Popular Music CDs for Adults
Hundreds of CDs are added to the Library's collection each month. Here are the most popular Music CDs for adults.
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First Two Pages of Frankenstein
Differences between albums by the National can be measured by minute degrees, each marking a distance from the group's melancholic center. First Two Pages of Frankenstein, the 2023 record that marks the band's first proper album since 2017's Sleep Well Beast -- not to mention the first they've released since Aaron Dessner became a collaborator of Taylor Swift's -- lies among the National albums that provide a glimmer of reassurance, the sense of consolation arriving not through catharsis but meditation. While stillness is a constant within the National, as they enter middle age, they seem to have less patience for varying tempo or volume, so First Two Pages of Frankenstein appears to be painted in gradations of grey; it's not monochromatic, but from a certain perspective it can appear homogenous. Even supporting vocals from Sufjan Stevens and Phoebe Bridgers, who cameos twice, don't command attention, marking a distinct break from I Am Easy to Find, where guest vocals provided a focal point. Here, the National sound relatively streamlined, concentrating on their collective subdued drama. Naturally, Matt Berninger's murmured musings are placed at the forefront, yet the band follow his every pause and sigh, giving the music the impression of riding a wave; things surge forward, then recede. Melodies aren't absent, but they're not forceful, they're sung as suggestions. Forward movement is achieved through shifts in texture and feel, momentum created through layers of harmony and weaving acoustic instruments through electronic beddings. Nothing here sounds precisely new -- this is the aesthetic that gelled around the time of High Violet, yet the skill in the craft is married to a brightness in outlook that lets First Two Pages of Frankenstein operate on two parallel paths: it can serve as moody atmosphere or reward close listening. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
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Fuse
At the beginning of Naked at the Albert Hall, one of several illuminating memoirs Tracey Thorn has published since 2013, the singer notes that she doesn't do nostalgia gigs. After she and Ben Watt turned their backs on pop stardom in 2000, performed their final concert as Everything But the Girl, and focused on raising a family together, it took several years before Thorn returned to the recording studio and restarted her solo career. With Fuse, the first EBTG album in 24 years, the duo immediately make it clear that they aren't interested in dwelling in the past. The Overmono-like taut beats and vibrating bass of marvelous lead single "Nothing Left to Lose" plunk EBTG's sound firmly into 2023, yet the sparse, clear production makes it unmistakable that Thorn's voice has roughened up a bit, even since her last solo record. This only adds more emotional weight to her lyrics, which are as thoughtful as ever, yet especially relevant for the 2020s. "Kiss me while the world decays," she exclaims at the climax of "Nothing Left to Lose," while she's reassuring and understanding during "When You Mess Up," which mentions living "in a world of microaggressions." The song makes momentary use of Auto-Tune, letting the pitch of her voice flutter upward for a few lines, and the ambient lullaby "Interior Space" shades reflections on alienation with James Blake-ian vocal processing. "Lost" is a lyrical as well as textural experiment, with Thorn listing various losses that came up as search engine results (particularly making an emphasis on "I lost my mother, then I just lost it"), while various vocal fragments and twittering glitches float around her inside a giant bubble. The calm, piano-driven "Run a Red Light" reminisces about playing shows at bars, and recalls the duo's earlier jazz-pop sound without re-creating it. That's as close to nostalgic as the album gets, though. The gently dramatic electro-pop tune "Time & Time Again" flirts with trap-influenced drum programming as a way to underline Thorn's urgent "call me" pleas. Most excitingly, the midtempo, shaker-heavy rhythm of "Forever" sounds inspired by South Africa's amapiano movement, and the bass hits just in time for the tremendous chorus: "Give me something I can hold onto forever." Fuse is nowhere near as club-friendly or single-driven as the stacked-with-hits Walking Wounded and Temperamental, but it contains the most adventurous production EBTG have ever attempted, showing that the duo haven't lost their touch for pairing up-to-date music with relevant, affecting subject matter. ~ Paul Simpson (syndetics)
