Ice cream may not go with pretzels, but the sweet and salty harmonies of Indigo Girls Emily Saliers and Amy Ray still work brilliantly on their ninth album. Three years after rocking out with Come On Now Social, the Indigos have returned to (mostly) unplugged arrangements that highlight the perfect vocal mix of the ethereal Saliers and gritty Ray. Acoustic guitars and mandolins take the Indigos back to their roots, while organs on a few tracks, such as "Moment of Forgiveness," a deeply felt single about maturing in a relationship, bring a rounded pop feel to Become You.
The Indigo Girls still have their moments of undergraduate-with-a-petition earnestness ("Lay down your weapons and love your neighbor," as they implore on "Our Deliverance," seems a bit facile these days). Yet on the title tune—on which the Atlanta-bred twosome confront the tangled past of the South—acoustic guitars meet a jaunty penny whistle for an earthy pep as welcome as an early spring.
Bottom Line: Close to their finest
Glenn Lewis (Epic)
Following D'Angelo, Maxwell and Bilal, Glenn Lewis is the latest soul man to bring back old-school R&B artistry. With his debut disc, this Toronto native harks back to the '70s heyday of album-oriented singers who didn't rely on eye-catching videos or studio trickery to make their mark—in particular artists such as Stevie Wonder, whom Lewis eerily sounds like, on tracks that could almost be leftovers from Wonder's Fulfillingness' First Finale or Hotter Than July.
Lewis, who cowrote all 15 cuts, excels at heart-wrenching ballads and moving midtempo numbers such as the first single, "Don't You Forget It," with its memorable vintage keyboard lines. And what Lewis lacks in originality he makes up for with a classic musicality on tight tunes like the acoustic-guitar-laced "Beautiful Eyes," a tender ode to his two sons, Xavier, 8, and Tobias, 4. As produced by Andre Harris and Vidal Davis, who have worked with other talented neo-soulsters such as Jill Scott and Musiq Soulchild, the entire CD captures an authentic '70s vibe that would do Stevie proud.
Bottom Line: Echoes of an unforgettable era
Darren Hayes (Columbia)
As lead singer of the Australian pop duo Savage Garden, Darren Hayes poured syrup on late-'90s adult-contemporary confections like "I Want You," "Truly Madly Deeply" and "I Knew I Loved You." Although he split with Garden mate Daniel Jones last year, little has changed on Hayes's solo debut, which goes down like too many chocolate-chip pancakes.
Working with producer Walter Afanasieff, who has charted success for Mariah Carey and Celine Dion as well as Savage Garden, Hayes doesn't mess with the hit-making formula here. And while it is all adequate enough for telephone-hold music, there is an innocuous, almost perfunctory quality to the disc, which is evenly split between ballads, midtempo numbers and dance tracks. Only the simmering slow jam "Insatiable," which showcases Hayes's silky, R&B-soaked falsetto, is really worth savoring.
Bottom Line: Won't hold up to repeat spins
Joi (Universal)
Mixing spaced-out psychedelia with raw, retro funk on her third solo album, Joi (full name Joi Gilliam-Gipp) is an obvious disciple of R&B titans Bootsy Collins and Chaka Khan. She even updates a Collins song, which humorously uses "the munchies" as a metaphor for sexual desire, and powerfully covers "I'm a Woman (I'm a Backbone)," Khan's 1974 funk-rock jam with Rufus, her former band.
With mostly her own lyrics, which are alternately witty and gritty, and music that bridges genres as well as decades, Joi certainly doesn't lack for ambition. Even so, this disc suffers from too many spoken interludes and not enough strong songs. But when she can wrap her versatile voice around a good melody, as on the soulful single "Missing You," it's a real joy.
Bottom Line: A flickering Star
Norah Jones (Blue Note)
Album of the week
Norah Jones may appear to be a brunette Britney, but don't let the Seventeen cover-girl looks fool you. At 22, the singer-pianist sounds as if she has spent the majority of her formative years in jazz haunts and smoky dives rather than the Mickey Mouse Club. She wears her old soul on her sleeve on her surprising debut, Come Away with Me, which fuses sophisticated cabaret-style musings with intimate folk-pop and even a bit of down-home country twang. The 14-track disc includes originals written by Jones and two members of her backing band, bassist Lee Alexander and guitarist Jesse Harris, as well as a Hank Williams cover, a Nina Simone standard and a tastefully understated rendition of the '30s jazz classic "The Nearness of You."
Jones, who attended the same arts high school as R&B star Erykah Badu in Dallas, has a beautifully textured voice with a myriad of interesting colors. The stripped-down production and instrumentation lay bare her vocals on such quiet gems as "The Long Day Is Over" and the mesmerizing title tune, which sounds like a standard but is actually a new composition by Jones. Her songwriting, like her singing, has a timeless allure.
Bottom Line: Keep up with this Jones
- Contributors:
- Kyle Smith,
- Chuck Arnold.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
