A-Ariana Grande Sweetener
Republic
The pop singer’s first record since the terrorist bombing that killed 22 people last year as they left a concert of hers at England’s Manchester Arena, Sweetener would likely have surprised few if it had arrived as a heavy-hearted work of mournful reflection.
Grande created something different: an album about how hard it is to move beyond tragedy — and how good it feels when that finally happens.
“Right now I’m in a state of mind I wanna be in like all the time,” she sings in “No Tears Left to Cry,” an ebullient, 1990s-style dance-pop jam. “I’m picking it up, picking it up/Loving, I’m living, so we turning up.”
Do those lines seem glib? They’re anything but when delivered by Grande, who at age 25 possesses one of her generation’s biggest, most expressive voices: an instrument capable of communicating all the emotional labor required to reach a place of love and light.
Sweetener is full of inward-looking reassurance, as in the dance hall-inflected “The Light Is Coming” — “to give back everything the darkness stole,” as Grande puts it — and “Get Well Soon,” where she layers her voice into a one-woman choir preaching a gospel of self-care.
Yet the album is also clear about who helped Grande find her way out of the darkness, and that’s Pete Davidson, the Saturday Night Live star to whom the singer is reportedly engaged.
Half the songs describe the rejuvenating power of fresh romance. There’s the bouncy title track, about someone who “bring(s) the bitter taste to a halt,” and Grande’s liberal interpretation (featuring some original lyrics) of “Goodnight n Go,” an ode to
The cover of Ariana Grande’s new album, Sweetener, has an upside-down photo of the singer.
a cute crush by British pop eccentric Imogen Heap.
Sweetener has a gravitas that feels new — the result of her life-altering experience in Manchester, no doubt, but also of the weird sounds and unconventional song structures she crafted with a team of producers led by Pharrell Williams and Max Martin.
Yet there’s an uncommon sense of self-possession to this album — a kind of ecstatic calm — that sets it apart.
Hot tracks: “The Light Is Coming,” “Get Well Soon,” the sexy “God Is a Woman”
— MIKAEL WOOD
Los Angeles Times (TNS)
B
Epic
With each album and mixtape since Owl Pharaoh in 2013, Travis Scott has heard the same thing: His flow is finer than Wedgwood, his raps are tougher than leather, his energy is higher than Red Bull with wings. So when is he going to make that one defining epic? Astroworld — touching upon the harshness of fame, darkly dedicated to the hometown amusement park of his youth — may be that grand gesture.
Stuffed with big brandname affiliates (Frank Ocean, Quavo) and wide-ranging in its elaborate styles and producers (including a “Skeletons” co-writing-production
credit for Pharrell Williams and alternative space-psych hero Kevin Parker of Tame Impala), Astroworld is a larger-than-life soundscape that never overwhelms. “Carousel” looks at the circus of life with humor, horror, and disgust. The sonic complexity of his “Sicko Mode” duet is daunting in its stretch and operatic in its theatricality. The rarely ruminative Scott looks deep within the thud and sonic bluster of “Coffee Bean” and finds himself afraid for his future. On the sleepy “Stop Trying to Be God” (with James Blake, Kid Cudi, and harmonicat Stevie Wonder), the rapper pleads to be left to his own devices. Several bangers sound trite, tired and overly inspired by his heroes. For 90 percent of this album, Scott sounds as though he has found his own way.
Hot tracks: “Carousel,” “Sicko Mode,” “Coffee Bean” — A.D. AMOROSI The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)
B
S-Curve/BMG
We The Kings arrived in the emo-pop bubble of the mid-2000s, alongside Cute Is What We Aim For and Boys Like Girls. What has kept the rockers thriving is their craftiness.
Six, which is out Friday, is the product of another PledgeMusic campaign and a well-orchestrated plan to widen its appeal by pulling together an assortment
of well-written songs from across the pop-rock spectrum.
Singer-guitarist Travis Clark continues to show that he can handle a variety of vocal approaches. As conventionally Warped Tourready as the first single “On My Love” sounds, Clark balances the sweetness of the sentiment with a bit of edge. “Festival Music,” which captures the band’s years on the touring circuit, finds him going from soaring notes on the chorus to rapping a torrent of syllables. On the stomping “Alive,” with its roaring metal guitar riffs and screams, We The Kings bounces between Imagine Dragons percussive, hip-hop-steeped swagger and moments of tender piano.
At times the band strays a little too far out of its comfort zone, such as the dance pop number “Mama Knows Best,” which is packed with synthesizer squiggles and EDM drops that sound out of sync with the rest of the album.
On the gorgeous piano ballad “What I Wouldn’t Give,” Clark poignantly deals with the loss of loved ones. “A mother’s love can never be replaced, but what I wouldn’t give for one more day,” he sings.
We The Kings’ experimentation works because their music is built on a solid foundation of songwriting craftsmanship.
Hot tracks: “What I Wouldn’t Give,” “On My Love,” “Alive”