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Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Lana Del Rey could have retired after the cinematic grandeur of her 2019 high-water mark Norman Fucking Rockwell! That album's imaginative songwriting, finely crafted performances, and exceptional production served as a realization of the magnificence promised by earlier efforts, and the deepest look yet at Del Rey's stormy inner world. Subsequent albums suggested a little bit of a comedown after such heights. Both released in 2021, Chemtrails Over the Country Club felt like an NFR! bonus reel, while Blue Banisters played like a mixtape of solid but random song ideas. Ninth album Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd finds Del Rey returning to the powerful level of song sculpting she reached on NFR!, and feels like a strong step forward as much as it does a worthy follow-up to her best record. The slow, lingering torch song style the singer has been perfecting since the beginning of her career shows up in fine form on the lovely, string-dazzled melancholy of the title track and the gospel choir-aided opening track, "The Grants." The tone of Ocean Blvd is more mature than previous albums but also more distant. The haunting music-box melody of "Paris, Texas" finds Del Rey on a solitary journey, feeling unsettled about her place in life and getting the sense that it's time to end a crumbling relationship. Much of the album hovers in this darkly dreamy mood, with lyrics sometimes circling around themes of family or long-term partnership, but usually choosing a thick atmospheric malaise over overt statements. Even the folky Father John Misty duet "Let the Light In" renders its open acoustic guitar chords and soft rock affectations more cloudy than crisp. Del Rey's genre experimentation has long been a part of her sound, and it results in some of Ocean Blvd's most exciting moments as well as some of its least. She brings on producer Jack Antonoff's band Bleachers to assist with "Margaret," and the song feels flat and unfinished, Antonoff awkwardly trying to fit the faux-Springsteen grumble he uses in Bleachers into the tune's flow. Conversely, the seven-minute "A&W" is one of Del Rey's more daring and immediately mesmerizing songs, starting out as a slow-motion lament but changing lanes dramatically with a severe beat switch that comes out of nowhere. Minimal electronics build tension until the song suddenly explodes into a blur of cheerleader-chant hooks and overpowering bass. It's a career-best track that owes its excellence to Del Rey's willingness to take it somewhere wildly unexpected. Other great experiments with style are "Fishtail," which floats through wispy ambience before a trap beat drops, and the watery funk of "Peppers," which loops a sample from Tommy Genesis for its chorus. Now more than a decade into making music, Lana Del Rey has honed a style so unique she's almost a genre unto herself. Full of brilliant strides forward, Ocean Blvd is a crucial chapter in Del Rey's ongoing saga of heartbreak and enchantment. ~ Fred Thomas (syndetics)
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The Record
Five years is a long time, long enough for a band to wander, reunite, and find themselves on a different plane. Such is the case of boygenius, the indie supergroup of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker. When the trio first joined forces in 2018, it was to bash out an EP over the course of four days, releasing the results on Matador. Everything about The Record, the full-length debut delivered a half-decade later, is more deliberate. Boygenius spent a month cutting The Record, releasing it on Interscope to great fanfare in March 2023. The leap to the majors certainly reflects how the profiles of Dacus, Baker, and especially Bridgers have been elevated since the boygenius EP, a rise aided by each of the three releasing strong, distinctive albums in its wake. What's remarkable about The Record is how these three idiosyncratic songwriters consciously decide to subsume their quirks within a group voice. Individual traits haven't been erased so much as they've been sanded so they can fit neatly together. The unified front gives The Record shape and heft, qualities apparent from its twin openers: "Without You Without Them" highlights their spectral harmonies, while "$20" drives home an offset riff that's quintessentially 1990s. Much of The Record feels like a conscious throwback to the spirit of 1993, blending the dreamier and noisier aspects of alt-rock, feeling equally at home with the bittersweet strums of "Leonard Cohen" and the walloping hooks of "Satanist," not to mention how "True Blue" and "Not Strong Enough" land squarely in the middle of this spectrum. Collectively, boygenius feels heftier and hookier than Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus do on their own, and this collective instinct towards immediacy pays great dividends: it's bracing to hear such introspective singer/songwriters embrace the pleasures of a united front. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
