C blink-182
California
BMG
Achieving what Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool couldn't, the seventh album by the SoCal pop-punk band -- and first since co-leader Tom DeLonge was replaced by Alkaline Trio guitarist Matt Skiba -- succeeded in pushing Canadian rapper Drake's Views off the top of the Billboard album chart for one week. Proving ... what, exactly? Certainly that the snarky, aging pop-punk band retains more audience share than might be expected, and that their less-ambitious-than-Green Day three-minute rips continue to appeal to current and former suburban youths.
The San Diego-born band's wit remains less than stellar. And California's efforts to stand as a unified statement about the Golden State are feeble, though there are songs called "Los Angeles," "California" and "San Diego." But almost despite themselves, the late-1990s trio has gathered a smidgen of gravitas, as they turn sensitive balladeers on "Home Is Such a Lonely Place."
Hot track: "Home Is Such a Lonely Place"
-- DAN DELUCA
The Philadelphia Inquirer
A- Allen Toussaint
American Tunes
Nonesuch
The gifted composer and pianist Allen Toussaint's final album was finished a few weeks before he died in November. Known for a boatload of hits by others (The Pointer Sisters' "Yes We Can," Glen Campbell's "Southern Nights" and tunes for Irma Thomas, Three Dog Night, Lee Dorsey and others), Toussaint's mostly instrumental American Tunes is graceful and elegant.
The New Orleans musician's teaming with producer Joe Henry (they also collaborated on 2009's Bright Mississippi) is filled with tunes mostly written by others. And what a list of songs ... classics such as Fats" Waller's "Viper's Drag," a restrained, pensive version of Professor Longhair's New Orleans standard "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" and what is perhaps the album's best track, Duke Ellington's moving and beautiful "Come Sunday," with a stunning vocal by Rhiannon Giddens.
There are a pair of Toussaint tunes here, also -- the wondrous "Southern Nights" and "Delores' Boyfriend." Toussaint sings one tune -- a weary, wise take on Paul Simon's "American Tune."
Hot track: "Come Sunday," Billy Strahorn's exquisite "Lotus Blossom," with saxophone great Charles Lloyd; Bill Evans' "Waltz for Debby," "American Tune"
-- Ellis Widner
B+ The Julie Ruin
Hit Reset
Hardly Art
The Julie Ruin, the latest project from riot grrrl trailblazer Kathleen Hanna, merges many of her many past lives in music with a dash of Bikini Kill's proto-feminist garage-punk, a pinch of Le Tigre's dance-pop celebration, and a dose of the bedroom-project introspection that characterized the singer's first record under the Julie Ruin moniker in the '90s.
When Hanna resurrected The Julie Ruin a few years ago as a coed band after nearly a decade away from recording, its comeback album Run Fast presented her most ambitious music yet. The title of Hit Reset could be read as a tongue-in-cheek admission of "more of the same," but Hanna has upped the ante. In many ways, this is the singer's most personal and musically diverse album: The harrowing "Be Nice" runs into the girl-group pop harmonies of the break-up wish "Rather Not." "Let Me Go" blends new-wave keyboard and hand-claps with a plaintive plea.
Double edges permeate the songs: "Planet You" sounds celebratory even as it skewers a narcissist, and the sassy wordless vocals on the thumping "I Decide" run counter to Hanna's declaration that "I belong to the wolves that drug me in their mouths just like a baby." Most telling of all, the sharp-tongued Hanna has never sounded more vulnerable than she does on the piano ballad "Calverton." It's a redemption song delivered in a sweetly forlorn voice.
Hot track: "Be Nice," "Calverton"
-- GREG KOT
Chicago Tribune (TNS)
B Elizabeth Cook
Exodus of Venus
Agent Love/Thirty Tigers
Elizabeth Cook used to come across like the direct heir of Loretta Lynn -- a spitfire whose songs could be as frank as the music was unapologetically hard country.
After six years, during which she dealt with death and divorce, the Grand Ole Opry regular has re-emerged with a largely new sound.
While the acoustic-textured "Straightjacket Love," with Patty Loveless on harmony vocals, is a crisp slice of mountain music, the rest of Exodus of Venus veers toward blues and rock. The songs are built around electric guitar and Hammond B3, and the result is a vibe that's darker and more atmospheric, bereft of humor or twang. It befits songs with titles such as "Dyin'," "Slow Pain," and "Methadone Blues."
Cook has never been one-dimensional -- she could always be as affecting as she was feisty. She digs deep here, too, and if the results are sometimes more allusive than before, they still hit hard. The spunk and unflinching honesty that have always fired her, like her Florida drawl, continue to underpin her music.
Hot track: "Straightjacket Love," "Slow Pain," "Dyin'"
-- NICK CRISTIANO
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Style on 07/26/2016