A Tony Bennett
& Bill Charlap
The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern
RPM/Columbia
There's a track on Tony Bennett's new album, The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern, that suggests a return to form: "I Won't Dance," which recently served as a his-and-hers set piece in his marquee collaboration with Lady Gaga.
This new version of the tune, arranged as a springlike waltz, features Bennett alone on vocals, with a sparkling piano trio. He sounds crisp but at ease, maybe a touch relieved -- like someone given the chance, at last, to trade klieg lights for candle-glow.
The reality is probably less cut-and-dried for Bennett, who has stood squarely at the intersection of jazz and popular song since the advent of the long-playing record. At 89, he retains the boyish spark in his tenor, and a remarkable degree of the plangency. So while The Silver Lining pulls him back to modest scale after big productions -- including two No. 1 albums, Cheek to Cheek (with Lady Gaga) and Duets II (with her and others) -- it doesn't carry a feeling of meek retrenchment.
The album is jointly credited to jazz pianist Bill Charlap, and its voice-and-piano intimacy recalls The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album of 40 years ago.
Jerome Kern turns out to be the ideal touchstone for Bennett. He was a suave melodist who married classical form with jazz inflection, and many of his tunes have long been standards. "The Way You Look Tonight" and "All the Things You Are" are each rendered here as a duet, with Charlap in exquisite form.
Hot tracks: "Yesterdays," "Pick Yourself Up."
-- NATE CHINEN,
The New York Times
B- Don Henley
Cass County
Capitol
It is not enough simply to age. One must age with patina, that layer of imperfection and soot that indicates that not all has gone as planned, but you've survived.
For many singers of a certain age, the world of country music -- the older kinds, generally, but sometimes the modern ones -- offers a sort of built-in weathering, a patina starter kit for squeaky-clean elders.
But country is hard, as is plain on Cass County, the fifth solo album by Don Henley. Fifteen years after his last solo effort, Henley is gamely trying to distance himself from the smoothed-out country-rock of his Eagles past.
Most of the songs here are Henley originals (with a handful of writing partners), but "Waiting Tables" reveals the cracks of this project: It's lovely but not complex, and a more progressive Nashville songwriter like Shane McAnally or Luke Laird would have added flesh to this skeleton.
Merle Haggard is one of many Nashville luminaries who shows up to bolster Henley on this LP, the finest American roots music album money can buy. The rough-edged scalawag Jamey Johnson sings background vocals on two songs, Martina McBride breezes through the duet "That Old Flame" and Dolly Parton is sterling even while underdelivering on a cover of the Louvin Brothers' "When I Stop Dreaming."
The number and potency of these guests sometimes make Cass County sound like a tribute album to someone not yet gone.
Hot tracks: "Old Flame," "When I Stop Dreaming."
-- JON CARAMANICA,
The New York Times
B- Gary Clark Jr.
The Story of Sonny Boy Slim
Warner Bros.
He's the latest blues guitar hero to come out of Texas, but Gary Clark Jr. obviously does not want to be confined to that box. The Story of Sonny Boy Slim -- not really a concept album, despite the title -- comes closer than his sometimes overly slick and layered debut, Blak and Blu, to capturing the raw potency Clark displayed on his 2014 live album, still the best showcase of his talents.
Gospel underpinnings lend power to "The Healing" and "Church," while "Our Love" reveals Clark can excel as a sweet soul balladeer. But numbers such as "Star," "Cold Blooded" and "Wings," with Clark stretching into falsetto, sound half-baked as they plod along.
The penultimate track, "Shake" (not the Sam Cooke song, but, like everything else here, a Clark original) reaffirms that for all his genre-stretching ambitions, Clark is still best when he's veering less toward Curtis Mayfield territory and more toward the juke-joint rambunctiousness of Hound Dog Taylor.
Hot tracks: "Shake," "The Healing."
-- NICK CRISTIANO,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
B Kurt Vile
b'lieve i'm goin down
Matador
Kurt Vile is a philosophical Philadelphian on b'lieve i'm goin down, the hirsute rocker's sixth album. "Humming a sad song when I'm alone," he sings to himself, on "Wheelhouse." "But you gotta be alone to figure things out sometimes." Indeed you do, and Vile seems to have figured out that the sanguine trance rock of 2013's cheerful Wakin on a Pretty Daze didn't capture the full spectrum of what he has to say.
The essential cheerfulness of that album is replaced here by an altogether darker worldview. "We'll take a puff on a cigarette and see what we get / An invigorating fix and a black lung," he wryly comments on "Dust Bunnies." Experimenting with varied textures and drum-machine rhythms, he tweaks his musical approach just enough to keep things fresh and deftly delineates existential issues on an album that opens with the songwriter looking in the mirror on "Pretty Pimpin" and not recognizing the man staring back at him. Full of deft finger-picking and dry humor, b'lieve drags a bit on the longer songs toward the end. But when it hits its marks, as when exploring the ups and downs of day-to-day existence on "That's Life, tho (almost hate to say)," it peaks very high.
Hot tracks: "Dust Bunny," "That's Life, tho (almost hate to say)."
-- DAN DeLUCA,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
A- Disclosure
Caracal
PMR/Island Records
There have been other eccentric English electronic-duo brothers to use top-tier vocalists to make their wonky sample-based melodies emotive (no, not the Chemical Bros).
Yet there's something special about Surrey-based siblings Howard and Guy Lawrence, the writing-production-musician team behind Disclosure. With an arsenal of dubstep, garage and house, Disclosure's first album, 2013's Settle, was a sampladelic, melodic, sprightly dance-floor smash that introduced the world to Brit crooner Sam Smith.
Rather than rest on its laurels (save for bringing back Smith, who gives "Omen" his tender touch) Disclosure uses fewer samples, makes its electro grooves downbeat and tactile, and keeps each track filled with the human voice.
With that, Caracal is more of a sensualist exercise than Settle. There are still fast-paced house tracks. Brother Howard Lawrence sings the speedy mixes like "Jaded," and Nao, a British singer-songwriter, touches on the subject of "Ego" with a silken disco flicker.
Yet it's the slower cuts and name-brand singers that do best on the new album; not so much Lorde's dismal appearance on "Magnets," but rather the Weeknd, who turns "Nocturnal" into a sexy, sleepy dream.
Good show, bros.
Hot tracks: "Omen," "Noctural."
-- A.D. AMOROSI,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Style on 10/06/2015