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Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles
Score: 9

If you grew up in the late '70s or in the '80s, chances are you spent a fair amount of time playing video games. And as you exercised your thumbs --- or your wrists, if you had a joystick --- your brain soaked up all that repetitive theme music.

As Crystal Castles, Ethan Kath and Alice Glass of Toronto take an experimental approach to music making, one of their tools being sounds from a modified Atari. It's a key launch point for whatever strikes their fancy. On their first full-length, that's a compelling agglomeration of rock freakouts, ambient techno, pitch-shifted vocals and creative samples.

Kath, who does the music, employs synths, sequencers and circuit bending. Glass, the singer, revels in the emotional purge of a shriek. Kath's manipulation enables Crystal Castles to change and rearrange those bleeps and blips and burbles, marshaling them into something greater than the sum of their parts. Witness his chopping and splicing on "Untrust Us" (sampling Death From Above 1979) and "Crimewave" (sampling Health).

In the frantic "Xxzxcuzx Me," Glass excoriates the mike over machine-gun beats as circuitry spasms around her. "Knights," which begins with a deep synth bassline and a metronomic clicking, drenches its druggy vocal line with distorted keys. "Untrust Us" builds its humming chant over a pattern of synth bloops, bringing in a faint buzzing in advance of the chorus. The buzzing, like a garage band at only a hundredth the volume, is nearly subliminal. Until the end of the song, that is, when it kicks into the foreground at full volume.

More than the half the tracks on Crystal Castles are uptempo numbers indebted to house, techno and electro-pop. "1991" palpitates with binary beats, fervidly pulsing before sliding into "Vanished," a relative breather. The vocals you hear on "Vanished" come not from Kath but from an extended sample of Australian band Van She. The instrumentals and songs with sampled vocals buffer the acid in Glass' strangled yelps and cries, providing variety and lending stability.

But just when you think you've sized them up, Crystal Castles reveal the surprise among surprises, "Tell Me What to Swallow." All vapor and gossamer, it shows that Glass can sing -- like an angel even, when she's awash in overdubs. Profane, meet sacred.

Now Scything: Kaki King, Beach House, Gavin Rossdale

Kaki King
Dreaming of Revenge
Score: 6

When Kaki King lets her fingers do the talking, it's easy to listen. The guitar mag perennial can handle plenty of instruments, and in addition to her weapon of choice, she wields bass and percussion here. Her voice, on the other hand, is a different body, comparable to a foreign medium through which she passes gingerly. Her slight, colorless vocals distract the listener and seem to pull her from her stringed world. When spoken in short bursts, as on "Pull Me Out Alive," they work better with her tapping technique; drawn out, as on the plaintive "Life Being What It Is," they steer the focus onto her weakest element. Smartly, Dreaming of Revenge is largely an instrumental album, with seven of its 11 tracks vocal-free. Take in the scrabbling and snapping of "Bone Chaos in the Castle" and the way King caresses sighs out of lap steel and electric alike on "Montreal," and you might see what the guitar magazines have been going on about.


Beach House
Devotion
Score: 5

If you're jonesing for a feel-good song, don't turn to Beach House. (That'd be the Beach BOYS you're looking for.) No, the Baltimore duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally pretty much stick to ... well, they don't really do sad songs, either. Devotion, like their self-titled debut two years earlier, wanders a perpetually socked-in soundscape of keyboards, reverb and organ thrum. If it could take shape, it would definitely be a plateau. There's a sense of depression to Legrand's songs of domestic life, as if she experienced sadness once but is numb to it now and is trying to reclaim it. In "All the Years," for instance, she describes "sitting on a rock, just / waiting for a key / to sleep inside the house / of old serenity." Devotion's mixing job plays up the band's haziness, but that doesn't flatter the material. Scally's guitar rarely rises above murk level. Legrand's vocals are difficult to pick out even when they aren't vying with a lot of instruments, and the lyrics are often opaque. "Astronaut," a somewhat psychedelic liaison, is really the only reason to read the liner notes. The mantralike chorus of "Gila" provides a much-needed hook; outside that, there's not much to latch onto.


