Dierks’ Mountain suits him just fine
Dierks Bentley The Mountain Capitol
On the final song on The Mountain, “How I’m Going Out,” Dierks Bentley acknowledges that he’ll eventually end up as “another ghost on Music Row.” But he asserts that he’ll know “when it’s my turn to jump off this carousel,” avoiding the mistakes of “the ones who left too soon and the ones who didn’t know when to leave.”
Based on his work here, Bentley has not overstayed his welcome yet. The country star can be as commercial as anybody, but at his best he can also dig behind the crowd-pleasing conventions and unearth some real substance. For this project, he left Nashville to record in Telluride, Colo. — hence the album title — and the move seems to have resharpened his muse.
There’s no “Drunk on a Plane” here, but on numbers such as “Burning Man,” featuring the Brothers Osborne, and the title song, the big, rock-edged sound jars with the often searching and sober nature of the lyrics. Mostly, though, Bentley settles into a nice balance of the radio-ready and the rustic that suits such selections as “Woman, Amen” and “You Can’t Bring Me Down.” To borrow from his duet with Brandi Carlile, on these numbers he is “Travelin’ Light,” and musically that style suits him best here.
Hot tracks: “Burning Man,” “Woman, Amen,” “Travelin’ Light”
— NICK CRISTIANO
The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)
Panic! At The Disco Pray for the Wicked Fueled by Ramen/DCD2
Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie has never lacked ideas.
However, starring in Kinky
Boots on Broadway in 2017 seemed to have pushed him to new heights on Panic’s sixth album.
It’s not just his singing — which often climbs to new, more theatrical heights across the album’s 12 tracks, including one stellar note in the first single “Say Amen (Saturday Night)” — that has developed. It’s Urie’s whole approach to how much he can pack into a song.
He drops mentions of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and William Golding’s
Lord of the Flies as he deals with social awkwardness at a rooftop party in “Roaring 20s.” “Oscars and Emmys and Grammys, everyone here is a trophy,” he sings, over an intoxicating mix of Latin dance rhythms and big-band orchestrations. “Maybe I’ll elevate. Maybe I’m second-rate, so unaware of my status.”
Urie tries to reconcile his Mormon upbringing with his pop-star pursuits without judging either side in both the dramatic lead single “Say Amen (Saturday Night)” and the charmingly upbeat “Dancing’s Not a Crime,” where he hits Michael Jackson-esque notes from the “Dancing Machine” era. In “Old Fashioned,” he combines Imagine Dragons’ cadences in his delivery with trap rhythms and horn flourishes to pay tribute to his formative years.
The album’s closer, “Dying in L.A.,” may have the most Broadway influence, as a piano-driven ballad with plaintive vocal runs that could fit in Dear Evan Hansen. But it also shows Urie has learned how to find the right musical combination to suit his messages best.
Hot tracks: “Dying in L.A.,” “Roaring 20s,” “Old Fashioned”
— GLENN GAMBOA
Newsday (TNS)
R+R=NOW Collagically Speaking Blue Note
Though started by nu-jazz keyboardist, composer and experimentalist Robert Glasper to embody the duty of an artist (“reflect” and “respond,” according to Nina Simone), there is no single star within the R+R=NOW universe. Terrace Martin (synth, vocoder), Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (trumpet) and Justin Tyson (drums) act in egalitarian, funky fashion with Glasper. Two names stand out: bassist Derrick Hodge is famous for diverse gigs with the Blue Note All-Stars, Talib Kweli and Robert Randolph. Then there’s Taylor McFerrin, the elusive, elastic vocalist, beat boxer and synth player (Bobby McFerrin’s son) who has existed under the radar since his 2014 solo album Early Riser.
As one, R+R=NOW makes improvisational prog-rocky, but predominantly ambient soundscapes that contain all of their genre-jumping talents — and deeply haunting melodies in the case of the piano-heavy “Colors in the Dark” and the modal jazzy “Resting Warrior” — without sounding messy. With so many styles and guests (such as rapper Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), actor Terry Crews, comic Amanda Seales) within R+R’s mix, the power of dynamic, vividly imagined musicianship and diamond-cutting precision is needed for subtle, nuanced numbers such as the acidic “The Night in Question” and the new age-y “Been on My Mind” to stand their ground.
Here’s hoping this superstar session’s debut yields additional fruit.
Hot tracks: “Colors in the Dark,” “The Night in Question,” “Been on My Mind”
— A.D. AMOROSI
The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)