The ALBUM Section: March 2024

At the moment, it feels like it’s Beyonce’s world and we’re all just living in it.

So we’re going to dive in to her new album, as well as strong new releases from veterans Kim Gordon and Judas Priest.

 

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It doesn’t take much to connect the dots on Act II: Cowboy Carter’s inspiration — the 2016 Country Music Awards, where Beyoncé performed her Lemonade country song, “Daddy Lessons,” with the Chicks.

“This album has been over five years in the making,” she said on Instagram. “It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive.”

It was a terrific performance that night, one which met combination of racist backlash against Beyoncé (fresh off an unapologetically Black appearance at the Super Bowl) and simmering resentment against the Chicks for being right about George W. Bush’s Gulf War sequel.

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Artist: Beyoncé

Album: Act II: Cowboy Carter

Label: Parkwood/Columbia Records 

★★★★1/2 (4.5/5 stars)

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There’s been a long discussion when it comes to women in country. It was less than a decade ago that radio consultant Keith Hill put his feet in his mouth on the topic.

“If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out,” Hill said. “Trust me. I play great female records, and we’ve got some right now; they’re just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and artists like that. The tomatoes of our salad are the females.”

And if white women were getting the cold shoulder, that’s more than Black women in country have received from the establishment.

Racism drove Linda Martell, the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry (in 1969) from country music after just one album. She was blackballed for trying to leave and, no, I am not making the name of this label up, Plantation Records.

There was a 20-year gap between 1987 and 2007 where no Black woman reached the country singles chart.
Some R&B acts of the ’70s explored country (Tina Turner, the Pointer Sisters), but found friendlier reception elsewhere.

That’s fertile ground for Beyoncé, but Act II: Cowboy Carter is, as her pre-album promotion put it, “Not a country album,” at least not in the sense the hype might paint it as.

Rather, it’s a sprawling affair, 27 songs and interludes where country mingles with mutiple other genres, everything from opera (which she busts out on “Daughter”) to the hip-hop and R&B that launched her into superstardom.
2022’s Renaissance, the first album of a planned trilogy, explored the varied Black contributions to dance music to entertaining effect. Given the Black roots of country, it’s fertile ground for a superstar of Beyoncé’s talents and reach  to explore.

 

VIDEO: Beyoncé “Texas Hold ‘Em”

The album’s two covers don’t suggest that much of a deep dive, even though they make sense. The Beatles’ “Blackbiird” (spelled that way because Act II) comes full circle. Paul McCartney wrote the song in 1968 while seeing ongoing civil rights struggles in the U.S. from across the world.

Beyoncé augments the original’s restraint with lovely backing vocals from Black country singers Tanner Adell, Tierra Kennedy, Reyna Roberts and Brittney Spencer (who all appear elsewhere on Cowboy Carter) and some subtle strings. The battle for civil rights never went away. In a time where racist attacks invoke acronyms like CRT as weapons and use DEI as a substitute for the N-word, the performance here is a powerful reclamation.

“Jolene,” which Dolly Parton wrote on the same day in 1973 as “I Will Always Love You,” is the country legend’s most-covered song. Beyoncé expands on the original, turning it from a plea into a firm threat, that things won’t end well for Jolene if she persists.

It’s a nice, if predictable, twist. Whether it’s the original’s mix of wounded desperation and jealousy or this cover’s strong defiance, neither protagonist sings to the man with the wandering eye.

“Protector” is warmer and stronger, but no less determined than the Dolly cover — a country and soul ode to motherhood. “Alligator Tears” is bluesier in its explorations of doubt.

Guest appearances are often spoken word — the interludes with Dolly, Willie and Linda Martell.

The two biggest names to join Beyonce for actual duets are Miley Cyrus and Post Malone.

Miley channels her inner Stevie Nicks on “II Most Wanted,” a beautiful ode to friendship that also seems ready to be a future queer love staple.