Gavin Rossdale
Wanderlust
Score: 4

Fellow Brit Mike Skinner of The Streets once declared, "I make bangers, not anthems." Gavin Rossdale does the opposite. Post-Bush and post-Institute, he shoots for the stadiums. Virtually every song on his solo debut tries to make grand statements (or at least big sounds) out of whatever's on his mind. Those things, regrettably, come out dressed in generic lyrics and verse-chorus-verse structures, which betray the effort Rossdale puts into his vocals. The imbalance between action and emotion culminates in a chorus that goes, in part, "Better get in my car and drive." It doesn't help that the phrase is preceded by "caught in a landslide," 'cause if you're caught in a landslide, you can't very well drive, though we can presume it's a metaphor (or maybe both are metaphors). Dave Stewart of Eurythmics worked with Rossdale in writing three songs ("Future World," "Another Night in the Hills," "Beauty in the Beast"), and Shirley Manson and Katy Perry contribute backing vocals, but their collective influence barely registers. If there's a sophomore slump in Rossdale's future, he won't have far to fall.

Follow them into the dark

Death Cab for Cutie
Narrow Stairs
Score: 7

Ben Gibbard writes drama, not comedy. But even with that in mind, the songs on Death Cab for Cutie's sixth album run notably darker than those on Narrow Stairs' nearest predecessor, 2005's Plans. And with fewer melodic entry points, the album isn't easy to get into.

Now four years removed from their indie-label days with Barsuk and enjoying a higher profile than ever before, Death Cab took a minor risk by making a less accessible album. Of course, it's obvious they weren't weren't too concerned with its commercial appeal, judging by the length of the first single, "I Will Possess Your Heart." Giving commercial radio stations an eight-minute-plus song is a good way to get ignored. Yet the single found a strong radio presence, even if many stations evaded the time commitment by playing an abbreviated version.

"I Will Possess Your Heart" showcases a lesser-known talent of Death Cab: the long song. Back in 2002, the steadfast trudge of the Stability EP's title track --- likely influenced by slowcore pioneers Codeine, for whom Gibbard has expressed admiration --- demonstrated that the band could lock in a mood and keep a song interesting even in lengthy instrumental passages. The plangent title track to Transatlanticism and an extended version of "We Looked Like Giants" on the The John Byrd E.P. proved this was no fluke.

At first, "I Will Possess Your Heart" seems to fit with Gibbard's other portraits of bittersweet romance: It's just a fellow following his heart, hoping for the best, eager to please and earnest to prove. But the second verse exposes the man as more than persistent, beginning with "there are days when outside your window / I see my reflection as I slowly pass." The way this development creeps up on the listener pairs well with the night-driving groove of Nick Harmer's bass and the canter of Jason McGerr's drums in the 4 1/2-minute instrumental opening section, almost as if they're a harbinger of the window-peeping to come. In retrospect, the title itself hints at the character's intentions. He's not going to win your heart; he's going to possess your heart. This guy's not taking no for an answer. He's going to get what he wants, possibly by force, if it comes to that.

Though this drift into seaminess is probably the only moment that will make some younger Death Cab fans squirm, Narrow Stairs has plenty of cobwebs in its corners. If they were about the same person, "Cath" and "You Can Do Better Than Me" could be successive chapters following a meek lonelyheart: "You can do better than me -- hey, wait, Cath! I'm better than that guy!" And the brooding guitars of "Talking Bird" and feedback that hangs in "Bixby Canyon Bridge" convey definite friction.

