B+ Randy Houser
Magnolia
Stoney Creek
You can hear Randy Houser really go for it on his new single "What Whiskey Does."
He sets aside the laid-back, cool delivery that he, and so many country contemporaries, have embraced in recent years and pours his heart out, reaching for big, poignant notes that convey just how high the stakes are, aided by some aching harmonies from Hillary Lindsey, who co-wrote the song with Houser. The direction change is an announcement of sorts that Houser's new album Magnolia won't be business as usual. In fact, it will be less music business-friendly than he has been since his breakout hit "How Country Feels" in 2013.
More than anything, Magnolia feels like Houser at his most authentic. He isn't chasing Chris Stapleton's outlaw-country, Americana train, even though that may have been his best career move.
Houser still drops in some hard-rock riffs and a bit of flash in songs like "Nothin' on You." Though his honky-tonk anthem "Whole Lotta Quit" is defiant fun, sometimes he still gets a bit too clever than he should on well-crafted, but emotion-lite tracks like "New Buzz" or "High Time."
But, man, he yanks at every tear-jerking string on the gospel-tinged "No Good Place to Cry," with Houser belting out soulfully over an old-school blues guitar groove, as he confesses, "They don't want to see these tears in my eyes, but there ain't no good place to cry." It's a showstopper that puts Houser's career on a whole new level, a sign that his artistry is now more important than success.
He follows that with the wrenching "What Leaving Looks Like" and later on the lovely Louisiana road trip "Evangeline," where he talks about getting a little "two-lane crazy tonight."
Hot tracks: "No Good Place to Cry," "What Leaving Looks Like," "Evangeline"
-- GLENN GAMBOA
Newsday (TNS)
B+ Various Artists
Basement Beehive: The Girl Group Underground
Numero
Chicago reissue label Numero Group is an expert unearther that specializes in bringing talented might-have-beens out from obscurity and into the light of day. Rather than center on a specific scene or individual artist (as with 2017's fabulous Jackie Shane set), this double-disc collection with excellent liner notes by critic Jessica Hopper gathers 56 little-known girl groups from all over the United States in the pre-psychedelic 1960s.
It's a treasure trove of swoony, energetic, lovelorn pop from black, white and brown groups such as Toni & the Hearts, Judy & the Affections and the Dreamliners that sing their hearts out but that never achieved the fame of the Shangri-Las or the Marvelettes. Florida rock band the Belles sound positively punky on "Come Back," and they turn a female gaze on the Van Morrison-penned Them hit "Gloria" with new lyrics about a cute guy named "Melvin." Future soul star Lyn Collins is heard as a 14-year-old on Charles Pike & the Scholars' "Unlucky in Love." Bernadette Carroll tries her darnedest to get a new dance craze going on "The Humpty Dump."
Basement Beehive is a high-haired, highly enjoyable alternate history of songs that sound like you must have heard them before but actually haven't.
Hot tracks: "Come Back," "Gloria," "Unlucky in Love"
-- DAN DELUCA
The Philadelphia Inquirer
SINGLES
• Radiohead, "Ill Wind." This song was a postscript to Radiohead's 2016 album, A Moon Shaped Pool, released on a bonus disc but not, until now, to streaming services. Its very few lyrics counsel isolation and detachment for fear of provoking that "ill wind." They're set to one of Radiohead's morose bossa novas, at first akin to "Knives Out": a nest of minor-key counterpoint on guitar and bass. But then more layers arrive, fluty sounds and buzzy ones, swallowing the song before prettily fading out. What seemed like a sanctuary was a trap.
-- JON PARELES
The New York Times
• Khalid featuring Kane Brown, "Saturday Nights Remix"
• Halsey featuring Juice WRLD, "Without Me"
More seemingly left field but in fact totally harmonious cross-genre collaborations, please. The young country star Kane Brown brings an earthy sincerity to Khalid's soothing delivery of angst on this remix of "Saturday Nights," and Juice WRLD drizzles his melodically sweet melancholy on Halsey's impressively stern scold "Without Me."
-- JON CARAMANICA
The New York Times
• Adia Victoria, "Different Kind of Love"
Adia Victoria, a songwriter from South Carolina who's now based in Nashville, Tenn., offers a terse taxonomy of breakups in "Different Kind of Love," from her second album due next month. "Some of them I knew it best to hesitate/Some I've never seen again," she notes. The setting seems retro at first: a hypnotic rockabilly shuffle with a hefty backbeat and plenty of reverb on the guitar, soon to be punched up by a saxophone section. But it's not back-to-basics. Extra guitars and other, more elusive sounds thicken the mix, as Victoria gets around to a classic, non-negotiable demand: "Tell me, who do you love?"
-- JON PARELES
The New York Times
Style on 01/22/2019