Fergie on the double
Fergie Double Dutchess Sony
WHY there hasn’t been more Fergie released since her solo debut (2006’s gazillion-selling The
Dutchess) probably comes down to then-fresh family commitments. That’s a shame. Not because her marriage is (gossip alert) crumbling, but rather because her vocal talents are many.
She can rough-ride hip-hop’s rhythms, manipulate the nuances of glossy R&B balladry, and belt out grand rockers with the power and emotion of Ann Wilson. She makes swagger sweet.
Voices like that are few and far between, so Double Dutchess isa welcome return. A strange one too, considering this is Fergie’s first album devoid of Black Eyed Peas boss will.i.am’s compositional touch (he does share production credits on several tracks). Sure, it shares similarities to
Dutchess #1, and feels dated in spots. L.A. Love (La La) with rapper YGisa London Bridge retread complete with phony foreign accents. The acoustic strum of Save It Till
Morning copies the shimmering blueprint of Ferg’s Big Girls Don’t
Cry (Personal) to a T. The femme-braggadocious M.I.L.F.$. is too conscious in its hot pursuit of old school hip-hop, as is You Already Know. Yet, those tracks sound great, with the gooey, gauzy New Wave of Hungry (sampling Dead Can Dance, no less), the torrid, trophouse Enchanté (Carine), and the Jamaican-inspired Love Is Blind all giving Fergie the necessary wind (and unique musicality) for her breezy, buoyant voice. Brava. — A.D. Amorosi/The Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service
The Killers Wonderful, Wonderful Universal
LOOK out, world, The Killers is coming out of its cage, and the guys are doing just fine. However, its new album Wonderful, Wonderful, starts off anything but.
The opening title track is the sort of song that can be classified as “hard to get into”, as frontman Brandon Flowers channels activistmode Bono on lyrics like, “Motherless child does thou believe/That thine afflictions have caused us to grieve?”.
It looks on the bleak side of things so much that you sort of wish Mr Brightside would come and slap some sense into Flowers.
With such a difficult opening salvo, it’s almost a surprise when the shimmering TheMan kicks in, with its shiny disco/funk beats, its David Bowie-esque glam rock vibes, and Flowers strutting out lines like, “Don’t need no advice/I got a plan” and “I got news for you baby/you’re looking at the man”.
Flowers imbues the song with a macho, over-confident swagger that makes it one of the albums standout tracks for me.
Elsewhere, the rousing Run For Cover sounds like something the Foo Fighters could have written, while Tyson Vs Douglas is arguably the closest the album comes to a Mr Brightside moment.
Although to be honest, the lyrics, which recall Buster Douglas’s legendary upset win over Mike Tyson in 1990, offer little in the way of a bright side.
It’s in moments like these that Wonderful, Wonderful really lives up to its title. Unfortunately, they are brought down by the likes of lumbering slow numbers Some Kind Of Love and album closer Have All The Songs Been Written, and the forgettable Life To Come and The Calling.
“Don’t give up on me/I’m just in a rut”, Flowers sings on Rut. Five studio albums in, The Killers does seem to be stuck in a little bit of a rut.
But there are enough creatively original ideas here that suggest that the band is more than capable of climbing out of it. – Michael Cheang
Prophets Of Rage Prophets Of Rage Fantasy
PROPHETS Of Rage, the supergroup of members from Rage Against The Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill, is clearly built to last on its eponymous debut.
Prophets Of Rage is packed with future political anthems, fueled by both Tom Morello’s raucous guitar riffs and heated rhymes from Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Cypress Hill’s B-Real.
“Hatred, lies divided people, gorgeous anger deeds of evil,” Chuck rhymes in Un **** The World where he trades lines with Morello over grinding guitar and trades grand verses with B-Real. “I’m elated to get y’all elevated. God remains God, yeah, and they hate it.”
The Roosevelt native’s thunderous style fits nicely next to B-Real’s more nimble flow, while also standing up to the wall of rock power coming from Morello, Tim Commerford, Brad Wilk and DJ Lord on the turntables.
It’s what drives Radical Eyes ,but it also allows for shifting gears to hit the groove-driven Living On The 110, a potent anthem for the homeless, and the unifying Strength in Numbers.
What makes Prophets Of Rage so powerful is the way each song has multiple layers that all make the song stronger, like fingers closing into a raised fist. – Glenn Gamboa/Newsday/Tribune News Service