Musically, "No Sunlight" is deceptively bright, with a surf guitar prancing and with piano highlights that glisten like dewy pie cherries. It's Gibbard's youth, all footloose and fancy-free. Until the clouds roll in. "The optimist died inside of me," he declares, even as the track remains happily upbeat. It's akin to Transatlanticism's "The Sound of Settling," a giddy sing-along that began, improbably, with the lyrics "I've got a hunger / twisting my stomach into knots." "Long Division," farther along Narrow Stairs, keeps similar company. Building itself on bass throbs and an oblong chord progression, the hooky Photo Album throwback is likely to join "Baba O'Riley" and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" in the hall of mistaken song titles, thanks to a repetitive chorus involving the word "remainder."

Still, the darkness has brought some stumbles. Tabla proves an odd fit (go figure) with Gibbard's vocals and the band's standard instrumental toolbox, disabling "Pity and Fear," though the Indian percussion works better for them when it's largely covered up by electric guitars. Puzzlingly, the track spikes in volume, then immediately cuts off, followed only a second later by the deliberate guitar tones of the last song, "The Ice Is Getting Thinner." The album has good pacing and logical sequencing up to this point, making it that much more frustrating of a decision.

The album closer leaves us on a pensive note. Returning to nature metaphors, Gibbard tells how two people have grown apart with time, not unlike ice floes. "We're not the same, dear, as we used to be / the seasons have changed and so have we."

The same holds true for Death Cab.

As the Crow flies

Sheryl Crow
Detours
Score: 5

Somewhere between the
time Sheryl Crow went
from mold-scraping and french toast-serving to
Kid Rock-dating (and dumping), her earth went fallow. Conflict and passion leached, she sang a could-be ode to tanning. 2005's glossy and conventional Wildflower didn't help matters. This time around, she comes armed with some serious fodder, namely a broken-off engagement, a recovery from cancer, and an adopted son. Yet for all the creative possibility these topics offer, Crow often proves unable to convert that to a powerful performance.

In "Make It Go Away (Radiation Song)," for instance, her exam-table entreaties are fairly flat despite the gravity of the situation, and when her multitracked voice is used for an overlapping effect, the result doesn't resemble mortal pleading, but surface-level whining.

"Diamond Ring" is a small improvement: Over the stagger of a kick-snare beat, Crow recalls how her push to get married was the catalyst in dissolving a relationship (with Lance Armstrong, in all likelihood). An organ churns for the chorus as Crow tests her pipes. It's a rare instance of her singing forcefully and reaching for high notes, and it's one of the better songs she's written this decade. Unfortunately, it seems as if she's concentrating on hitting her notes rather than conveying the emotion that she clearly must feel. As a result, she can't quite pull off the pathos. The raw song itself, however, is good enough to become a standard. Assuming Crow's plight is common enough to invite feelings of solidarity, it will be interesting to hear what other artists bring to "Diamond Ring" in the future.

The life change that does produce a solid performance is "Lullaby for Wyatt," a tender tribute to her baby son, in which she expresses premature worries along with the standard pledges of parental caring. "How do I keep you from losing your way?" she wonders, "Hope you'll go out and you'll come back someday." What could have been a treacle cradlesong instead achieves a rounder quality, more representative of the sweep of emotions brought on by new parenthood.

In general, the sparer the song on Detours, the better Crow fares, and vice versa. The title track and "Drunk with the Thought of You," both largely acoustic numbers, whisper their wings with Beatle dust, hinting at Crow's Fab Four appreciation (she covered "Mother Nature's Son" for the "I Am Sam" soundtrack and "Here Comes the Sun" for the "Bee Movie" soundtrack). By contrast, the hippie-dippy "Out of Our Heads" grafts a torpid Euro house beat to slide guitar and accordion, and the percussion for "Love Is All There Is" sounds too canned.

From the beginning, when the loud, pro-studio "Shine Over Babylon" rudely tailgates the pretty, lo-fi folk of "God Bless This Mess," it's apparent that Detours is muddled. But the album's not without its moments.

