JUSTICE † This Parisian duo emerged as the brightest lights in the Euro nü-rave scene that’s also been dubbed blog-house, an apt name because the duo’s bowel-loosening riffs are gargantuan enough to sound cool on even the crappiest computer speakers. Like mentors Daft Punk, Justice create populist dance music—their Sabbath-meets–Nile Rodgers tunes are jacques-your-body jams for indie kids. With references drawn from ’70s hesher rock—quasi-Christian iconography, stomp-box bass lines, crunchy prog-synth riffs—Justice made electronic music filthy, funky, and fun again. M.E.
Even the worst Jay-Z songs have one lyric that makes you wonder, “How does he do it?” On Da Drought 3—the best of one trillion comps Weezy put out this year—that’s virtually every rhyme. He gets high, eats Gummi Bears, free-associates hustler fantasies and sports metaphors. And when he interrupts a lament about dying in the streets to interject, “When I was five, my favorite movie was the Gremlins / Ain’t got shit to do with this, but I thought I should mention,” the only appropriate response is stunned amazement. K.A.
After more than ten years as romantic and/or musical partners, Jack and Meg White behave like anything but an old married couple on their frisky sixth album. With the title track’s brash synth/guitar squeal, the mariachi wig-out “Conquest,” and the 280-Z prison-break “Bone Broke,” they convulse in a rhythmic flourish like first-drink soulmates whose chemistry is so dead-on it’s almost comical. And on “Rag and Bone,” Jack nails the band’s gleeful, junk-shop aesthetic, purring: “If ya ain’t gonna use it, just give it to us / We’ll give it a home.” C.A.
Despite its vintage tunes and acoustic arrangements, Springsteen’s 2006 album with the Seeger Sessions ensemble, We Shall Overcome, rocked plenty hard. So the beauty of Magic isn’t that the Boss is back to his arena-rousing ways; it’s that for the first time since the mid-’80s, he’s made a record that can’t be reduced to a slogan or a concept. Filled with optimism and dread, cynicism and sincerity, ballads and anthems, Magic sounds like life lived on the ground. M.W.
Having spent the better part of a decade exploring and exploding the possibilities of no-frills garage rock, Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and his dapper Swedes are now, gleefully and mischievously, all about the frills. Much has been made of the two Motown-meets-Motörhead tracks produced by Pharrell Williams, but no matter how many bells, whistles, or kitchen sinks are thrown into the mix of overdriven Nuggets riffs and shout-along choruses— “Try It Again” epitomizes this recipe at its best—the Hives still sound like the Hives. And like no one else. S.K.
Eschewing the it’s-all-about-the-art platitudes that bog down so many of his fellow prestige acts, Prince announced his return to immediately pleasurable songwriting on Planet Earth’s buzzing lead single: “I love you, baby / Just not like I love my guitar.” From the jangle pop of “The One U Wanna C” to a clutch of slow jams, the whole album bursts with a directness Prince hasn’t shown in years— which doesn’t mean there aren’t loads of idiosyncratic details. In “Mr. Goodnight,” his idea of foreplay is watching Chocolat on the big screen. M.W.
The loosest, funkiest album yet from a band that once wrote a song about a fitted shirt, Ga5 proved that Britt Daniel is capable of more than killer blue-eyed soul grooves and enigmatic descriptions of household objects—check out the ambient dub-blues of “The Ghost of You Lingers” or the brass-blast pop of “The Underdog.” Of course, it’s also got killer blue-eyed soul grooves and enigmatic descriptions of household objects, the finest of which, “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case,” is just as elegant as the item it extols. M.W.
References:
http://www.myspace.com/thewhitestripes
http://www.myspace.com/lilwayne
http://www.myspace.com/thehives
http://www.myspace.com/brucespringsteen
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