viewing scrutiny — which matters if you want to see it again. But I found it so much fun to see its variations on an old theme that I found myself having a good time. I surrendered to the bombardment. The new cast is still disconcerting. By the end of the original Trek, the actors were a collection of paunches and hairpieces; these guys are so trim and tender-skinned, they’re like the Baby Looney Tunes.

Kevin Whitehead pays tribute to clarinetist and bandleader Woody Herman on what would have been his 100th birthday:

In the late ’30s, he never rivaled bandleading clarinetists Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. But then came that late blooming. In 1944, not long before the swing era collapsed, Woody Herman put together a stupendous band known as his First Herd. It was popping with talent, starting with hotdog bassist Chubby Jackson, whose added fifth string made him sound speeded up. The brass included young trumpeter Sonny Berman with his antic bebop solos, and the lyrical but shouting trombonist Bill Harris. Igor Stravinsky wrote his “Ebony Concerto” for them. Herman famously said later, “We had no more right to play it than the man on the moon had.”

Above, Eleanor Powell with Woody Herman and His Orchestra

Maureen Corrigan on the new novel Americanahby Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

Ifemelu does make it over to America on a student visa and, ultimately, she becomes a very successful blogger. Ifemelu’s blog is called: Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. The name of her blog should give you a sense of the subjects as well as the tart smarts of her posts, many of which are included in this novel. But, before Ifemelu strikes the blogger bonanza, she must endure the new immigrant initiation rite of looking for work. Ifemelu answers ads for home health aides in apartments that stink of urine and she works as “the nanny” in the Philadelphia suburbs. At one point, desperate for rent money, Ifemelu accepts a sexual job offer.

“Flag” by Brent Godfrey via Artdoxa

Ken Tucker reviews Stories Don’t End, the third album from the LA-based, West Coast folk rock-influenced band Dawes:

If you heard the Dawes song “Just Beneath the Surface” and said, “Somebody’s been listening to their old Jackson Browne albums!,” you’re not exactly insulting Dawes. This band has actually backed Browne on tour and Browne has sung back-up on at least one of their songs, and so you could say they come by their riffs, licks and phrasing honestly. You could, that is, if you want to pigeon-hole this quartet as a throwback to Southern California ’70s soft-rock, which would be a mistake. Why, on the very next cut on their new album Stories Don’t End, they sound like East Coast ’70s soft-rock, on the Steely Dan-ish “From a Window Seat.”

Kevin Whitehead on four albums of reissues and archival releases from Bing Crosby’s own vaults:

Crosby often sounded funnier, and more at ease, on radio than on records. Not hard to hear why, with some of the settings record producers put him in — like a ’70s funk version of “Georgia on My Mind,” heard on the Crosby CD A Southern Memoir. That album comes from a batch of reissues and archival releases from Bing’s own vaults. They’ve been dribbling out awhile but the series is getting a higher-profile relaunch. The music is all over the map: Bing goes Latin. Bing goes Hawaiian. Bing sings special lyrics to amuse his horseracing and fishing buddies.

Image of Bing Crosby eating ice cream in 1953 courtesy of HLC Properties Ltd.

Ken Tucker likes Stories Don’t End, the new album from Dawes and thinks you might too:

I kid Dawes about their influences — I kid because I like the way these boys carry those influences with their own good humor, and with a loose assurance that their distinctiveness will shine through. On the lovely title song “Stories Don’t End,” singer-songwriter-guitarist Taylor Goldsmith talks about the ineffectiveness of talk — how words cannot express all that he wants to say about the woman he’s describing, the feelings he has for her. For that, he requires not only words, but the slightly fuzzy timbre of his voice and the gentle drumming of his brother Griffin Goldsmith. He gets closer, in this way, to suggesting how complex a story one song can tell, because as the title reminds us, the stories of a relationship, once launched, don’t end. We impose a narrative — a beginning, middle and end — upon them.

