B Original Broadway Cast
An American in Paris
Masterworks Broadway
An American GI and a young French girl fall in love to the songs of George and Ira Gershwin in this Broadway adaptation of the award-winning 1951 film. The musical was nominated for 12 Tony Awards, winning four.
The story is relatively the same as the famed Gene Kelly flick, but the song list has been beefed up for the stage version, with more Gershwin tunes -- some with lyrics, some instrumentals.
It's a fun album for those who like Gershwin's syncopation and a combination of bouncy and moody songs. Some of the familiar tunes and lyrics have been tweaked to make them fit in the story's framework. But while it has some great songs well-performed, it doesn't necessarily stick out among all the other Gershwin albums and Gershwin-theme shows out there.
Hot tracks: "Liza," "'S Wonderful," "They Can't Take That Away From Me."
A- Muse
Drones
Warner Bros.
Muse has turned what it planned as a "back-to-basics" album into a complicated concept album.
Singer-lyricist Matt Bellamy has built a multilayered story of a young, disillusioned guy who enlists in the service and is lured into becoming a drone operator. In the glam-rock stomper "Drones," his job is described by his superior officer as "a Super Drone, and you will kill on my command and I won't be responsible."
The narrator's transformation plays out across the album, with plenty of moments of doubt. "Mercy" is the strongest track, not just because Bellamy makes the narrator's predicament so emotional, but because the driving rhythms from drummer Dom Howard and bassist Chris Wolstenholme make the singer's falsetto feel even more like Freddie Mercury.
Queen's influence is felt throughout Drones, especially in the strutting "Revolt" and "Defector," with their stacked backing vocals a la "Bohemian Rhapsody."
"Reapers" bounces between Appetite for Destruction-era metal and prog-rock guitar. The 10-minute epic "The Globalist" goes through sweet piano ballad moments as well as thrash metal riffs, as the narrator surveys the destruction he has wrought.
Hot tracks: "Mercy," "The Globalist," "Revolt."
-- GLENN GAMBOA, Newsday (TNS)
B+ Jovi
Mboko God
New Bell Music
Cameroonian rapper Jovi and pals bring a spin-art pastiche of hip-hop beats, Euro dance and African rhythms to this intriguing, head-bobbing set. Spitting verses in pidgin, French and English, Jovi's energy is contagious. Boastful like any good MC, he trades verses with a small army of guests on tracks that range from exotic ("Nyongo Money" featuring Abracadabra), trap-bouncing sexy ("Beat Tape Sessions" with Tilla, Teddy Doherty, Pascal and Inna Money) and radio-friendly world-pop ("Jungle Book" featuring Shey).
It's easy at first to get behind the tracks that are mostly English, but the whole collection blossoms on repeated listens, with furious and creative production that takes American hip-hop and injects it with a magnificent African soul and inventiveness.
Hot tracks: "Mboko God (Positioning)," "Man Pass Man Part 2," "Nyongo Money."
B+ Eminem
"Phenomenal"
Shady/Interscope
Maybe all of Eminem's songs should be inspired by battle movies. His new single "Phenomenal," from the forthcoming Southpaw boxing movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is one of Eminem's best in years. Part pep talk, part boast and -- because it is Eminem -- part worry, "Phenomenal" works on multiple levels as it shows his skills are as sharp as ever. "There ain't no situation that you ever had to respond to that's adverse," he rhymes. "The messiest thing you've ever gone through is your purse."
-- GLENN GAMBOA, Newsday (TNS)
B Faith No More
Sol Invictus
Reclamation/Ipecac
Faith No More first hit the charts with Epic in 1990. So it's crazy that Sol Invictus, the band's first album in 18 years, has landed atop Billboard's Top 200. Their avant-garde mix of hard rap-rock and prog -- combined with singer Mike Patton's booming, operatic voice and incendiary lyrics -- is pulsating, dramatic, ferocious and eerily aggressive. Same as it ever was.
Where Patton has had a career's worth of personal projects -- e.g., Tomahawk, Fantomas, Peeping Tom, John Zorn sessions -- this sounds like a band work, with big melodies, ragingly precise rhythms and frenetic complexity. Faith No More 2015 don't eschew manic theatricality ("From the Dead"), nor do they shun pop (the contagiously paranoid "Separation Anxiety") or slick riffing ("Matador"). But there's noise and skronk throughout, and Patton joins in with a will on hard-core numbers such as the jackhammering "Superhero." Odd-rock's most gorgeous voice since Bowie sounds as though it has found a comfortable home among old friends.
Hot tracks: "Separation Anxiety," "From the Dead," "Superhero."
-- A.D. AMOROSI, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Style on 06/16/2015