Soaring with glee
LEA Michele’s new album is so full of Celine Dion-type vocal moments, I’d like to pour her a warm cup of honey lemon tea and congratulate her on a job well done.
The former Glee star’s sophomore release, Places, gets off on a climactic start with Love Is Alive.
Each time she belts its chorus – which sees her hitting and holding those big, long notes, the kind you have to sing with your arms stretched out – I get goosebumps.
Love Is Alive is a classic love song built around a simple yet infectious melody, and it’s probably the singer’s best bet at a radio hit.
The album opener really sets the tone for the rest of Places. The 11-track release is pretty much filled with these vocally-challenging ballads. Michele usually starts off soft and calm, gradually building up to an explosive finish, which could mean a display of her soaring falsettos in Heavy Love or just her unbelievable ad-libs in Anything’s Possible.
But it’s not just about the vocal acrobatics. In fact, the most moving track on the album sees her singing hushedly on Hey You. Michele lost her boyfriend and fellow Glee co-star Cory Monteith in 2013, and the song sounds like a letter she wrote to him.
There are other quieter moments as well, particularly in the moody Sentimental Memories and heartwarming Getaway Car.
Lyrically, Michele is decidedly inspirational. Proud is about taking one’s own time to achieve something, Believer is about rising up after a fall, Anything’s Possible is about starting over with a clean slate and Tornado is about taking life’s challenges in stride. Michele’s 2014 debut release
Louder was aimed at marketing her as a pop star. Places positions her as a powerhouse vocalist with a gift for sprawling pop ballads. — Kenneth Chaw As Rusty Empyrean Enigma Independent
IT’S clearly a sign of the times, with numerous bands flogging the post rock pastiches of Mogwai and Russian Circles — and this isn’t even something new. But As Rusty Empyrean brings an exuberance straight from the southern tip of the country, Johor, with a kind of melodicism that can sometimes get lost in the haze of electronic gadgetry and sterile songwriting.
The band’s instrumental voice vaunts all the characteristics of a group finely in tune with its genre, fuzzy and grinding guitars tumbling into ethereal passages, often within the space of a single song.
Suatu Hikmah’s (the band’s songs are all titled in Bahasa Malaysia) angular and muscular riffing adeptly makes space for potent lead lines while Memoir’s sprawling arrangement takes listeners on an emotional roller coaster ride.
Melankolik’s jaunty rhythm is just what the doctor ordered, and takes the listening experience to tamer terrain, with slide guitar making an appearance. The spacey delivery takes a sharp turn by the end with some cranium-crunching rock, though.
Eksplorasi Antagonis quickens the pace of an album that largely stays on shuffle mode, what with its piercing, and sometimes, stuttering guitar breaks. The sense of urgency in Panik only becomes palpable midsong, when guitarists Nadzrul Iddhar and Irwan Shah turn up the wick, as bassist Ridhwan Rosli supplies a pulsating bass line right through.
Enigma isn’t the first album to trudge down this path, and it certainly won’t be the last, either. In a genre already dominated by a sea of hopefuls, As Rusty Empyrean genuinely adds hope. — N. Rama Lohan
Erasure World Be Gone Universal
ERASURE’S bond, like any 32-yearold relationship, is built on give and take.
Sometimes, the focus is on the elaborate, club-filling electronic dance music that Vince Clarke has long crafted with his banks of synthesizers. Sometimes, the focus is on Andy Bell’s gorgeous voice and his stunning ability to convey a deep emotional story.
For the duo’s 17th studio album World Be Gone, Bell’s voice is the undisputed focus to masterful effect. On Be Careful What You Wish For, they stack his vocals to create an army of Bells to carry forward the ballad’s simple, pretty melody. On Still It’s Not Over, about the battle to get attention and help in the early days of the AIDS crisis, the echoing on Bell’s poignant delivery makes it feel all the more lonely. “Ignorance it isn’t bliss,” Bell declares. “And words they can hurt me.”
However, like much of World Be Gone, after the buoyant single Love You To The Sky, Bell’s warm vocals put an optimistic spin on the troubling issue. The result, like most great relationships, is bigger than the sum of its parts. — Glenn Gamboa/Newsday/Tribune News Service
The Charlatans Different Days BMG
THERE are two parts to The Charlatans’ 13th album, Different Days — the first with sunny melodies and the other which samples their roots in Manchester’s baggy dance scene.
Opener Hey Sunrise leads with acoustic guitars and has a melancholy air like The Church’s Under The Milky Way. A melody that practically floats appears on Solutions, with Tim Burgess’ stretching the syllables.
More songs with a bit of bite like Plastic Machinery would have been welcome as Johnny Marr’s guitar and Verve drummer Pete Salisbury add some kick to the proceedings. New Order’s Stephen Morris also takes care of drums and programming on seven of the 13 tracks.
Crime writer Ian Rankin and Kurt Wagner from Lambchop each feature in a spoken interlude, distractions more than deep dissertations.
Not Forgotten kicks off imaginary part two, which sees the band setting their phasers to nostalgia and performing as if back in 1990 again, sharing a Madchester stage with The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.
There Will Be Chances sounds like Stephen Duffy’s Tin Tin and The Same House, where they can all live and “wear matching shoes” reminds of 1991 sensations The Farm. Salisbury appears again on Let’s Go Together which joyfully picks up the pace before The Setting Sun, a brief instrumental.
Paul Weller puts his stamp on Spinning Out – co-writing the track while also contributing backing vocals, percussion and keyboards – which ends the album with a return to a more organic feel, “trying to get back there again”.
The Charlatans have repeated cycles of rises and falls in a nearly 30-year career and the swirling Different Days is a reminder of the good times. — Pablo Gorondi/AP