ALBUM REVIEWS

Justin Timberlake Man of the Woods RCA Records

Justin Timberlake, you’ve failed us. The superstar singer produced epic solo albums with Justified, FutureSex/LoveSounds and The 20/20 Experience. And though he tripped over his own disco ball on 20/20, he rebounded with Can’t Stop the Feeling!

Unfortunately, Timberlake not only missteps on Man of the Woods, he crashes and burns. While some of the 16 songs are enjoyable, some feel like leftovers from FutureSex or 20/20.

The album does have some good tunes, thanks to country superstar Chris Stapleton. He cowrote the album’s best songs — the Alicia Keys-featured Morning Light and Say Something, on

which Stapleton also sings. But on Man of the Woods, Timberlake is trying to craft a rootsy sound like Stapleton’s AND keep you on the dance floor. But instead of rocking your body, you’ll want to cry yourself a river. The Associated Press

Calexico The Thread That Keeps Us ANTI Records

Long beloved by roots music fans, Arizona’s Calexico has always straddled the more outside aspects of its desertbred psychedelia with a fondness for ’60s California hippy pop. Particularly the sound of the band Love, whose songs they’ve covered and who were also prone to include elements of mariachi horns and twang.

For this album, it appears Calexico stepped past that and set up camp in the Troubadour of the early ’70s.

The first half of the album is predictable easy-listening with the occasional flourish such as the catchy horn-and-drum hook in Under the Wheels. Flores y Tamales gets it all right with an easy shuffling conjunto rhythm and Spanish lyric.

But for the first time, Calexico sounds like its recycling its ideas and aiming for something more mainstream.

Stuart Derdeyn

Khari Wendell McClelland Freedom Singer Coax Records

Talk about a track written

for today, and you are talking about Song of the Agitators.

The opening song on Freedom Singer roars in on a tuba-blast and a rim shot right before the Vancouver-based singer testifies “Cease to agitate / We will / When the slave whip sound is still.” With the intensity of a preacher, he builds to the point where the chorus kicks in and you realize this could be a new gospel standard.

From the Tin Pan Alley clarinet snaking through the bluesy No More to the stark banjo on Never the Child, the songs are tied to an accompanying theatre work about the singer’s relatives who ran from slavery to Canada. They function just fine without the production though, as this is a beautifully crafted redemptive recording.

Stuart Derdeyn