Music & Reviews

One of the year’s best music videos was directed by Jay-Z and cost about zero dollars to make. The camera phone clip shows Beyoncé rehearsing her new album’s opening eternal-love ballad, “1+1“, backstage at “American Idol”. There she is: eyes shut, standing in front of a mirror, singing her guts out while family and friends look on in quiet awe. The video has a similar impromptu charm to the many intimate, one-shot performance clips popularized by Vincent Moon’s “Take Away Show”, its appeal compounded by the shock of seeing such a notoriously manicured superstar without embellishment. “Help me let down my guard,” she belts. And, as Beyoncé finishes the song, you hear her proud husband let out a joyous “woo!” It’s all quite endearing and personal– two words one might not often associate with this superhumanly talented and famous couple. “Sometimes you need perspective,” wrote Jay in an intro to the video on his Life + Times website. “You’ve been right in front of greatness so often that you need to step back and see it again for the first time.”

It’s a fitting sentiment and song to introduce 4, which largely deals with monogamy and all that comes with committing to one person for a potential lifetime. Which, like a bad marriage, might sound boring, repetitive, staid. But, in Beyoncé’s more-than-capable and still-in-love hands, a relationship that lasts can seem as complicated and rewarding as anyone would hope. “If I ain’t got something, I don’t give a damn/ ‘Cause I got it with you,” she testifies on “1+1”– potentially dubious words from a woman who certainly has “something,” but her mainlined vocals quickly dismiss mere logistics. The song boasts some of her finest-ever singing laid over a bed of warm and flowing synths, strings, and bass that manages to connect the dots between Sam Cooke and Prince without sacrificing any Beyoncé-ness. “1+1” is that rare wonder: a wedding song that pleases but doesn’t pander.

The only recent pop ballad that comes close to its power is Adele’s stunning “Someone Like You“. But where that song– and its massively successful corresponding album, 21— wrung out the aftermath of young heartbreak, Beyoncé is aiming for something a bit more challenging with 4: love the one you’re with, and have some fun doing it, too. The album’s relative riskiness extends to its music, which side-steps Top 40 radio’s current Eurobeat fixation for a refreshingly eclectic mix of early-90s R&B, 80s lite soul, and brass’n’percussion-heavy marching music. All of the album’s best elements, thematically and sonically, burst ahead on Jay-Z ode “Countdown”, a honking, stutter-step sequel of sorts to “Crazy in Love“. The new track makes 10 years of loyalty seem just as thrilling as the first time, with Beyoncé offering her partner copious praise in that famed half-rap cadence: “Still love the way he talks/ Still love the way I sing/ Still love the way he rock them black diamonds in that chain.”

The album’s carefree retro sensibility pops up on three more highlights, including the Kanye West-assisted “Party”, which combines a pitch-perfect André 3000 guest verse, a Slick Rick sample, bubbly 80s keyboard tones, and 90s girl-group harmonies. The track has Beyoncé infatuated once again while its mid-tempo bounce provides prime summer barbecue background. “Love on Top” lilts like a lost Reagan-era smash, its light-as-air bop recalling Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder at their sunniest. And “End of Time” is perhaps 4‘s most strident declaration of co-dependence; sounding like En Vogue remixed by a high school pep band, the song has Beyoncé finding the strength in two as she sings, “I just wanna be with you/ I just wanna live for you/ I’d never let you go!” That track– along with most of 4‘s stand outs– was co-written and co-produced by the star’s other invaluable partner, Terius “The-Dream” Nash.

The pair first combined forces on super hit “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)“, but their collaborative relationship fully blooms on this album’s ramped-up back half, including the bombastic, Major Lazer-sampling empowerment tract “Run the World (Girls)”. As a songwriter, The-Dream has a way of drawing out a side of Beyoncé that’s both more personal and brash, and, as seen on his several brilliant solo albums, his production style routinely references past greats while standing in the now. Tellingly, without his help the album stumbles, as on the overblown “I Was Here”, a faceless, theoretically-inspirational slog written by veteran schlockmeister Diane Warren. (Unsurprisingly, “I Was Here” is the only cut on the record that wasn’t co-written by Beyoncé herself, too.) Elsewhere, Babyface spearheads the decent “Irreplaceable” retread “Best Thing I Never Had”, which probably wouldn’t sound out-of-place on a Vanessa Carlton album, and Sleepy Jackson/Empire of the Sun leader Luke Steele worked on the ungainly “Rather Die Young”, which ruins its Philly soul vibe with a theatrical Broadway glaze. (Steele also contributed an awful hook on Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 trash-can bait “What We Talkin’ About“– can we get him away from this couple, please?)