“Levii’s Jeans” is playfully cheesy with a knowing wink, where Post Malone amiably manages not to screw things up.

It’s indeed noticeable that whether at its most serious or silly, Beyoncé is clearly enjoying herself, showing off her eclecticism and vocal skills throughout.

Honestly, if nothing else, Cowboy Carter makes the strongest case for her as a singer alone more than any of her albums.

“American Requiem” opens the album with a mixture of church vocals and twangy Outlaw country guitar dug into a mission statement for what’s to come.
The two songs released during the night of the Super Bowl hold up well in context of Cowboy Carter as a whole. The epically anthemic “16 Carriages” shows off its sweep even more placed between “Blackbird” and “Protector.” The blend of R&B and country on “Texas Hold ‘Em” remains pretty seamless, with Rhiannon Giddens on banjo.

 

VIDEO: Beyoncé “16 Carriages”

There’s been Bey bump for the Black country artists appearing on the album. Billboard recently reported a sizeable increase in streams for them (and others), which one hopes increases their money made in actual revenue sources.

In the case of Martell, it’s a deserved and long overdue case of giving the woman her flowers while she’s still with us. Giving her lone album, Color Me Country, a listen today leaves one impressed at the talent that was there and sadly angered that she was denied the opportunities to build on it.

Martell delivers a pair of spoken intros, first for “Spaghettii,” which features an Auto Tuned Shaboozey in a song that owes more to hip-hop. Ironically enough, it doesn’t channel spaghetti Western soundtracks (which “Daughter” does instead).

The second, “Ya Ya,” calls to mind classic old school soul music while sampling Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” and quoting “Good Vibrations.” Its irrestible music plays off the desperation in the lyrics, where the only seeming answer to poverty and income inequality really just keeping the Bible on the dash and keeping the faith.

Down the stretch, the album blurs the lines more. “Riiverdance” turns a country guitar loop into a soulful dance ballad. “II Hands II Heaven” moves into synth territory. “Sweet ★ Honey ★ Buckiin'” doesn’t bother to signal change its segues, feeling more random than effective as a result.

But the album ends effectively with Beyoncé revisting the opener for the country gospel of “Amen.”

Could Cowboy Carter be a little shorter? Sure. And for an album inspired by “digging into history,” the lone country cover being “Jolene” feels a little obvious.

But taken as a whole, it’s quite the showcase for Beyoncé as an artist. Upon repeated listens, it reminds me in a way of Sign O’ The Times. But whereas Prince indulged his muse as a showcase for the variety of styles he’d mastered, Beyoncé uses country as a launching point. If it’s not quite the grand statement where everything comes together, it’s still a damn good collection of songs.

Hopefully, it inspires people to check out Black women in country and Americana, women who can be the whole meal and not just the tomatoes, that they haven’t before.

It also leaves one wondering where she might go to wrap up the trilogy. Rock? Jazz? All of the above? She’s got two tough acts to follow and a whole lot in her tool kit to do just that.

 

 

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Kim Gordon, who turns 71 next month, is at a point in her life where she doesn’t have to put out albums or tour if she doesn’t feel like it.

These days, Gordon is just as likely to channel her artistic instincts into areas beyond what she’s known for in Sonic Youth, Body/Head, Free Kitten, various other side projects and solo. Visual, multimedia art projects, music for dance, that sort of thing.

When Gordon finished 2019’s No 8Home Record, there was a chance that her solo debut could be her last. She wasn’t in any rush to do another, but she did know what she wanted to do if she did.
It started it with once again working with producer Justin Raisen, only going farther than they did on No Home Record.

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Artist: Kim Gordon

Album: The Collective 

Label: Matador Records 

★★★★ (4/5 stars)

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“It’s essentially a continuation of the last record, but I wanted this one to be more beat-oriented,” Gordon told Rolling Stone this year. “Justin is really good at taking sounds and fucking them up. He’s sort of punk in that way, not respecting the technology in a way.” 

