It's called Van Halen II not just because it's the band's second album but because it's virtually a carbon copy of their 1978 debut, right down to how the band showcases their prowess via covers and how Eddie Van Halen gets a brief, shining moment to showcase his guitar genius. This time, he does his thing on acoustic guitars on the remarkable "Spanish Fly," but that temporary shift from electrics to acoustics is the only true notable difference in attack here; in every other way, Van Halen II feels like its predecessor, even if there are subtle differences. First, there's only one cover this time around -- Betty Everett's "You're No Good," surely learned from Linda Ronstadt -- and this feels both heavier and lighter than the debut. Heavier in that this sounds big and powerful, driven by mastodon riffs that aim straight of the gut. Lighter in that there's a nimbleness to the attack, in that there are pop hooks to the best songs, in that the group sounds emboldened by their success so they're swaggering with a confidence that's alluring. If the classic ratio is slightly lighter than on the debut, there are no bad songs and the best moments here -- two bona fide party anthems in "Dance the Night Away" and "Beautiful Girls," songs that embody everything the band was about -- are lighter, funnier than anything on the debut, showcases for both Diamond Dave's knowing shuck and jive and Eddie's phenomenal gift, so natural it seems to just flow out of him. At this point, it's hard not to marvel at these two frontmen, and hard not to be sucked into the vortex of some of the grandest hard rock ever made.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Deftones didn't really have a hard time with their third album, White Pony, since it received generally positive reviews and entered the Billboard charts at number three. However, the class of 2000/2001 nu-metalurgists overshadowed the group in terms of sales, even if they retained greater critical respect and a hardcore fan base, who nevertheless still registered some reluctance in regard to the artier, atmospheric, post-punk edges on White Pony. At first, their simply titled eponymous fourth album seems like a retreat from that territory, since as it opens with "Hexagram" it hits hard -- harder than they ever have, revealing how mushy Staind is, or how toothless Linkin Park is, even if it's a bit of a shame that Chino Moreno has resorted to guttural barking for singing. Deftones continue in that vein through much of the first half of the record, gradually working in more atmospheric numbers as the record draws to a close. That shift in mood has the strange effect of seeming confident at first, and then a retreat, even if the music they're retreating to is, by and large, more adventurous and reminiscent of White Pony. It feels as if Deftones feel compelled to strengthen their metallic roots and will sacrifice the very things that make them better and more interesting than the rest -- namely, their love of art rock, whether it's via the Cure or My Bloody Valentine. They don't abandon this impulse completely -- and when they marry it to their harder inclinations, the results are smashing, as on the lead single, "Minerva" -- which is welcome, since even if the harder stuff is done well (again, better than their peers), it doesn't carry nearly as much promise as when Deftones don't play by the nu-metal reviews. When they do play by the rules, they're good, but they're great when they don't follow a map. Deftones sticks a little too close to familiar territory this time around -- the sound is still good, but knowing that they have done a record like White Pony, this feels like a disappointment, especially because in its unevenness, it sounds like it is the album that should have come before this one.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Obliterating the concept of guilty musical pleasures, I Get Wet turns hair metal hedonism, punk energy, and pop melodies into an instant, insistent blast of fun with all the power of a beer commercial. From the opening anthem, "It's Time to Party," to the excellently named finale, "Don't Stop Living in the Red," the album is all climax -- the blasting guitars, blaring keyboards, and Andrew W.K. himself are all turned up to 11 throughout. W.K. is a one-man manifesto, dedicated to spreading the way of the party with songs like "Party Hard" ("We do what we like and we like what we do!" could be "Dirty deeds done dirt cheap" several generations down the road), "Party Til You Puke," and "I Get Wet," and the fact that he looks like the stoner bully from high school only adds to his cred. Guessing whether or not Andrew W.K. is a big joke or not is almost beside the point; he comes on so strong that he either really means it, maaan, or he's got his tongue stuck firmly in his bloodied cheek. Either way, there's not much fence-sitting with his music -- you'll think the big, dumb, cartoonish "Girls Own Love" and "Ready to Die" are the stupidest songs you've ever heard, or you'll love them because they're the stupidest songs you've ever heard. Even I Get Wet's sensitive "She Is Beautiful," which is about being too shy to talk to a pretty girl, is about as subtle as a high schooler's after-shave -- and just as awkwardly charming. While the album has a certain sameness due to the frenetic beat that drives nearly every track, it's the perfect complement to W.K.'s party-centric vision. Refreshingly simple and cleverly stupid, I Get Wet is a great big bear hug of an album, and resistance to its hard-partying charms is futile.