Image via Dawes

Kevin Whitehead on Bing Crosby’s influence on popular music:

Bing Crosby’s influence on modern singing is so huge, we barely notice it anymore. It spread out through deadpan crooners like Perry Como, folksy colloquialists like Johnny Mercer, and warm sexy baritones like Billy Eckstine. Later singers who effectively undersell a song are indebted too, like Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen.

Image of Bing Crosby reading the sheet music is from a CBS radio recording session in the fall of 1954, at the CBS studio in Hollywood courtesy of HLC Properties Ltd.

David Edelstein on Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby:

It’s hard for a director like Luhrmann to capture the notion of longing to be somewhere you can’t be. He’s not that spiritual. Leonardo DiCaprio embodies that longing, though. The performance is broad — and he’s more tan and healthy than I imagine the character being. But that works here. His Gatsby is still glowing with youthful dreams; he feigns an upper-class accent in the sincere conviction he can rise in society. It’s easy to believe he thinks that with his new wealth he can vanquish time.

Image via NPR

David Bianculli on Christopher Guest (above in Waiting for Guffman), who is the co-creator of the new HBO comedy series Family Tree:

Christopher Guest, of course, has made a career — quite an impressive one — out of marching to his own comedy drummer. As an actor, his standout bizarro roles include the evil six-fingered count in The Princess Bride, the clueless heavy-metal musician Nigel in This is Spinal Tap and a series of memorable characters in a brief but inspired stint on Saturday Night Live. As a writer and director, he amassed a batch of giddily original comedy films — movies with tightly scripted outlines but lots of room for improvisation. If you’ve seen one, you may have seen them all, because they’re habit-forming and they’re that good: A Mighty Wind. Waiting for Guffman. Best in Show. For Your Consideration.

Ken Tucker on how Natalie Maines’ new solo album Mother can be seen in light of the ostracism she experienced after criticizing the Iraq invasion on stage with the Dixie Chicks in 2003:

When Natalie Maines remarked from a London stage in 2003 that the Dixie Chicks were “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas,” she was criticizing Iraq War policy in a manner that would earn her instant condemnation and worse, even as her take on that war would eventually become a majority opinion in the U.S. No matter: What she and her group-mates felt in immediate response wasn’t just an overreaction from a segment of the country-music audience. It was also the cowardice of a music industry running scared from blunt political ideas in a perilous industry economy. There’s a tendency, therefore, to hear every song on this album as some sort of response to Maines’ life-altering remark and her subsequent public retreat. It lurks here and there, to be sure, but after the first few listens, Mother becomes the work of a mother, wife, feminist, teammate and solo artist taking her place in the public square once again, making stubbornness sound like a kind of freedom.

Image via Blacklisted Journalist

Our pop music critic Ken Tucker on the title track from Natalie Maines’ new solo album, Mother:

Natalie Maines doesn’t hesitate to make audacious moves, and wresting away “Mother” — Roger Waters’ hymn to oppressive maternal authority figures from Pink Floyd — is the biggest one on her first solo album. Maines takes the “Mother” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall and deconstructs it, emotional brick by emotional brick. She rebuilds the melody and radically alters the vocal intonation of the lyric to render it resilient enough for new interpretations. “Mother” becomes a plea for understanding; to come to terms with difficult relationships through love and trust. Which, among other things, could be heard as Maines’ attempt to reach out to Dixie Chick fans, both present and former, loyal and hostile.

Ken Tucker on Caitlin Rose’s The Stand In:

As its title suggests, The Stand-In finds Rose assuming various roles in her songs, but they really boil down to two: the person who’s been wronged and the person who’s committed a wrong. Rose produced this album with Jordan Lehning and Skylar Wilson, who also co-wrote much of the material with her. The production of any given song frequently rubs against the mood of its lyric, with downbeat sentiments made tense when strung along a zippy, coursing melody, or a hopeful verse called into question by the downward spiral of guitars, keyboards and drums.

Above, “Own Side” off of Caitlin Rose’s new album The Stand In