The two worked back-and-forth a lot. Gordon came up with some ideas. Raisen, who produced Lil Yachty’s acclaimed 2023 release Let’s Start Here, would send her beats. She’d come up with more ideas, adding her vocals and instrumentation.

Gordon had been involved when Sonic Youth brushed against hip-hop in the ’90s. Her lyrics to “Kool Thing” off 1990’s Goo, were inspired by LL Cool J. Public Enemy’s Chuck D did a guest appearance in the Flava Flav role, interjecting things like “Tell it like it is” and “Word up” halfway through a song that remained urgently guitar-driven alternative rock.

Later on, the band teamed up with Cypress Hill for “I Love You Mary Jane” (a title that apparently accurately reflected its recording) for the Judgment Night soundtrack. That song basically injected a little bit of noise and Gordon’s repeatedly sprechesang hook line of “Sugar come by/And get me high” into a Cypress Hill song.

The Collective is a whole other beast. The trap beats, the occsional appearances of Auto-Tune in buried wordless vocalizing take a turn from their current pop and hip-hop arenas into an industrial landscape full of all sorts of sonic touches familiar to Gordon’s work over the years.

Those elements aren’t subsumed, but this isn’t a rap album, nor does it come off as Gordon trying to act current in a way where you picture her asking “How do you do, fellow kids?”

The album is inspired by Jennifer Egan’s 2022 novel Candy House, a sequel to 2010’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad.

“I don’t know if you’ve read it, but it’s this guy who rips off this research someone else has developed using algorithms and creates this kind of app,” Gordon told NPR. “And through it, you can experience other people’s memories and how they felt. But in order to do that, you have to upload your own memories and experiences and join the collective, or the collection. I thought that was interesting. It felt very near-future. And there’s something a little sci-fi about the record, or dystopian, that I felt like it fit in.”

If you’re seeing parallels with the different forms of connection, if not outright disconnect, in a post-pandemic world with many forms of social media accessible at the touch of a fingertip, you’re not alone.

The official audio clips for The Collective’s songs that don’t have music videos makes the connection more obvious, as the background is silhouetted, out-of-focus hands scrolling on a phone.

Ironically enough, Gordon went a bit viral on TikTok, thanks to the album’s first single — “Bye Bye.”

 

VIDEO: Kim Gordon “Bye Bye”

The beat for it was originally intended for Playboi Carti. Raisen and his brother, Jeremiah, were coming up with things for the rapper. But when they finished this particular beat, they figured it was too “out there” for Carti. Justin thought it could work for Gordon.

She took it and added the distorted rumble while reciting lyrics that are pretty much a to-do list for a person with some money about to travel (“Milk thistle, calcium, high-rise, boot cut, Advil, black jeans/Blue jeans, cardigan purse, passport, pajamas, silk”).

Whether the items are being read off a list or recited by rote, guitar squall seeps in through the edges before taking over and consuming the song whole. It’s a more fully realized blend of hip-hop and Gordon’s brand of music than those versions in the ’90s.

“I’m a Man” floats along on a sea of guitar noise, as Gordon puts on the mask of performative masculinity in an era of consumerism (“So what if I like the big truck?/Giddy up, giddy up/Don’t call me toxic/Just cause I like your butt!”).
Later, the protgonist wishes they could get a manicture and wear a skirt. Gordon told Loud and Quiet earlier this year that the line wasn’t intended to be provocative in the way one might thing.

“Mick Jagger I think was the first rock singer to wear a dress on stage, at Brian Jones’s memorial,” Gordon said. “In a way, ‘skirt’ is just a reference to dressing and fashions. Harry Styles – his stylist is reading the times, but also, nothing is ever new, it just keeps coming back around.”

That said, it’s easy to interpret it as a riposte to the right-wing’s insistence on rigid gender roles that fuel its constant attacks on LGBTQ people, especially when Gordon intones, “Don’t make me have to hide/Or explain/What I am inside.”

