Disc of the week

Bloc Party
A Weekend in the City (Vice/Warner)
With producer Jacknife Lee’s helping hand, the U.K.’s Bloc Party push the parameters on their second proper album, due out Tuesday. The trusty tropes established on Silent Alarm—the rhythm section’s dance-before-we-die artillery barrage, the stabbing guitars whipping up into climactic blizzards—serve them well on the back-to-back “Hunting for Witches,” “Waiting for the 7.18” and “The Prayer.” But the latter and “Where Is Home?” suggest they’ve been soaking in TV on the Radio’s ecstatic innovations, and elsewhere, tamer tempos and bright, bittersweet fragility cement their place in the Britpop pantheon. Most importantly, frontman Keke Okereke has ditched his dim lyrical abstractions for direct action, touching on tough times and teen angst, coke binges and queer love, “second-generation blues” and post-9/11—excuse me, post-7/7—paranoia. Hardly a happy time, but a weekend well spent. 9/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)

John Mellencamp

Freedom’s Road (Universal Republic)

Even though Mellencamp has long since ditched the Cougar moniker, most folks will still perceive the poor guy as the hayseed who sang about Jack and Diane taking up residence in pink houses in the middle of the heartland. This first record in five years, though, shows Mellencamp still proud of his past but surely growing out of his ’80s persona. Although he still can’t hold a candle to Springsteen in the overcrowded blue-collar rock genre, this actually isn’t half bad. The duet with Joan Baez, “Jim Crow,” is great, but on “Heaven Is a Lonely Place,” he proves he can still ably steer a pen when it comes to simple and effective storytelling. 7/10 (Johnson Cummins)

Kristin Hersh

Learn to Sing Like a Star (4AD/Select)

Though she’s tended to favour light arrangements on her solo records, in contrast to her invariably scalding subject matter, Kristin Hersh’s seventh album bears a slightly harder edge, recalling her Throwing Muses material, or even that of her more recent band, 50 Ft Wave. Even the tracks dominated by acoustic guitar and voice come with a side of lovely strings and piano, while rumbling guitars and string sections kick-start some songs like fanfare. There’s still urgency in her distinctive voice, despite its bluesy weariness (or dreariness), and there are enough fiery
and sublimely sad tunes here to match its weight. 7.5/10
(Lorraine Carpenter)

The Earlies

The Enemy Chorus (Secretly Canadian)

Split between Texas and Manchester, the Earlies’ first proper album is a hit ’n’ miss grab-bag of spit ’n’ polish psychedelia. Their sound owes more to orchestral pop and sci-fi soundtracks than psychedelic rock, with mechanical synths leading teams of strings, horns and piano, and a little country guitar, and blues and gospel melodies lending some Dead-head-friendly roots-music flourishes to the proceedings. Meditative tracks like “The Ground We Walk On” and “Little Trooper” suffer from plain presentation and pedestrian melodies, however, and even bright moments like “Foundation and Earth” and “Breaking Point” get a little lost in a jumble of half-formed songs. 6.5/10 (Lorraine Carpenter)

Saliva

Blood Stained Love Story (Island/Universal)

One shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or back cover, but when I see a band I’ve heard little about and they look like their best days are behind them, I start to worry. Especially when their semi-rap rock sounds like something 19-year-olds could be doing, and better. It’s not bad music, just boring, generic and not very inspiring. You can expect to hear the sappy “Never Gonna Change” and the anthemic cheese of “King of the Stereo” in a crappy teen action flick sometime soon. 6/10 (Lateef Martin)

Rafter

Music for Total Chickens
(Asthmatic Kitty/Sonic Unyon)

Rafter Roberts is no household name, but he’s allegedly either played in, produced, mastered or engineered the likes of the Rapture, the Fiery Furnaces, Black Heart Procession and Sufjan Stevens. He’s also behind the music in Superbowl ads, but you wouldn’t know it from this little patch of difficult listening. That said, there’s a distinct pop sensibility behind his stream-of-consciousness guitars, narcoleptic time signatures, Philip Glass thievery and piercing feedback, as well as some of the most tranquil sounds this side of new age music. Ultimately, it’s more punishing than rewarding, but it’s an interesting place to visit. 6/10 (Lorraine Carpenter)

The Mooney Suzuki

Have Mercy (V2)

