Review of reviews: Music

Radiohead

In Rainbows

(Internet Release)

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It wouldn’t be a Radiohead album without the drama, said Alexis Petridis in the London Guardian. In the four years since releasing Hail to the Thief, the band ended a sixyear contract with EMI, lead singer Thom Yorke produced a solo album, and fans feared the worst: the end of Radiohead. They needn’t worry anymore. Radiohead has regained control—and public interest—by releasing In Rainbows via download on a pay-what-you-will basis from inrainbows.com. On its seamless, supremely confident seventh album, Radiohead “does not sound like a band clutching their brows and wondering what to do next.” They’re already doing it, refreshing even familiar material with expansive new sounds. “Reckoner” is no longer a pulsing rocker but an impelling, moody ballad complete with finger-cymbal solos. “Nude” is soulful yet lined with sonic edges. Yorke once said he had “had it with melody,” but here the frontman embraces it, along with lush acoustic strums, delicately strewn arpeggios, and fleeting crescendos. In Rainbows also explores emotional realms unexpected for Radiohead. “It delivers an emotional punch that proves all other rock stars owe us an apology,” said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Since its 1993 debut, Pablo Honey, the wily boys have stayed a step ahead of both musical rivals and industry adversaries. Radiohead knows “the trick is to give your fans what they didn’t know they wanted,” said Pete Paphides in the London Times. The band’s done it once again.

Leif Ove Andsnes

Ballad for Edvard Grieg

(EMI Classics)

*****

You couldn’t ask for a more perfect pairing than Ballad for Edvard Grieg, said Melinda Bargreen in The Seattle Times. Norway’s finest pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes, interprets the country’s most acclaimed composer in honor of the centennial of Grieg’s death. Andsnes dedicated the past year to Grieg: filming a documentary, traveling Europe following in his footsteps, and even having a piano hoisted up the mountains of Norway for performances. Throughout his career, Grieg’s music always captured the beauty and vastness of the countryside, said Joseph Dalton in the Albany Times Union. “Tenderness and melancholy” permeate his work, yet the “more predominant feeling is of rapture and enthrallment, and being awed by something larger than yourself.” Major pianists have recorded Grieg over the years, but Andsnes owns the field now, said Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. Accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic under Mariss Jansons, he masterfully handles the material. The reflective collection includes a “scintillating and Apollonian account of the Piano Concerto” and six Lyric Pieces, but the most valuable interpretation is of the Ballade in G minor (Op. 24). In this difficult and uneven composition, Andsnes “highlights the Wagnerian resonances in Grieg’s application of chromatic harmony, uncovers Chopinesque beauties, Lisztian colors, and contrapuntal passages with the grand rigor of a Franck chorale” before ending its climactic outburst with “clarity and grim resolve.”

Kid Rock

Rock N Roll Jesus

(Atlantic/Top Dog)

***

Kid Rock is the “muscle car of American music,” said Geoff Boucher in the Los Angeles Times. Since rolling onto the scene with 1998’s Devil Without a Cause, he’s become a fixture in American culture. But we’ve often been left to wonder what kind of guy Kid Rock really is. “Is he a white rapper, an arena-rock hero, or an outlaw country singer?” Rock N Roll Jesus makes it clear. Never before have his classic-rock influences been as pronounced as on this record. Produced by Rick Rubin and Rob Cavallo, who made Green Day’s American Idiot, this is an album of homegrown hick rock bursting with bad attitude. Kid Rock revs up the album with robust drums, partyhard guitar riffs, and concert-ready choruses in an all-American salute to his music heroes. The nostalgic “All Summer Long” alone pays homage to Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” and Lynyrd Skynryd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” Kid Rock has good taste, said Jim Farber in the New York Daily News. It’s difficult to advance musically, however, “when the only way to deepen your sound is to draw hard on somebody else’s.” But Kid Rock has never asked to be taken seriously, professionally or personally, said Anthony DeCurtis in Rolling Stone. “As he well knows—and Rock N Roll Jesus proves—roaring guitars, truckloads of attitude, and unquenchable lust for life

Band of Horses

Cease To Begin

(Sub Pop)

***

A change of scenery has done Band of Horses good, said Stephen Deusner in Pitchforkmedia.com. After bassist Mat Brooke’s departure last year, frontman Ben Bridwell decided to return to his Southern roots. The band left Seattle for Mount Pleasant, S.C., and Cease to Begin is a testament to the comfort and confidence Band of Horses has found there. Like 2006’s Everything All the Time, this sophomore effort is immersed in reverberating, rural drama. The guitars still “churn and crest majestically,” and Bridwell reaches the same stratospheric range that earned him comparisons to My Morning Jacket’s Jim James. But the record is softer, rippling with emotional heft, which allows the trio to shed those comparisons. Only Bridwell “can sell the line ‘The world is such a wonderful place’ or get away with singing ‘la-dee-da’ with open-hearted amazement” on “Ode to LRC.” His voice bears a quavering vulnerability that gives pull to his bittersweet lyrics, said Brett McCabe in The New York Sun. It’s the “smile in the face of sadness that permeates the album’s strongest tracks.” Though the hovering, somewhat ominous undertone causes the occasional song to fade into the background, said Edna Gundersen in USA Today, even such “hypnotic amblers as ‘Is there a Ghost’ and ‘No One’s Gonna Love You’ have an arresting power.” Like the South, Cease to Begin gradually reveals its charms.