There’s the attachment to things that don’t mean much to anyone else, as in the grinding “Trophies,”where Gordon alternates between pitchy actual singing and heavily Auto-Tuned warbles in the background.

Don’t expect to see Gordon on a Bowling For Dollars reboot any time soon. She told Loud and Quiet, “I was looking non-typical things to write lyrics about. I would periodically ask a friend, ‘Do you have any song ideas?’ One friend said, ‘Why don’t you write about bowling trophies?’ I’m a terrible bowler. My memories of bowling are just hanging out at a bowling alley as a teenager. It was ridiculous.”

“Shelf Warmer” coasts uncomfortably along its foregrounded beat, as Gordon pretty much performs her own ASMR over a gift she’s not thrilled with, in that “it’s not really about the gift” way.

“Psychedelic Orgasm” is buzzing guitar and warbling robot voice as Gordon walks through the Los Angeles she lives in now, connecting its disconnection and viewed status as a place to escape.

“It’s Dark Inside” comes across as performance art soundtrack, the guitar heavily distorted as Gordon free associates through love, sex and American violence.

 

VIDEO: Kim Gordon “Psychedelic Orgasm”

With all the incorproration of modern hip-hop elements, it’s still unmistakably of a piece with Gordon’s prior work. The disquieting “Tree House” plays with guitar sounds that would have fit right in with Sonic Youth, only restlessly moving from one to another, chopping and rearranging in on itself, rather than let the drone unfold.

For an album that’s pretty uncompromising with its industrial clatter, distorted roars, mechanically efficient beats and willful dissonance, the effect isn’t as oppressive as one would think. Gordon and Raisen give the whole thing plenty of space to work.

There are times where one wishes for little more cohesion and a little less dissonance for its own sake, but as a whole, The Collective shows Gordon as vital as she’s ever been. It makes a strong statement for Gordon as an artist and, as loathe as she might be to admit it, a musician.

 

 

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Time wins out against all of us, but it can certainly hit metal bands hard. The genre has plenty of bands with loyal audiences, but as the wider culture involves less rock than it used to, it’s a challenge. Musical differences, age, creative wells drying up.

These days, Anthrax singer Joey Belladonna also fronts a Journey tribute band. Mötley Crüe’s released one album the last 23 years, seemingly to flog the old hits until Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee are as physically unable to do it as Mick Mars sadly is.

In recent years, the seeming exceptions have been two of the standard bearers of British Heavy Metal — Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

The former unleashed Senjitsu in 2021, an album that could have comfortably sat on a shelf next to their classics from over 30 years prior.

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Artist: Judas Priest 

Album: Invincible Shield 

Label: Epic Records 

★★★★1/4 (4.25/5 stars)

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Three years earlier, Judas Priest’s Firepower was a living, breathing example of how there can be truth in the “best album since” trope for older acts, as it raged with the power of a band with members in its 20s and 30s.

The band has returned with Invincible Shield, which is much the same, a powerful part of its third act.

Judas Priest has pretty much had the same lineup since KK Downing’s 2011 departure, only adding Andy Sneap as touring guitarist (more on him in a bit).
Bassist Ian Hill, guitarist Glenn Tipton and singer Rob Halford still remain, with Halford ever front and center.

Now 72, Halford is a wonder, still able to hit the high notes and deliver with the intensity he did over 40 years ago, even if he’s had to adjust with age. Singers of any genre could do far worse than follow his path in taking care of their voices.

He told Dean Delray on the Let Their Be Talk podcast in 2020: “I just go out and do it. And as I’ve been doing this now for 50-odd years, I really have to save my voice; I have to make sure that it’s got the strength. ‘Cause when you’re drinking, that’s the worst thing for your voice, especially when you’re a doing a show. How the hell did I get through those shows [before I got sober]?”

