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REVIEWS OF CDS NOW IN STORES
Jason Mraz Love Is A Four Letter Word out of five
POP • There are some parts of the world, there are some cultures where an unwavering sunny disposition is seen as a gift from the heavens, a blessing from the gods, a sign that you’ve be granted all of the happiness that life and the world can afford. In others, it’s sign of brain damage.
We’ll give Jason Mraz the benefit of the doubt and assume his cheery view of the world is something he’s come by through more positive means than by way of blunt force trauma, but with the understanding that we do so not as a patent endorsement nor enjoyment of it. Well, not entirely. True, there is something to be said for someone who sings and writes with a skip in his step and a whole lot of joie de vivre in his heart, and can do so with a pretty good grasp of middle-of-the road catchiness. That’s something the American songwriter displays throughout the 12 adult pop tracks that make up the record — a Don’t Worry Be Happy blend of Jack Johnson chilling and smooth, clearly Caucasian Paul Simon jazz and soul.
The problem, like many things in life, is that a little of Mraz’s positivity and niceness goes a long, long way. Halfway through all of the material about blue skies, flying birds, heartbeats, never-ending love, unwritten futures and coming home, you’ll feel as if you’re stuck on the It’s A Small World Ride with Tony Robbins as your tour guide. Musically, it’s the same thing, the melodies are so tasteful yet unremarkable, that they slip by without making any impact, without leaving any mark, until the end — when the damage is done.
— Mike Bell
Jack Johnson & Friends The Best of Kokua Festival out of five
FOLK • It’s hardly surprising that this album of breezy live numbers led by nice-guy warbler Jack Johnson contains a version of the Eagles’ Take it Easy.
It’s the sort of song not only custom-built for Johnson and his non-threatening, acoustic-pop grooves, but also for sun-soaked festival-goers who don’t want to think that much about what they’re listening to. Joined by one of the song’s co-composers, Jackson Browne, it’s one of many low-key treats that floats by as Johnson offers highlights from his green-themed, Hawaiibased Kokua Festival. Browne, Ziggy and Damian Marley, Taj Mahal, Ben Harper, Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews are among Johnson’s friends who have taken part over the years, all lending to the album’s communal vibe even if they occasionally sound like they’ve arrived on stage fresh from a catnap in a hammock. Even the famously dour Eddie Vedder gets into the spirit, crooning about laying underneath the stars on Johnson’s featherweight favourite Constellations. Johnson and Vedder also manage to flatten any hint of the inherent anguish of Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released, which is turned into a sunny, album-closing singalong. It’s all fairly forgettable, but you can practically feel the sun on your skin as these tracks amble along.
— Eric Volmers
Yann Tiersen Skyline out of five
AVANT-GARDE • Roughly halfway through Yann Tiersen’s gripping and often beautiful new album he offers two largely instrumental tracks that seem to represent his duelling sensibilities. Exit 25 Block 20 is an abrasive concoction that finds a repetitive groove rising up from under a din of toy piano, electronic squalls, barking and “swearing.” A few tracks later, on the majestic mini-epic Forgive Me, he offers a soaring, triumphant soundscape of tightly wound drama and expansive pop that climaxes with a small choir repeating a twoword refrain. Sometimes noisy, sometimes hypnoti- cally clear, often dreamy, occasionally nightmarish, this French avant-garde composer mixes his sparse downer lyrics with swirling beauty. The results can be surprisingly accessible. This is hardly radio fodder, but Tiersen understands pop music’s inherent drama and can wring beauty out of repetition and slowburning grooves as handily as any orchestral-pop collective.
— Eric Volmers
M. Ward A Wasteland Companion out of five
ROCK • It’s easy to underestimate Matt Ward. In the indie supergroup Monsters of Folk, the guitarist, singer, and producer isn’t the one with the eerily beautiful voice or the cryptically Dylanesque lyrics. (That would be Jim James and Conor Oberst, respectively.) And in She & Him, he’s not the cute-as-a-button ingenue who wins big points for her retro-pop songwriting skills. (That’s Zooey Deschanel.)
Even on his own albums, Ward is self-effacing. He favours fingerpicked explorations of all manner of American vernacular music, rather than show off his formidable instrumental and arranging attributes for any purpose other than to serve the best interests of the song at hand. This applies to the Alex Chilton-inspired ruminative original Clean Slate or the reworked delight that is his cover of Louis Armstrong’s I Get Ideas. Despite its downbeat title, A Wasteland Companion is comparatively cheery by Ward standards, mixing elegantly elegiac moments, like the wordless title track, with upbeat pop such as Primitive Girl, which features Susan Sanchez on backup vocals while Ward sings the praises of a muse “who don’t like to boast . . . but has a lot of what they call the most.”
— Dan Deluca