B Drake
If You're Reading This, It's Too Late
Young Money/Cash Money
Toronto rapper Drake opens his latest with a grim realization. If the 28-year-old dropped dead today, he'd become one of a rarefied few: artists who died too young, at the peak of their powers.
That is the hook to the first track, "Legend": "Oh my God, oh my God, if I die I'm a legend," he sings on the misty, minimal work.
Or, as he more eloquently puts it on "6 PM in New York": "Longevity, wonder how long they'll check for me."
A pent-up set that blurs the line between album and mixtape, If You're Reading revels in isolation. He is wary of others' intentions, tired of posting bail for friends, sick of women asking for his Wi-Fi code.
"Only see the truth when I'm staring in the mirror," he raps on "Used To."
The 17 tracks read like a fed-up farewell note. It's bracingly honest and filled with observations about the darkness just outside the spotlight.
But Drake also reveals the same boring strand of misogyny that taints his lesser work.
Few are the interesting, thoughtful women likely to melt before his desire as conveyed in "Preach."
The standout final track, "6 PM in New York," has a series of veiled Drake swipes at Tyga, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. "Now & Forever" has a snare-beat that sounds like a sledgehammer clanging railroad spikes.
Hot tracks: "Used To," "Now & Forever," "6 PM in New York."
-- RANDALL ROBERTS
Los Angeles Times
A- Bettye LaVette
Worthy
Cherry Red
Bettye LaVette's latest album reunites her with producer Joe Henry, who worked on 2005's I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, the album that reintroduced LaVette to American listeners. Worthy follows that album's winning philosophy: Give the great singer great songs and great musicians and get out of the way.
LaVette's voice is strong and passionate, as she digs deeply into songs such as Bob Dylan's "Unbelievable," the Beatles' "Wait" and the Beth Nielsen Chapman title song. LaVette's gift is bringing these songs into her own experience and revealing yet another layer or two in their meaning or implication.
"Unbelievable" is smoky, gritty and a bluesy-jazzy wonder. The haunting, spare "Wait" gets a heartbreaking, broken, emotionally torn vocal. On "Just Between You and Me and the Wall You're a Fool," she is raw and defiant. Henry's "Stop," with its shuffling, blues style, is powerful.
Hot tracks:"Unbelievable," the Rolling Stones' "Complicated," "Wait."
-- ELLIS WIDNER
B+ JD McPherson
Let the Good Times Roll
Rounder
With his 2012 debut, Signs & Signifiers, JD McPherson came out of Oklahoma blazing, with a sound that hearkened back to the early '50s, when rhythm-and-blues was morphing into rock 'n' roll. Let the Good Times Roll tweaks the approach without losing any of the original character and excitement.
To be sure, numbers such as the dreamy, doo-wop-style "Bridgebuilder" (co-written with the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach) and "It's All Over But the Shouting," with its burping sax, still make for decidedly retro fare. But the guitars often have more of a metallic edge, the drums pack thunder, and there are numerous atmospheric touches that all lend a more contemporary air, while still keeping plenty of the "roll" in the rock 'n' roll equation and ensuring that the album more than lives up to its title.
Hot tracks: "Bridgebuilder," "It's All Over but the Shouting."
-- NICK CRISTIANO
The Philadelphia Inquirer
C Imagine Dragons
Smoke + Mirrors
Interscope
Smoke + Mirrors confirms suspicions that this group is made up of corporate rock arrivistes more interested in piling on cool circa 2012 influences than in presenting its own point of view. It will advance the notion that Imagine Dragons is an inexplicably popular band that has neither soul nor taste.
It's also pretty good.
The new album relies less on hip-hop beats than 2012's Night Visions, but otherwise follows the same formula: carefully sculpted arena rock with freight-train choruses, overlaid with decorative touches pinched from a variety of genres.
Imagine Dragons is unafraid to mix sounds that are terrible with sounds that are great, although the band gives no indication it can distinguish between the two. "Shots" is reminiscent of late 2000s synth-pop from Brooklyn, piled vertiginously high and shorn of subtlety. "I Bet My Life" is Mumford & Sons-esque stadium rock. "I'm So Sorry" buries a solid blues song under a mountain of needless distortion.
The band has never met a serviceable rock song it couldn't make worse by weighing it down with electronic effects or generically exotic Middle Eastern flourishes, or hand claps and choirs or several of those things at the same time. The group is beholden to its influences while showing little affection for them.
Imagine Dragons is very good at what it does, even if what it does isn't very good.
Hot tracks: none or all, depending on your point of view.
-- ALLISON STEWART
The Washington Post
Style on 02/24/2015