Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Fayettevil­le band has Brand New hit

- Max Recordings RCA — CARYN GANZ

B+ The Good Fear Long Gone Brand New

Fayettevil­le’s The Good Fear returns after a 10-year break with Long Gone Brand New, a clever, inviting collection of mostly midtempo indie rockers that has us cheering the band’s revival.

“Here we go again/an old familiar friend,” sings Todd Gill on “The Knack,” the catchy second track that could also serve as a bit of a mission statement for the album and one of several tunes made stronger by Dustin Bartholome­w’s keyboards. It actually sounds like a more apt choice for the opening track than “Old Habits Die Hard,” which starts the album. Perhaps The Good Fear were just trying not to be so obvious.

“Autumn Leaves of Oklahoma” is an intriguing song that starts like a huge My Morning Jacket epic then settles into a quiet middle before breaking out toward the end like a tornado gaining power. The title track has a neat stopstart thing happening and the feel of a ’70s album-rock deep cut, while “Long Way to Go” is sparkling power-pop.

Little Rock-based Max Recordings has a limited number of LPs and the album can be streamed at the usual outlets.

Hot tracks: “The Knack,” “Long Way to Go,” “Autumn Leaves of Oklahoma” — SEAN CLANCY Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

B+ Cage the Elephant Social Cues

The new Cage the Elephant album begins with a spacey, otherworld­ly hum that’s interrupte­d by some throbbing, insistent knocking. That leads to some machine-gun drumming and, as if a door has been opened, an infectious, high-tempo post-punk glam tune comes on. It’s the sound of Cage the Elephant finally uncaged.

After taking a detour into fuzzy guitars, tambourine­s and a ’60s vibe with 2015’s Tell Me I’m Pretty, the alternativ­e rockers have put out what is arguably their best collection of songs with Social Cues. Confidence runs throughout this assured album.

Social Cues is produced by John Hill, who has let the band explore and play and breathe. The music is bouncy and filled with swagger, even as the lyrics reveal trauma. Broken love is a prominent theme, the product of singer Matt Shultz’s marriage breaking up. The superb first single, “Ready to Let Go,” brings us into a raw moment when a vacation between lovers breaks apart and the singer is “trying to hide this damage done.” Shultz isn’t angry as much as sorry in the gloomy “What I’m Becoming.”

But the album isn’t devoid of hope. “Let the love light guide me home,” Shultz sings on the melancholy “Skin and Bones.” There’s fatigue in “The War Is Over” but he acknowledg­es “love was on both sides.”

The band veers over the cliff with the overindulg­ent “Love’s the Only Way,” but teams up with Beck for the terrific, driving “Night Running.” The title track also is a raw picture of insecurity.

The album ends with “Goodbye,” one of the saddest and most tender breakup songs ever recorded. Shultz’ heart may be broken but with this new album, you’ll fall in love all over again with this band.

Hot tracks: “What I’m Becoming,” “Goodbye,” “Ready to Let Go” — MARK KENNEDY The Associated Press

SINGLES

■ Madonna featuring Maluma, “Medellin.” On her 14th album due in June, Madame X, Madonna promises to become a shape-shifter, a secret agent “fighting for freedom” and “bringing light into dark places” in the guises of a professor, a housekeepe­r, a nun, a cabaret singer and a prostitute, among others. If her overstuffe­d 2015 album Rebel Heart was a touch reflective, reckoning with elements from her past as a not-always-embraced cultural rabble-rouser, Madame X so far promises to be a bit of a romp. She has said the inspiratio­ns come from her adopted home, Lisbon, and her longtime fascinatio­n with Latin music, which has been a part of her aesthetic since she touched down in New York at age 19.

The first single, “Medellin,” is a spotlight for the Colombian star Maluma, who met Madonna backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards last year and cheerfully glides through the track. Though this is likely the song on which she morphs into a cha-cha instructor, Madonna is playing a fantasist. The producer Mirwais, who was one of Madonna’s core creative partners from her 2000 album Music through Confession­s on a Dance Floor in 2005, returns to help provide a dreamy backdrop for her carefully sung (and digitally tweaked) voyage to an alternate past: a life, and love, in Medellin. The track soars when it hits its arms-outstretch­ed chorus and dips when it reaches its most cringewort­hy lyric, but while its missteps aren’t barbed enough to deflate a reverie, it feels more like a stride in the right direction than an emphatic stomp forward.

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 ?? Courtesy of Big Fear ??
Courtesy of Big Fear

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