A- Sleater-Kinney
Live in Paris
Sub Pop
After a nine-year layoff, riot grrrl feminist punk rockers Sleater-Kinney made a surprise comeback in 2015 with the fantastic No Cities to Love, a worthy addition to the influential trio's stellar catalog.
With a new album came a new tour (we caught them in Kansas City and were sufficiently awed) and now there's Live in Paris. Hard to believe, but this is Sleater-Kinney's first concert album.
Abrasive and angular, the band -- guitarist-vocalists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, drummer Janet Weiss and touring member Katie Harkin -- are blisteringly good here. The set list isn't exactly career-spanning -- the self-titled debut album and All Hands on the Bad One are not represented. And we were a little sad to not find "Good Things" or "One More Hour" on the track list, but, c'est la vie. What is here works just fine.
Tucker pointedly replaces "Thurston Moore" with the name of his ex-wife, Kim Gordon, in the lyrics to "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone"; Brownstein's "Entertain" is wonderfully breathless and propelled by Weiss' thunderous drumming; and "Dig Me Out" retains its punk power nearly 20 years after it was first recorded.
The set closes with "Modern Girl," which, in its stripped-down simplicity, is just as moving as the 12 raging blasts of power that came before it from these queens of rock 'n' roll.
Hot tracks: "Price Tag," "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone," "Jumpers," "A New Wave," "Modern Girl"
-- SEAN CLANCY,
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
B Brian Nahlen
Cicada Moon
Self-released
The penultimate track of Cicada Moon, North Little Rock singer-songwriter Brian Nahlen's new album, is "A Song for the End of the World." With a title like that, it would seem to be a bit of a downer. It's not.
"I'm here for you now," Nahlen sings reassuringly on the chorus, backed by a small army of soulful, backing vocals. It has a kind of underlying tension that makes you think it's going to eventually swell into some epic anthem, yet it doesn't. It's a simple, powerful song -- just guitar, a little percussion and voice -- that maintains its tempo and arrangement with restraint and is all the better for it.
The title track, which follows a classic quiet-loud-quiet template, blows up nicely with each pass through the chorus and benefits from backing vocals by Stephanie Smittle and Anna Jordan. Nahlen also excels on moody, acoustic-based, midtempo rockers like "Listen" and the gently inspirational "Sing Out Loud," the latter being a perfect pick-me-up after a hard day-week-month-year. "Crowded" is a guitar workout with -- wait, what's this? A saxophone solo from Dave Williams II? Yesss!
Cicada Moon, which is Nahlen's follow-up to 2015's Better Than I Thought It Could Be, rises high with solid writing and fine playing. Find it at briannahlen.com.
Hot tracks: "Cicada Moon," "A Song for the End of the World," "Sing Out Loud"
-- SEAN CLANCY,
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
D Train
a girl a bottle a boat
Columbia
Some people adore Train. Others loathe them. The band's new album is unlikely to change anyone's mind.
The band -- now without lead guitarist and founding member Jimmy Stafford -- has returned with an unmemorable, fluffy and yet desperately needy soft-rock CD.
Train, the band behind "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" and "Meet Virginia" is once again as edgy and raw as a Labradoodle puppy.
Take "Play That Song," the first single. It's instantly cloying and catchy -- the way "Hey, Soul Sister" was -- until you realize they've swiped the melody from "Heart and Soul," the Hoagy Carmichael tune kids learn to play on the piano.
Train tries some doo-wop ("Valentine"), some faux-Coldplay ("Drink Up"), dance-pop ("Lost and Found") and a bombastic piano ballad ("You Better Believe"). But it's all so very limp.
The best song is "Working Girl," but it's marred by typically atrocious lyrics that rhyme "game" with "Aspartame" and "never been" with "Ritalin." Still, lead singer Patrick Monahan does have this advice for anyone firmly anti-Train: "If you don't like it, let me get the door for you."
Hot tracks: none
-- MARK KENNEDY,
The Associated Press
A- The xx
I See You
Young Turks
The xx's tricks are two. Singers Romy Madley-Croft and Oliver Sim talk to each other in song, carrying on a musical conversation like a post-modern Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner or anxiety-ridden Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. And ever since their self-titled debut album in 2009, they've made the most of minimalism, getting maximum emotional impact out of restrained arrangements that communicate unease while almost always opting to hold back rather than cut loose.
However, it's the third wheel -- keyboard player and producer Jamie xx (real last name: Smith) -- who's the difference-maker on the British band's third album. Smith stepped out as a solo artist with 2015's In Colour, and on I See You, he fills out the band's sound in inventive ways -- starting with the pitch-shifted sample of Hall & Oates' "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" -- that takes the album's superb lead single, "On Hold," by surprise. Madley-Croft and Sim have always been skilled at conveying unresolved sexual tension that's best suited to the dark corners of the chill-out room. Here, they brighten up and get moving to the dance floor.
Hot tracks: "On Hold," the spare "Brave for You," the intimate "Lips"
-- DAN DELUCA,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Style on 01/31/2017