Ironically, 4‘s deluxe edition comes with three bonus songs that would easily count among the proper album’s finest moments. Chiefly, The-Dream co-written/produced “Schoolin’ Life” is an irresistible Prince tribute that’s much more motivational than “I Was Here” could ever be: “Who needs a degree when you’re schoolin’ life?” struts Beyoncé. The singer has said she recorded more than 60 songs while making 4, and some of the wrong-headed inclusions are lazy attempts at re-creating her past hits. But they are few. And the lion’s share of the album– along with its excellent deluxe tracks– has one of the world’s biggest stars exploring her talent in ways few could’ve predicted, which is always exciting. After 2008’s I Am… Sasha Fierce, which saw Beyoncé catching up to trends when she wasn’t trying Streisand-wannabe ballads, 4 is more akin to her wily sophomore solo album, B’Day. But where that record was preoccupied with the club, 4 is happy at home; on Off the Wall-style bonus track “Lay Up Under Me”, the contented 29-year-old gushes, “You ain’t gotta worry ’bout a club, just come on lay up under me tonight.” If anyone can make a quiet Friday night come off like an open-bar blowout, it’s Beyoncé.

Up to this point, it’s been somewhat difficult to listen to the broke-down electro-pop of Handsome Furs without imagining what Dan Boeckner’s more established band, Wolf Parade, might do to elaborate on it. Though the projects sound very different, his songs for both bands rely heavily on his bleary-eyed lyricism and jagged guitar chug. But as Boeckner could tell you, there’s an easy way to get people to stop comparing your side project to your main gig: just break up the latter.

But it’s not just Wolf Parade’s recently announced “indefinite hiatus” that casts Sound Kaptial as Handsome Furs’ most passionate, committed album to date. Rather, by taking the emphasis off of Boeckner’s guitars and giving greater shine to wife Alexei Perry’s neon-bright keyboard lines and woofer-busting beats, Handsome Furs present themselves as a genuine, ready-for-the-floor synth-pop band rather than a frazzled rock act that happens to use synthesizers. With new wave confections like “Memories of the Future” and “What About Us”, Sound Kapital effectively conjures an alternate 1980s where Bruce Springsteen didn’t just tinker around with synths and drum machines on occasion, but actually tried to make a full-on Depeche Mode record.

However, Sound Kapital isn’t so much an 80s throwback in sound as in its spirit of sincerity. A handful of songs on the record were inspired by the Furs’ 2010 visit to Burma, where they performed alongside bands who were quite literally underground, forced to perform out of sight of the oppressive local authorities, with minimal access to electricity, let alone recording technology. Given that Boeckner’s always been drawn to the struggle of the underdog, the experience of being around people who routinely risked incarceration just to play their music naturally had a profound effect on his songwriting; the opening song is built around a click-tracked chant– “When I get back home/ I won’t be the same no more”– that effectively serves as a promise to put aside petty, material-world concerns.

And rather than deal in general, impressionistic images of hearts on fire and shining lights, the album’s centerpiece song, “Serve the People”, pays tribute to the Burmese band Side Effect with street-level scenes of “kids… making noise with their generators on till the cops say, ‘move along.'” It’s the sort of arm-swaying anthem you could easily imagine the Furs’ Montreal mates Arcade Fire turning into a Coachella-rocking showstopper. But the humbly lo-tech take– all shuffling drum-machine breaks and squelching frequencies– feels very true to the environment that inspired it, where music is exchanged via pirate radio and the power can be suddenly cut at any moment. The more frenzied companion track “Cheap Music” reframes the same scene, but downplays the overarching themes of valor and perseverance to convey the illicit, punk-rock thrill of hearing “a thousand lonely kids making noise in the basement.”

Therein lies Sound Kapital‘s greatest success: Handsome Furs no longer feel like a stripped-down antidote to Wolf Parade, but more like a band that’s able to execute progressively grander, emotionally resonant ideas while staying within their limited means. And nowhere is that more evident than on Sound Kapital‘s urgent, feedback-swathed closer “No Feelings”, which, despite its seven-minute sprawl, counts as Boeckner’s most immediately affecting performance since Wolf Parade’s “Shine a Light”. The song sees Boeckner returning to familiar concerns (emotional ennui, self-doubt) but as it reemerges from a My Bloody Valentine-like miasma for a final sprint to the finish, Boeckner’s repeated claims that he’s “got no feeling” provide Sound Kapital with a rare moment of irony: Everything about this song– and this entire album, for that matter– suggests this heart’s still got a lot left to burn.