Burning the book of love

The Long Blondes
Couples
Score: 10

Romantic strife is The Long Blondes' stock-in-trade, but Couples affords the topic an inflamed sense of urgency, writhing as if dunked in turpentine. Kate Jackson, the album's principal voice, bounds through tales of curdled love, yowling here, sashaying there, as the rest of the band shake the dust off new wave and disco, assimilating them into their tightly wound rock 'n' roll.

The lyrics, nearly all written by lead guitarist Dorian Cox, examine the intrigue inherent in affairs: the emotional twisting and turning that upends lives and turns people into marionettes.

"Too Clever by Half" swivels to an R&B rhythm and outlines a "Closer"-style web of betrayal: "You both planned to leave your lovers and run off with each other / and leave us to look like fools." Jackson delivers the lines seductively, her character's coquettishness meant to draw the cheater close. Clearly possessing the upper hand and knowing it, she savors the moment, her words exposing themselves as a taunt. Then she sticks the knife in: "When you and her were out, I would go 'round to his house / and I don't have to tell you what we did next."

The roles are somewhat reversed in "Round the Hairpin," which throws a rented car into the equation. He's at the wheel. She's at his mercy. A keyboard lurches and buoys, combining with drummer Screech Louder's snare taps to lock in the trajectory, weaving back and forth, back and forth. When the taps give way to crashes, it's the terror pounding in the passenger's head. "Don't let me die," she pleads (possibly a last-minute ad-lib by Jackson, since the phrase isn't listed in the liner notes for the song). The driver's response, spoken by Cox and barely audible over the now-screaming guitars, is a chilling ramble, complete with, "If I can't have you, I don't want nobody / If I can't have you, I don't want to live."

Similarly, the woman at the pub in "The Couples" feels that failed love has sucked the life out of her. Now jaded, she clings to her self-pity as she watches the guys and gals. "People have the nerve to tell me that they're lonely," she moans to herself, "You're not lonely --- I am, baby."

All of this is heavy stuff, but Couples is a hemorrhage you can dance to. The slinky bass line of "Too Clever by Half" invites you to strut, and "Guilt" demands more, its disco-indebted beat and humming keyboards poppy enough to be a floor-filler. When it comes to vocals, bassist Reenie Hollis and guitarist-keyboardist Emma Chaplin add to the variety, providing the shouted chorus on "Here Comes the Serious Bit" and backing vocals elsewhere.

The final track, "I'm Going to Hell," is a towering inferno of a rock song -- huge enough to be a Broadway production -- with piano pounding worthy of at least a few puffs of "Great Balls of Fire." "I don't watch soap operas," one of the cheaters confesses, "maybe I should / I need to know if being the bad guy's any good." Everything about the song goes for broke: musically, vocally, thematically. It goes for the throat and hits the heart instead.

Soul sides

My Morning Jacket
Evil Urges
Score: 10

A brave step into uncertain territory, Evil Urges proves, first and foremost, that Jim James can sound great even without the echo that has swathed and reinforced his voice on previous albums. It also proves that My Morning Jacket have legs beyond their rollicking jams, delivering song after song of accessible, well-crafted, traditionally styled rock.

From the get-go, Evil Urges indicates that it will be a far different listen than its predecessors. The soul style that James dabbled in on 2005's Z now takes center stage, with him heavily favoring his upper register on the first three songs. The change is all the more drastic because his voice is no longer echo-drenched. It's odd to hear to his notes without sustain; it gives a feeling of directness, and it might be an attempt to achieve a new level of intimacy, putting the listener in the room with James rather than on the other end of a grain silo. On the ballad "Thank You Too!," James tells a loved one, "you really saw my naked heart / you really brought out the 'naked' part." He could just as easily have been talking about his voice.

"Highly Suspicious" shows us another side. Like a kid who suddenly discovers he can holler, James has a ball with his falsetto, swooping around and climbing. He even cackles, the closest approximation being the witch in Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall." And though James' vocals in the title track suggest Smokey Robinson, Jackson might be the nearest influence to James' burgeoning soul-man side (go back and listen to him "hoo!" on Z's "Wordless Chorus").

