A- Laura Marling
Semper Femina
More Alarming
Laura Marling takes a giant step on Semper Femina, nine exceptional songs of vulnerability, bursting with femininity and passion.
Skillfully produced with great sympathy by Blake Mills (Alabama Shakes), his work helps make Marling's sixth album the most magnificent of the bunch. Rob Moose's inventive string arrangements, tinting Marling's songs with hues that stretch from playful to majestic, are another plus.
"Soothing," co-written by Marling and Mills, opens the album on a high note, with sliding basses (electric and acoustic), crackling percussion and sweeping strings.
A percussive effect that's like a horse snorting marks "Wild Fire," a Shelby Lynne-style Southern drama, while "Don't Pass Me By" sees Marling exposing her feelings with a restrained Dusty Springfield-like vibrato on lines like, "Can you love me if I put up a fight?"
Marling's guitar playing and songwriting are uniformly terrific.
Roman poet Virgil's line that "woman is ever a fickle and changeable thing," whose Latin original inspired Marling's album title, is also quoted in "Nouel," a lovely ballad in which the singer wants to "hit the switch that keeps you from getting on."
On "Nothing, Not Nearly," Marling distills the essence of her challenges -- "The only thing I learnt in a year ... is nothing matters more than love." The song ends with chirping birds opening the window to the next phase in Marling's career, a unique folk singer creating traditions of excellence.
Hot tracks: "Soothing," "Wild Fire," "Nothing, Not Nearly"
-- PABLO GORONDI,
The Associated Press
B Bob Dylan
Triplicate
Columbia
The idea of Bob Dylan becoming the keeper of Frank Sinatra's flame would have seemed preposterous 50 years ago. Dylan was revolutionizing songwriting in a torrent of words, instantly making the classics sung by Sinatra another generation's music. Parents' music.
Yet after two releases delving into the songs primarily from the first half of the last century, Dylan doesn't just double down on the strategy. Triplicate is a three-disc thematic set of similar material. All of the songs were once covered by Sinatra.
It seems like an odd direction for Dylan, fresh off a Nobel Prize. He hasn't released a disc of self-penned material since 2012, and it's worth wondering if the well has run dry.
Dylan's voice is surprisingly supple, even lovely. The songs are recorded in a hushed, intimate setting with spare backing from his longtime band, many resting on a bed of steel guitar.
These are songs of missed opportunities and lost love that feel right coming from a 75-year-old man. "We were young and didn't have a care," he sings in "Once Upon a Time." "Where did it go?"
As well performed as the material is, the slower tempos allow a sense of sameness to creep in. Triplicate is more of a historical document than a contemporary recording, and absent a curiosity about songwriting of this era, some tedium is inevitable.
Hot tracks: "Stormy Weather," "September of My Years," "Once Upon a Time"
-- DAVID BAUDER,
The Associated Press
B- Real Estate
In Mind
Domino
Time seems suspended in Real Estate's shimmery, languid songs. The band specializes in lazy and lovely guitar interplay inspired, primarily, by the pastoral songs of the Feelies. Their fourth album, In Mind, introduces some slight variations: New guitarist Julian Lynch and keyboardist Matt Kallman add some distorted edges to the usually pristine arrangements.
Most of the album is comfortably familiar, full of Martin Courtney's crystalline guitar arpeggios and musings on the transience of relationships and the passage of time, songs filled with starry nights and morning sunlight. There's little tension here. Even when bassist Alex Bleeker sings, "It's a time to raise our voices loud and not go quietly," he does so with easygoing complacency. Real Estate would rather go gently, with thoughtful tunes and sparkling guitars.
Hot tracks: the jam band feel of "Serve the Song," the brooding "Darling," the momentous "Same Sun"
-- STEVE KLINGE,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
B Betty Who
The Valley
RCA
These might be anxious times but don't worry. A new album of Betty Who's infectious, fizzy pop music might be just what we need.
The Australian singer is all about finding love, overcoming heartache and promoting self-empowerment on her second effort. Nothing gets Who down. It's like she swallowed the sun. "Hole in my heart but I'm still alive/I'm so low I'm high," she sings.
Who, born Jessica Newham, comes to your rescue when you've been dumped -- "So dance with me tonight/Baby you can cry tomorrow" -- and tells herself that "on your worst days you're still beautiful."
The album is bookended by the slightly off-kilter "The Valley" and ends with a moody cover of Donna Lewis' "I Love You Always Forever," the only song Who didn't help write.
Who's earnest songs -- despite their electronic roots -- have a knack to transcend the dance floor. This is an artist whose "Somebody Loves You" became a hit after it was used at a flash mob marriage proposal at a big-box hardware and home goods store.
Several of the new songs could go viral as well, including "Some Kinda Wonderful," "Beautiful" and "Free to Fly."
Hot tracks: "Free to Fly," "Some Kinda Wonderful," "I Love You Always Forever"
-- MARK KENNEDY,
The Associated Press
Style on 04/11/2017