ALBUM REVIEWS
Belinda Carlisle Wilder Shores Spirit Voyage/Edel
On Wilder Shores, Belinda Carlisle shares her spiritual journey.
The mantras chanted while practising Kundalini yoga helped Carlisle, who lives in Thailand, overcome years of addiction and her new album is centred on those healing repetitions of brief texts, hypnotic in their intensity.
Carlisle chose to perform the Buddhist chants in pop-song settings, so while the lyrics may require translation, the sounds are familiar. There are some Far East instruments, but guitar, violin, piano and drums dominate the production.
Singing as well as ever, she still has that marked vibrato, which gives her voice distinction.
Would it be heretical to approach Har Gobinday as a dance tune? Two songs sung in English, Light of My Soul and Long Time Sun, are engaging ballads.
The record ends with a pianoled version of Carlisle’s No. 1 hit, Heaven Is a Place On Earth.
Musiq Soulchild Feel the Real eOne Music
Feel the Real is long, dense and fulfilling, but Musiq’s omnipresence requires commitment to get through its more than 97 minutes at once. Doubling down on varied aspects of love and romance with tracks like Benefits and the insistent Sooner or Later, the man born Taalib Johnson has crafted an often truly spectacular set.
As with most double albums, quality control slips on the second disc.
There are alluring sonic details spread along the two discs — a nearly prog-rock guitar at the start of Test Drive, big band drums launching Sooner or Later — but sometimes they taper off deeper into the songs, dissolving some of their appeal.
Simple Things contains elements some of the other songs could benefit from — an instrumental solo and 20 seconds of stripped-down vocals, which charm with beauty and simplicity.
Dhani Harrison In Parallel BMG
To say Dhani Harrison didn’t learn a thing or two from his Beatle father is ludicrous. He was alive for the last 20 years of the elder Harrison’s solo career, and he appeared on his father’s final album, Brainwashed. He has been involved in musical tributes to his father with Tom Petty and others.
Listeners would be hardpressed not to hear the Beatlesque and Harrisonian touches on several songs, including the leadoff Never Know and All About Waiting. The latter is reminiscent of his father in subject matter and musical structure, though the pulsing beat owes more to clubs. Admiral of Upside Down, wouldn’t seem out of place on the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
Don’t let the comparisons fool you: Harrison is his father’s son and a free agent, supremely confident as he embraces sounds across the universe. In Parallel is a sonic marvel and mystery that should reveal and reward over repeated listening.