That opening trio --- "Evil Urges," "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 1" and "Highly Suspicious" --- is the biggest surprise, but My Morning Jacket don't shift into their standard structure until later; "I'm Amazed" seems like a long-lost Lynyrd Skynyrd cousin, and "Thank You Too!" covets the power ballads of the '70s. "Sec Walkin," the first to resemble their past work, breaks out the Rhodes for a droopy excursion. But about when James' sentiment nears moping, on the hunt for "eyes that hypnotize and sparkle," a voice behind him repeats "sparkle" and begins to shadow him or harmonize with him periodically.

It's one of the signs on Evil Urges that the role of James' bandmates is expanding. Not only do bassist Two-Tone Tommy, drummer Patrick Hallahan, guitarist Carl Broemel and keyboardist Bo Koster play their parts masterfully and help shape James' songs, but Koster and Broemel also lay down backing vocals on more than a few cuts. Those vary from the bright additions to "Sec Walkin" to an affected, comical gruffness on "Highly Suspicious" to more-traditional accompaniment elsewhere. This development increases My Morning Jacket's repertoire and opens the door to even more options in the future.

So where will they head next? One possibility could be greater experimentation with song structures and narrative threads, as hinted by "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 1" and its companion piece. Both concern a craving for human connection, and the second side of the song proceeds past the longing glances of the first, to a precipice. Despite the song being about the thrill of new love, James isn't so much basking in it as he is hanging on for dear life. The chorus is a dual expression of joy and fear: "Ohhhhhhhh! This feeling, it is wonderful! Don't you ever turn it ahh-a-ahh-a-ahhhhhff!"

If his love was guaranteed, there'd be no need to plead for it.

Now Scything: She & Him, Counting Crows, N.E.R.D.

She & Him
Volume One
Score: 9

These days, when an actress decides to dive into singing and songwriting, often the best you can hope for is collective amnesia. But unlike Ashlee Simpson, Juliette Lewis, Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan or Scarlett Johansson, Zooey Deschanel has tapped into a vein of musical talent. Collaborating with M. Ward (but you can call him Him), Deschanel demonstrates a keen ear for melody and a knack for country-tinged pop delivered in the style of Patsy Cline. Whether covering "You Really Got a Hold on Me" or chirping her way through originals, Deschanel sings with a purity of spirit that recalls a bygone era. (The whistling on "I Thought I Saw Your Face Today" is more likely to evoke "The Andy Griffith Show" than Peter Bjorn and John -- not that PB&J aren't pure themselves.) On "Black Hole," for example, Deschanel lays out her melancholy simply: "I'm alone on a bicycle for two." And "I Was Made for You" shows that, with some smart multitracking, she can pull off nimble harmonies worthy of The Angels (of "My Boyfriend's Back" fame). M. Ward, who produced the succinct Volume One and contributed guitar and vocals, doubtlessly played a big role in achieving the album's vintage sound. The warm and dusty overtones might as well be sunbeams shining in from an attic window.


Counting Crows
Saturday Nights
& Sunday Mornings
Score: 5

Thanks to pop culture, we know Saturday night's all right for fighting, drinking, carousing, canoodling and otherwise blowing off steam. And Sunday's the day of regret and hangover and phone-checking. Between the seven of them, the members of Counting Crows no doubt had plenty of personal experience to draw from in creating Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. For a while, it looked as if Counting Crows were winding down, having released a greatest-hits collection in 2003, Films About Ghosts: The Best Of, and a concert disc in 2006, New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall, which was compiled from shows performed more than three years earlier. Yet here they are. Naturally, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings speaks to both sides of its title, loading the first half with rock bluster and the second half with quieter fare. (Turn off the amps, break out the banjo and the piano.) The album would have been right at home when cassettes were the order of the day. It's brave to lead off with a song that references Christopher Columbus and borrows from a mnemonic device about him sailing "the ocean blue," but Adam Duritz has kept good care of his voice, and he sells "1492" with his earnestness. He also has a hit in the resigned "You Can't Count on Me," care of a catchy chorus. Given the time that's passed since Counting Crows' last studio album, 2002's Hard Candy, it's remarkable how little has changed stylistically, though the caliber of their songs in general started to sag before the new millennium. Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings works as a quasi-concept album, but you won't necessarily want it to serve as your soundtrack to Saturday night or Sunday morning.


