Beck’s a pale imitation of himself while St. Vincent redefines the guitar

BECK

“COLORS” (UNIVERSAL)

ST. VINCENT

“MASSEDUCTION” (UNIVERSAL)

These should be two of the most exciting major releases of the fall season. They’re not.

No one knows what to expect from Beck on any given record; his last one, “Morning Phase,” was an unremarkable acoustic affair that somehow won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2014. This one is supposedly a return to “party Beck,” which means that a lot of people are still in a 20-year-old time warp hoping that he makes another “Odelay.” The man is 47 years old. He’s not going to make another record like the giddy young hipster he once was. But surely he can make a record that doesn’t sound like a pale imitation of himself: every song here is a somewhat funky groove with an overproduced rock song on top of it. It sounds like … the Happy Mondays? Is the zeitgeist so bad that we have to be nostalgic for that band now? It’s telling that the best song here is when the old man tries on a trap beat for “Wow.” “It’s like: wow. It’s like, right now.” Yep, sure is.

Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent, is far more interesting: she’s a fascinating thinker, an interesting lyricist and a forward-thinking musician who, among other things, is out to redefine the guitar in pop music in ways not heard since Adrian Belew. All that said, “Masseduction” is far more interesting to read about than to listen to. Everything about Clark sounds tightly controlled and perfectionist, in ways that don’t necessarily serve her music. Yes, she gets lots of comparisons to David Bowie or Bjork — but both those artists used their vocals in ways that humanized their sometimes arch musical vision. Here, Clark sounds like she bleeds the humanity out of her music. Knowing her, that’s probably on purpose. But it’s also alienating. She sure makes for a great New Yorker profile, though.

Stream Beck: “Colors,” “Dreams,” “Wow”

Stream St. Vincent: “Happy Birthday, Johnny,” “Los Ageless,” “Sugarboy”

SHANIA TWAIN

“NOW” (UNIVERSAL)

MARGO PRICE

“ALL AMERICAN MADE” (THIRD MAN)

Why yes, the new Shania Twain album does open with a reggae song. Why wouldn’t it? She singlehandedly rewrote the rules about what modern country pop is supposed to sound like. She can mess with it all she wants. And it works: “Swinging With My Eyes Closed” is the kind of big-chorus, radio anthem we’d expect her to return with. It’s her first in 15 years. It’s also her first without ex-husband Robert “Mutt” Lange, who got a lot of credit for cowriting and producing her blockbuster records. Twain writes all the material here herself, and enlists four different hitmakers in the producer’s chair. She’s taken full control, and it’s paid off. Now is everything that Twain does best: affirmational anthems with catchphrase lyrics. The only knock here is the corniness of some of the clichés: “You can’t buy love / but you can make it.” Or, “Because of you, I’m me.”

The only major disappointment here is that after all this time, it would’ve been nice to hear her sing — naturally. Instead, even acoustic ballads here have the stench of AutoTune, which Twain neither needs nor, now that she’s no longer working with Def Leppard’s producer, does she deserve.

The flip side of Shania Twain is Margo Price, a young Nashville singer-songwriter whose sound skews toward the traditional: live instruments, no AutoTune, no eye on the pop charts. No surprise she records for Third Man Records — owned by Jack White, the man who resurrected Loretta Lynn’s career. This is Price’s second album, and has fiery performances, an absolutely ace studio band, and some piercing lyrics that don’t shy away from politics. If feminism is a big F-word in Nashville, Price bites back with “Pay Gap”: “Pay gap / why don’t you do the math / pay gap / ripping my dollars in half.” That might set her apart from other current country artists, with the obvious exception of Jason Isbell, but she’s mostly just a plain-spoken country writer par excellence, with an eye for all kinds of social detail. “Sometimes I’m Virginia Woolf / sometimes I’m James Dean,” she sings.

“All American Made” is not just a star turn for Price as a vocalist and songwriter. The musical touches throughout elevate everything on this album, recorded at Sam Phillips’s Memphis studio: the Tex-Mex accordion on “Pay Gap,” R&B organ flourishes on “A Little Pain,” the gospel quartet on “Do Right By Me.”

Stream Shania Twain: “Swinging With My Eyes Closed,” “Poor Me,” “We Got Something They Don’t”

Stream Margo Price: “Don’t Say It,” “A Little Pain,” “Pay Gap”