A gang of surly teenagers gives away music for free online, makes light of the industry’s established byways, and somehow manages to sell records at a time when overall album sales continue to dwindle. It’s a familiar storyline these days, but when Arctic Monkeys’ precociously jaded Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not became the fastest-selling UK debut ever, back in early 2006, the idea of a “MySpace band” was still something new. Now, with News Corp. reportedly trying to sell MySpace and other sites such as Bandcamp and Tumblr taking the struggling social network’s place in music think-pieces, the Sheffield band’s latest is a throwback in a more classic sense.

Suck It and See, the Arctics’ fourth and most rewarding album so far, is not music to blog to. Listen while updating your Facebook status or crafting the perfect tweet, and you’re probably going to miss something crucial. Actually, you’re probably going to miss something anyway: For instance, the title, while no doubt partly intended as a provocation toward American audiences, is mostly just easily misunderstood Brit-speak for “give it a try.” But the record itself brims with endlessly replayable details, some goofy and some poignant, both in frontman Alex Turner’s always keenly observed lyrics and in the band’s ever-proficient music, the latter of which ranges here from muscular glam-rock to chiming indie pop balladry. Cowboy movies and humdrum observations about the weather conceal thoughtful contemplations on romance and coming of age.

“Oh, in five years’ time, will it be, ‘Who the fuck’s Arctic Monkeys?'” That was Turner five years ago. Fittingly, Suck It and See is something of a reboot for the band. 2007 sophomore effort Favourite Worst Nightmare, the Arctics’ first album with Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford producing, found the group enriching its palette both emotionally and sonically, while musically toughening up. 2009’s Humbug paired the group with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, leading to predictably brawny, unwound results. Elsewhere, Turner’s once-shouty voice ripened into a honeyed croon with 2008 side project the Last Shadow Puppets, and his recent solo soundtrack for Richard Ayoade film Submarine allowed him to unplug. The new record, produced by Ford but with a burly backing vocal from Homme on the churning “All My Own Stunts”, sounds informed by each of these experiences, distilling them all into the unit’s next phase: confident, melodic, and as expertly played as ever.

Turner has been talking up country greats Johnny Cash, George Jones, and Patsy Cline as lyrical influences on this album, along with Nick Cave, the Byrds, Nick Lowe, David Bowie, and Leonard Cohen. When he’s at his clearest (which is still pretty heavy with ambiguities), Suck It and See has a bleak sense of humor to prove he’s not kidding. That’s fleshed out by bandmates whose tastes run more toward Black Sabbath stomp or Stooges aggression. Musically, drummer Matt Helders remains the Arctics’ not-so-secret weapon, capable of lizard-brain freakouts or deceptively innocent waltzes; Sean Combs has invited him more than once to sit in with Diddy Dirty Money.

So hardly a verse goes by without an instant quotable or two, and the backing is elegant enough that at first you might not even notice. “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair”, a swaggering boogie worthy of its title, lists off dangerous ideas that are all presumably less dangerous than sitting down (“Do the Macarena in the devil’s lair”– you know, the usual). Plucky ode “Reckless Serenade” has a hell of an opening line: “Topless models doing semaphor/ Wave their flags as she walks by and get ignored.” Other times, Turner keeps his cards so close to the chest that trying to puzzle out literal meanings would probably be impossible, though his disconnected imagery is usually still pretty compelling. These songs tend to be heavier, more fuzzed-out: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid nod “Black Treacle”, which envisions “belly-button piercings in the sky at night” (how careful are Turner’s word choices? This careful: “Now it’s getting dark, and the sky looks sticky/ More like black treacle than tar”); “The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala”, which juxtaposes memorably impressionistic verses with searing, yes, sha-la-la-la choruses; “She’s Thunderstorms”, as tempestuous and captivating as its female subject. Only jagged, mathy “Library Pictures” fails to hold interest.

For a band whose breakthrough hit was called “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”, Arctic Monkeys have always been perhaps unexpectedly great at gentler moments. On that score, Suck It and See is a thing to behold. The heart-wrenching “Love Is a Laserquest” addresses a lost love every bit as unsparingly as past Arctics slow burners “Do Me a Favour”, “Cornerstone”, or “A Certain Romance”, picking up a lyrical theme that also runs throughout an album by a very different band, Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues: “Do you still feel younger than you thought you would by now?” Finale “That’s Where You’re Wrong”, in the steadily escalating two-chord format of LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends”, furthers this concern with the passing years: “Don’t take it so personally, honey/ You’re not the only one that time has got it in for.” Now there’s something you don’t see every blog-second: a group that grew up too fast, aging gracefully.