N.E.R.D.
Seeing Sounds
Score: 7

In one of their many farces, comedy band Flight of the Conchords had their way
with a song style praised
the world over: the sex jam. But if "Business Time" took away any of the style's mojo, even for just a few minutes, consider it taken back. N.E.R.D.'s "Time for Some Action" is a lust-not-love instant classic, or would be if it weren't attached to an intro of Pharrell Williams talking about a supernatural ability he discovered in the shower (see album title). In an odd but effective pairing, The Hives supply the bassy bump 'n' grind and the deep, throaty hook as Williams indulges his inner lothario. Seeing Sounds, though, has more than that to offer. The second half is a garden of delights, from the Red Hot Chili Pepper-ish funk metal of "Kill Joy" to the extended chorus and guitar heroics of "Sooner or Later." Turn down the bed, but save some energy for the rest of the show.

He loves the '80s

M83
Saturdays=Youth
Score: 5

A song called "Teen Angst" appeared on Anthony Gonzalez's last nonseries album, the masterwork
Before the Dawn Heals Us;
this time around, the topic carries a lot more weight. Saturdays=Youth is Gonzalez's homage to the '80s, particularly to synthesizer-heavy British rock.

"Graveyard Girl" bears the unmistakable influence of New Order, guitars chiming over synth strings and a brisk tempo. But the bridge goes overboard, yielding the floor to the title character, who, with a school bell ringing in the background, proceeds to drown us in melodrama:

"I'm gonna jump the walls and run. I wonder if they'll miss me. I won't miss them. The cemetery is my home; I want to be a part of it, invisible even to the night. Then I'll read poetry to the stones. Maybe one day I could be one of them: wise and silent, waiting for someone to love me, waiting for someone to kiss me. I'm 15 years old, and I feel it's already too late to live. Don't you?"

The monologue reduces her to a stereotypically irrational teenager, removing any intrigue from her graveyard fascination. It's precisely the sort of move that's at odds with Gonzalez's wistfulness, making him seem more of a patronizing adult than the kindred spirit he means to be.

Many of the vocals come courtesy of Morgan Kibby, a classically trained Los Angeles-based musician with whom he's collaborating. Also on hand is brother Yann, who helps with the songwriting, and drummer Loic Maurin in an expanded role, also contributing guitar, bass and keyboards this time around.

Saturdays=Youth continues Gonzalez's retreat from his early instrumental works, as well as his movement toward conventional song structures. Gone are the choirs of Before the Dawn Heals Us. Gone, too, are the noisy jaunts, leaving Saturdays=Youth fairly homogeneous.

As on past M83 releases, the final track is of epic length: 11-plus minutes. The problem is that there's too little variation in "Midnight Souls Still Remain" to support its runtime. The moody synth drone, registering somewhere between Brian Eno and Angelo Badalamenti, doesn't function as a climax; it simply stretches on for what seems like an arbitrarily long time, then drops off.

Also frustrating is the album's cover, a tableau of characters with uncanny resemblance to those featured in coming-of-age movies set in the '80s. Ever seen "The Breakfast Club"? Even if you've seen the box, you'll get it. Ever seen "Donnie Darko"? Really, a guy in skeleton pajamas?! The only way that could be more obvious is to have the dude with the neck chain appear as a giant menacing rabbit.

Gonzalez would have done better to try subtlety. His nostalgia for the '80s is genuine, and his mimicry of some of the decade's British rock touchstones (Tears for Fears, Kate Bush) is skilled, but his heavy-handed approach doesn't do justice to him or his inspirations.