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Multitudes
With her albums separated by anywhere from three to six years, it took a couple decades for Leslie Feist to establish that, while her songwriting tendencies show an affection for complex bossa progressions as well as breezy campfire folk, she never really repeats herself. The elegant Let It Die (2004) effortlessly mingled bossa nova, jazz-pop, folk, and rock; The Reminder (2007), while also diverse, is memorable for its jingle-like anthems; Metals (2011) took a moodier, atmospheric route; and the more assertive Pleasure (2017) seemed to relish being unsteady and unpredictable. Following in 2023, Multitudes changes approach again, finding Feist at easily her most direct and poignant to date -- and that's saying something -- on a set of songs developed during a run of intimate live shows (also called Multitudes) performed in the round in 2021 and 2022. The songs were inspired by major life events including adopting a baby, the death of her father, and the onset of a worldwide pandemic. In addition to its themes of life, love, and loss, Multitudes has an experimental bent that only amplifies its profundity alongside exquisite production (recording, mixing, mastering) that gives weight to every sound. It was tracked in a custom-built home studio in Northern California just weeks before its release, with Feist, Mocky, Robbie Lackritz, Blake Mills, and (filmmaker) Mike Mills having a hand in production. Multitudes opens with "In Lightning," one of its few moments of bombast. Stomping drums and full-throated harmony vocals distinguish the tense, tuneful entry, as do its syncopated, sometimes onomatopoeic lyrics. It later introduces strings and more striking instruments like synth recorders in addition to its flawed and interrupted closing harmonies. The album then moves into a series of emotive quasi-acoustic ballads with fat, tactile plucks and strums and brittle, lilting vocals as she takes on heavier thoughts and remembrances. Among these are the musically lovely and lyrically devastating "Love Who We Are Meant To" ("Sometimes we don't get to") and the more head-bobbing, campfire-like "Hiding Out in the Open," which is nonetheless made alien by widescreen harmonies, warped vocal editing, and faint, spacy synths. That song concludes that "Love is not a thing you try to do/It wants to be the thing compelling you/To be you." Later, "I Took All of My Rings Off" finds her opening the window "to let in the wind and get rid of what might have been," and the quasi-classical "Of Womankind," which quotes Homer's The Odyssey, plays out as an artful lament replete with spoke-sung passages, rich vocal harmonies, and fluttering Romantic melodicism. With an intro not unlike Bowie's "Heroes," "Borrow Trouble" surprises by greatly widening the audioscape with its buzzing orchestral-rock atmosphere, including a baritone sax solo and screams. Ending with a track called "Song for Sad Friends" that acknowledges that it's appropriate to feel bad in these times, perhaps the most impressive thing about Multitudes is that virtually any of its 12 songs would be showstoppers in less consummate company. ~ Marcy Donelson (syndetics)
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Songs of Surrender
Six years after Songs of Experience -- and nearly a decade after Songs of Innocence -- U2 delivered Songs of Surrender, an album whose title suggests it's either part of a trilogy or the album where the band decided to finally succumb to the forces attempting to pull it down to the ground. Given that a collection of remakes inherently feels like a retreat, the latter interpretation seems more likely. Named partially after Bono's 2022 memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, the project -- available in a couple of iterations, including a four-LP set where each volume is named after a bandmember -- finds each member of the group cherry-picking ten of their favorite U2 songs, and then the Edge spearheading "intimate" rearrangements of them. Largely anchored by -- but by no means limited to -- acoustic guitars, Songs of Surrender is subdued, handsome, and tasteful, music made from the vantage point of reflection rather than risk. There's nothing on Songs of Surrender that sounds precisely like the originally released versions -- studio effects and electric guitars have been stripped away, the rhythms don't thunder -- yet nothing here quite surprises. Bono's lyrical alterations are subtle, even when they amount to more than the tweaking of a stray line; giving "Stories for Boys" a mature makeover or rewriting "Walk On" for Ukraine doesn't quite change the emotional thrust of the songs. Apart from Adam Clayton's album, which contains inversions of such loud rockers as "Vertigo" and "The Fly," U2 doesn't stretch the boundaries of what acoustic-based rock would be: it's all ballads and anthems, songs that can be sustained by drumming. Pros that they are, U2 deliver smooth, polished performances that are handsome and, yes, intimate but not especially compelling. It's stylish background music that sounds a bit like it was designed to be heard in chain coffeehouses during the late 2000s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