A challenge in recent years has been working with Tipton’s Parkinson’s disease (he announced the diagnosis in 2018). He had to pull away from touring, with Sneap brought on board to fill in, appearing when he could during encores. As he’s been unable to play certain things, guitarist Richie Faulkner’s picked up the slack with Sneap playing more of the role Tipton might have played in the past.

Halford’s noted how Tipton brought Faulkner, who was hardly a novice to begin with, along. He told Stereogum, “So, to see their relationship develop on a musical sense, as well as a personal sense, has been very profound and very moving. To the point now where there are parts of the album where Richie’s articulating what Glenn would say, because the way that Parkinson’s has brutally robbed Glenn’s articulation.”

“When you play songs and solos by both K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton on an intimate level for 13 years, I don’t think you can help but have that become a part of your DNA, as well, so I think you can hear stuff from Glenn in my playing as well as what I’ve learned from him in the last 13 years,” Faulkner told The Aquarian. “On something like ‘Panic Attack,’ there are some sweep picking stuff that was never part of my repertoire.”

Tipton remains an utterly crucial part of the band, co-writing 13 of the deluxe edition’s 14 songs, supplying riffs, direction and playing whenever he was able.

Sneap, meanwhile, took on full production duties after co-producing Firepower with Tom Allom, who’d produced Priest’s classic ’80s output. He gives the album a clear sound that suits band equally well in its punishing and melodic moments.

Judas Priest wastes little time in announcing its presence, blasting through with the speed assault of “Panic Attack,” an updated “Electric Eye” for the modern internet age (“Fiber optic, mass hypnotic/Wild neurotic memes/Cynicism, greed, is what you’re fed/Disconnecting from the World Wide Web”) with soloing that singes the speakers.

Halford tackles the nimble grind of “Devil in Disguise,” which doesn’t name names, but one could easily seeing it about the type of person who’d endorse a nationalist Bible, with malevolent glee.

 

VIDEO: Judas Priest “Invincible Shield”

There’s no shortage of thrashing tempo on Invincible Shield. “As God Is My Witness” is but one example that gives former Racer X drummer Scott Travis a workout, as is the riff-fest of the title track.

There’s plenty of expected shredding to be found. Tipton’s soloing on the driving “Sons of Thunder” is welcome while Faulkner blisters on “Escape from Reality.”

The band pulls back the throttle on the anthemic “Crown of Horns” to solid effect and the deluxe edition closer, “The Lodger,” is thoroughly, metallically Judas Priest, while also sounding ready for a jukebox musical on Broadway (which just you know would be called “Breakin’ The Law”).

As throughly enjoyble as it is to hear Judas Priest put the foot to the floor with as much skill as they do on the album, it’s the twists and breaks from relentless speed riffage that really make it work.
“Fight for Your Life” snarls like the a lesson in how Metallica’s Load could have sounded with Halford at the wheel. Spoiler alert: the answer is “pretty good.”
“Giants in the Sky,” a tribute to departed performers in general and Dio and Lemmy in particular. It comes with a boogie stomp in the verses before going to the fist-raising chorus. But then the midsection quiets down with some Spanish guitar, a quieter reprieve before the blast of remembrance returns.
Judas Priest isn’t engaging in reinvention at this point, as song titles like “Gates of Hell” and “The Serpent and the King” are dead giveaways.

But they are doing what they do well with energy and craft belying their age. If it’s not quite the bracing wakeup that Firepower (their best in almost 30 years) had been, it’s right in the ballpark.

Sure, most of their live sets will feature the classics, but the new material won’t be an excuse for a bathroom break. Still on the short list of metal’s all-time ambassadors, Invincible Shield shows there’s plenty of life in these warhorses yet as well as offering reminders of why they mattered in the first place.

Thankfully, there’s no need to bring in Rob Halford to perform all your Foreigner favorites at a corporate gathering or casino near you just yet.