ALBUM REVIEWS
SNOOP DOGG Bible of Love RCA Inspiration Snoop Dogg, one of rap’s OGs, has a gospel double album out. Yes, that’s right: The D - O -Double- G is doing G- O -D.
A humble, family-centred Snoop emerges on the 32-track double album Bible of Love. He quotes from the book of Isaiah and has nice things to say about his devout grandmother.
Snoop doesn’t perform on every track, preferring to showcase outstanding performers in the genre, such as The Clark Sisters, John P. Kee and Kim Burrell.
When Snoop does drop in, his nasally, laconic flow works in beautiful counterpoint to gospel stars such as Rance Allen (a funky Blessing Me Again) and B. Slade, who pops up all over the CDs.
Rising star October London, Faith Evans and Patti LaBelle also show up.
DAVID BYRNE American Utopia Todomundo/Nonesuch David Byrne’s last release billed as a solo album was Grown Backwards from 2004. The new album is Byrne’s alone but it is “based on original tracks” by Brian Eno, who also plays on several of the tunes, while two songs are co-written, performed and produced with Brooklyn-based Daniel Lopatin a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never.
The result is a mix of some anxious, highly charged moments tempered by sweet melodies and gentle rhythms. Sometimes it all happens on the same track. Opener I Dance Like This starts as a gentle piano ballad and turns into an assault of mechanic rhythms before switching back again. Gasoline and Dirty Sheets could be off Naked, the last Talking Heads album, while the South American refrain from Every Day is a Miracle, a song with four drummers plus drum programming, would fit on Rei Momo, Byrne’s first post-Heads solo album.
THE DECEMBERISTS I’ll Be Your Girl Capitol Frontman Colin Meloy wanted this album to reflect the mood of the times, and it’s even more topical than intended.
The Oregon band began performing the song We All Die Young onstage a year ago, and now it will bring tears on tour — the recent events in Florida transform the singalong into an anthem that pairs jarring words with defiantly exuberant music.
Such is the tone of I’ll Be Your Girl, which leavens Meloy’s dark lyrics with humour and arrangements as colourful as the album cover. Severed threatens violence via ’80s synth pop; Once in My Life is whiny but funny arena rock. There’s also Everything is Awful, written after the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Meloy is at his most literary on Rusalka, Rusalka/Wild Rushes, which reads like a Russian novel teaching about the hazards of temptation.
It doesn’t end well, which is no surprise.