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Memento Mori
Death and loss loom large over the mournful Memento Mori, Depeche Mode's 15th album and first without founding member Andy Fletcher. Started long before his passing in 2022 and influenced more by the effects of a global pandemic, the somber set took on even more gravity and significance after he died. Understandably subdued and emotionally heavy, this is the sound of two old friends reeling from tragedy while keeping an eye on the days that remain. Without Fletch as a buffer and peacemaker, Martin Gore and Dave Gahan were forced to get closer, resulting in one of their most engaging and thematically cohesive statements to date. Ominous opener "My Cosmos Is Mine" reclaims control in an unpredictable world, repeating the mantra of "No fear…no rain/No final breaths, no senseless deaths" atop industrial piston crushes and a haunted cosmic haze. The bittersweet tone and space-blips on the Gore/Gahan co-write "Wagging Tongue" carry them back to their early synth pop days, just as another throwback moment reveals one of their best singles with "Ghosts Again" (one of four tracks penned with the Psychedelic Furs' Richard Butler). The melancholy beauty of this heartbreaker sparkles through the tears, filtering "Enjoy the Silence" through New Order's "True Faith" as Gahan laments, "Everybody says goodbye." The drama is heightened on the goth waltz "Don't Say You Love Me," a string-washed throbber that sounds like Gahan brought Soulsavers to a haunted ballroom, and on the requisite Gore solo of the album, "Soul with Me," a swaying ballad where he finds resolve in the face of the inevitable, singing, "I'm heading for my ever after" in his vulnerable, angelic croon. The detached "Caroline's Monkey" resurrects the digital coldness of Exciter and themes of addiction from the band's darkest '90s period, just as the pulsing menace of "My Favourite Stranger" builds to discomfiting yet alluring levels of anxiety, cutting post-punk guitars through a squall of distortion. In terms of major moments that should eventually find their way onto one of the band's inevitable future compilations, the most immediate make clever nods to past hits, luring fans in with familiarity before hitting them with the exact Depeche Mode hallmarks that they crave. Pulsing with an irresistible club beat and dark neon synths, "People Are Good" shows that not much has changed in the world since the release of their similarly titled 1984 breakthrough single, as Gahan tries to convince himself to believe in humanity. Meanwhile, the driving "Never Let Me Go" cuts caustic NIN-style guitars into an urgent plea that could have been plucked from the Playing the Angel vault. Speaking of that career high point, track-for-track, Memento Mori is their most solid effort since Angel and a catalog best, a wonder coming four decades into their career. Facing mortality and the inevitable sunset of their lengthy, storied careers, Gore and Gahan transform tragedy into something profound and universally relatable. Though not their most immediate offering, Memento Mori is their most heartfelt, thoughtful, and moving statement in decades. ~ Neil Z. Yeung (syndetics)
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Keep your Courage
A defining characteristic of Natalie Merchant's career after leaving 10,000 Maniacs in 1993 is her deliberateness as a songwriter; the songs do come, but not quickly. Keep Your Courage is Merchant's first collection of original songs in nine years. She didn't stay quiet during that decade -- she revisited her 1995 solo debut Tigerlily upon its 20th anniversary -- but she also spent a period of time in the early 2020s recovering from a spinal surgery that required a long healing process. Keep Your Courage documents her re-emergence after this convalescence, a record that doesn't dwell in the darkness but rather celebrates compassion, empathy, and inspiration. Merchant may have gone through an extended period of introspection, yet she chooses to look outward, even inviting Abena Koomson-Davis of the Resistance Revival