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. After blatantly trying to storm the charts with their last stinker, the one the Dust Brothers’ production stomped the life out of, the boys are back for another crack. In the fallout of missing the brass ring, they’d called it a day, but reformed to offer this apology. Sometimes, things are better left unsaid. Have Mercy is hardly as bad as their last record, but it really pours dirt on their grave with “mature” songs like “This Broke Heart of Mine” and the horrendous “First Comes Love.” They just come across as the whining New York trust-fund brats they truly are. Avoid! 5/10 (Johnson Cummins)

múm

The Peel Session EP (Fat Cat/BBC/Fusion III)

From back in October ’02 come these 20-odd minutes of early múm material, a command performance for the late, great John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show. Over four tunes drawn from their first two albums, the Icelandic forest sprites display first a strong predilection for irritable, skittering glitch rhythms and fragile music-box melody, and then the chamber-pop charm and fairy-tale neo-folk that they were moving towards. A good intro for newbies, but for fans, it’s both a neat look back and a warm-up for this coming year’s new album. 7.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)

The Glimmers Fabriclive.31 (Fabric/Fusion III)

The latest in a series of DJ mixes that impress more often than not has Belgium’s Mo Becha and David Fouquaert deploying their dissident, deviant disco to uneven effect. Opening strong on a Roxy Music remix and an unearthed Fingerprintz track, the mix then gets mired in a long stretch of dour, rigid and unremarkable electro-house, punctured only by an Optimo remix of Scottish rockers Sons and Daughters’ punchy “Dance With Me.” The second act picks up again with the tasty retro rap “Reckless,” George Kranz’s nutty Euro-scat jam “Din Daa Daa,” LCD Soundsystem, a dub-reggae detour and a mid-’60s Moog meltdown from Pierre Henry. Now that’s the good stuff. 7.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)

Think Twice

With a Loop and Some Swing (P-Vine)

Montreal producer Think Twice, aka Phil Kennedy, isn’t quite a household name in Montreal, where he lives and works, but with this, his second full-length and first solo release on Japanese label P-Vine, that could very well change. With most tracks clocking in at around 94 bpm, and a nod factor laced with jazz and soul, Montreal hip hop gets a makeover as TT teams up with Manchilde and Shogun for the solid single “People Wanna Know.” Local MCs like Mr. Goodvibes, Loes, Karma, and Lotus all benefit from the tight timing and open ear of this up and comer. 8.8/10 (Scott C)

Various

Mount Real Mixtape Vol. 1 (Escape)

If the Mount Real Mixtape does anything, it does a great job of showing you just how many different local takes on hip hop there actually are. From the thuggish lament of drama laden tracks from Cashrulez, Magnum 357, Novakane and Mr. Bits, to the boom-bap appeal of Velvet Trench Vibes, D-Shade, Metazon and Meta4ce, there’s more voices now then there ever was. Now, that doesn’t mean it all pops, and the downfall off this comp comes in showcasing one too many duds. Get it tight, get it right. 6/10 (Scott C)

Gladys Knight
Before Me (Verve/Universal)

Natalie Cole
Leavin’ (Verve/Universal)

Legendary soul singer Gladys Knight looks to the great jazz artists for inspiration on her latest set. Knight’s still a vocal powerhouse and here, she seems in a perpetual state of joy. That works wonders for songs like “Since I Fell for You,” but she just sounds too content to effectively convey the disappointment of “This Bitter Earth” or “Good Morning Heartache.” Meanwhile, Natalie Cole seems right at home interpreting the work of everyone from Fiona Apple to Kate Bush, yet she also comes up short. Cole simply doesn’t have the range of a singer like Knight, so her interpretations of more expressive material, like Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be,” aren’t convincing. The one original track in Cole’s set, “5 Minutes Away,” is a solid addition to her catalogue. Both 7.5/10 (Gerard Dee)

Ian Hendrickson-Smith

Blues in the Basement (Cellar Live)

Night Crawlers
Presenting (Cellar Live)

Tenorman Hendrickson-Smith is common to both these releases on Cory Weeds’s Vancouver label. The first was recorded in NYC, the second in Vancouver, and both are live recordings drenched in funk. The former features a tenor-trumpet front line, while the latter has Chris Gestrin on B3 with tenor and alto (Weeds), Dave Sikula on guitar and Jesse Cahill on drums in a seven-track program including material from the pens of Horace Silver, Big John Patton and Jack McDuff. Simple stuff, but guaranteed to get your foot a-tappin’. Both 8/10 (Len Dobbin)

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