Choir to duet on "Big Girls" and "Come On, Aphrodite," the pair of songs that open the album. These two tracks suggest a bit of a brighter record than what Keep Your Courage actually is. Most of the album is stately and sober, careful and cautious compositions that touch upon myths and legends as a way to address personal and political issues. Merchant's inherently warm, empathetic voice keeps the album from seeming still in its quiet moments, of which there are many; most of the record either simmers slowly or requires concentration to narrow in on its core emotions. Perhaps the album could use a few more cuts like "Tower of Babel," whose spruced-up New Orleans swing is a clear outlier here, but there's something softly compelling and endearing about Merchant's dedication to kindness, not to mention her penchant for literature and history. Where her peers have scaled down their ambitions, she's reaching for grand ideas and emotions on Keep Your Courage, turning her personal journey into something universal. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
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Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix, Vol. 3
The irreverent, fun-loving Marvel trilogy and its popular soundtrack series come to a close with Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix, Vol. 3. As with Awesome Mixes past, there's a wide variety of hit favorites and unexpected surprises that are cherry-picked for maximum dramatic effect. Matching the sometimes somber tone of the third film, the soundtrack opens with an appropriately dour take on an already depressing song, Radiohead's "Creep." Other song-to-screen highlights include the spaced-out bliss of the Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize??" and Spacehog's monstrous glam rock one-hit wonder "In the Meantime." Beyond those, two key tracks have the honor of soundtracking a pivotal pair of memorable scenes: Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" brings a raucous energy to the film's extended fight sequence and Florence + the Machine's big inspiration anthem "Dog Days Are Over" joyously ends the film and trilogy in triumphant fashion. Also appearing are Heart, Faith No More, Alice Cooper, X, The The, and a returning Redbone with Vol. 1's enduring "Come and Get Your Love." ~ Neil Z. Yeung (syndetics)
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72 Seasons
While promoting Metallica's 11th album, Lars Ulrich claimed 72 Seasons was "maybe the most friction-free record we've ever made," which is a fair assessment of the LP. Never before has Metallica seemed so comfortable being Metallica, embracing their identity as a collective and letting each member play to their strengths: Ulrich's drums are pushed forward in the mix, Robert Trujillo roams wild with his bass, Kirk Hammett gets plenty of room to solo, while James Hetfield processes all he's learned in therapy. Hetfield provides the hook that holds together 72 Seasons: the title derives from the passing time during the first 18 years of life, the period when a child becomes a man. The album is filled with meditations on mortality and morality, Hetfield looking back on his raising with clarity, not anger. There's a sense of purpose in Hetfield's storytelling that's mirrored by Metallica's dedication to keeping 72 Seasons thick and heavy. There are digressions -- they're a natural side effect of a group that composes their tunes by stitching together riffs and movements, turning individual songs into mini-suites -- but there are no slow moments, there are no ballads: the entire record barrels forward at an advanced clip and crushing volume. It's heavy but it's not grimy or gritty. Metallica are old pros at this point, so they favor clearly articulated production, and they know how to reserve their energy so they play for endurance, not speed; even when this comes close to thrash tempos, the band never threaten to give themselves over to abandon. The clarity of the production makes it easy to admire what Metallica achieve with 72 Seasons -- this is a maturation that never sacrifices their integral characteristics -- yet hearing every bit of Metallica all at once can be a little exhausting, particularly as the album creeps well beyond an hour. As carefully constructed as this is -- there is no element out of place, no moment of embarrassment outside of maybe the concluding riff of "Shadows Follow" slightly suggesting Neal Hefti's Batman theme -- it's difficult to discern how 72 Seasons could've been tightened, yet it's hard not to wish that it was about a third shorter: the force would've had a greater impact if it wasn't quite so diffuse. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics) (5/30/2023 1:41:06 PM)
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