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Most pop stars reach a point where they accept the slow march of time, but not Madonna. Time is Madonna's enemy -- an enemy to be battled or, better still, one to be ignored. She soldiers on, turning tougher, harder, colder with each passing album, winding up with a record as flinty as MDNA, the 2012 record that is her first release since departing Warner for Interscope. That's hardly the only notable shift in Madonna's life since the 2008 release of Hard Candy. Since then, she has divorced film director Guy Ritchie and has seen her '80s persona co-opted and perverted by Lady Gaga, events so cataclysmic she can't help but address them on MDNA. Madonna hits the divorce dead-on, muttering about "pre-nups" when she's not fiercely boasting of shooting her lover in the head, and she's not exactly shy about reasserting her dominion over dance and pop, going so far as to draft Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. as maid servants paying their respect to the queen. Whatever part of MDNA that isn't devoted to divorce is dedicated to proving that Madonna remains the preeminent pop star, working harder than anybody to stay just on the edge of the vanguard. All this exertion leads to an excessively lean album: there's not an ounce of fat on MDNA, it's all overly defined muscle, every element working with designated purpose. Such steely precision means there's no warmth on MDNA, not even when Madonna directly confesses emotions she's previously avoided, but the cool calculations here are preferable to the electronic mess of Hard Candy, not least because there's a focus that flows all the way down to the pop hooks, which are as strong and hard as those on Confessions on a Dance Floor even if they're not quite so prominent as they were on that 2005 retro-masterwork. MDNA does echo the Euro-disco vibe of Confessions -- "Love Spent" consciously reworks the ABBA-sampling "Hung Up" -- yet as a whole it feels chillier, possibly due to that defensive undercurrent that pervades the album. Even if she's only measuring it in terms of pretenders to her throne, Madonna is aware of time passing yet she's compelled to fight it, to stay on top, to not slow down, to not waste a second of life, to keep working because the meaning of life is work, not pleasure. Naturally, all that labor can pay off, whether it's through the malevolent pulse of "Gang Bang" or the clever "Beautiful Stranger" rewrite "I'm a Sinner," but, ironically for all of Madonna's exhausting exertion elsewhere, these are the songs that benefit from her finely honed skills as a pop craftsman, illustrating that no matter how she combats it, she can't escape her age and may indeed be better off just embracing it.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Always intending to surprise, clash and never to stagnate, Jeffrey Lamar Williams a.k.a. Young Thug throws us off balance once again with Beautiful Thugger Girls. During the summer of 2016, the charismatic rapper from Atlanta had once again stepped on the gas in terms of eclecticism with Jeffery (on the cover, he wore a dress designed by Italian fashion designer Alessandro Trincone!). Following I’m Up and Slime Season 3, he released a mixtape packed with guests, such as Gucci Mane, Young Scooter, Travis Scott, Quavo or even Fugees’ Wyclef Jean, to whom he paid tribute from the very first song. The out-of-this-world rapper also played around imitating Future (Future Swag) and laid down an extremely heterogeneous programme… This time, Young Thug releases a kind of R&B album, sometimes flirting with pop: an album of melancholic rhythms in which he’s rather a singer than a rapper. Produced by Drake, Beautiful Thugger Girls among others features Future, Snoop Dogg, Lil Durk, Millie Go Lightly, Jacquees, Travis Scott and Gunna, and shows that Young Thug is aiming high (he doesn’t stand 1m91 for nothing…) and is very very hungry, as can be seen from the hit song potential of some of his songs, which will reach a public usually sealed off from his die-hard rap. At 25 years old, the Southern MC is just getting started… © MD/Qobuz

Anybody looking for Sparks to return to the timeless lushness of "Under the Table With Her" or the sonic indiscretions of "Change," the disconcerting dynamics of "Equator," or the pulsing repetition of Number One Song in Heaven is going to recognize Lil' Beethoven almost immediately. But anybody holding any of those ideals so dear that they cannot see past their superficial tensions is going to be left in disarray. Lil' Beethoven is the (or, more appropriately, a) summation of everything Sparks had been promising for the past 30 years. It is also quite unlike anything they have ever delivered before. The classical pretensions of the title are mirrored exactly in the music. Strings, acoustics, piano, and chorales are the album's primary assets, layered on with such guile that their essential simplicity is absolutely disguised. Lyrically, Lil' Beethoven is sharper than Sparks have sounded in a while -- at least since the best bits of Gratuitous Sax, with the closing "Suburban Homeboy" a brilliant summary of every rich kid booming rap from their mother's SUV ("I say 'yo! Dog' to my detailing guy"). One song, though, is constructed almost wholly around a joke that is older than dirt ("How Do I Get to Carnegie Hall?" -- "practice, man, practice"); another takes the bulk of its lyric from a stubborn voice-mail system ("Your Call Is Very Important to Us -- Please Hold"). But, while the repetition itself can grow...well, repetitive, on an album that stakes out its parameters by introducing "The Rhythm Thief" ("oh no, where did the groove go?"), then letting him steal every beat off the record, the mantras themselves become a pulse of sorts, around which the orchestrations take the wildest flights. There are breaks. The exquisite "I Married Myself" is as lush a loving ballad as Sparks have ever wrapped their more Beatlesque aspirations around, and that despite the entire song stretching out over the kind of prelude that other people might have reserved for a pretty prelude alone. Later, "Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls" is less a lyric, more a son-of-"Change"-style diatribe, but the greatest shock comes when you realize just how easily conditioned you were by the rest of the album. Thumping beat and wired guitar leap out with such resolute energy that it feels like you're listening to another record entirely -- every time you play it. And that is the magic of Lil' Beethoven. It takes a few plays to understand and a few more to appreciate. But how many times can you listen to it through and still be discovering new things to admire? That's a question that time alone can answer.© Dave Thompson /TiVo

Early in her career, songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter was marketed as a country artist, but strangely, it took ten albums before she would record in Nashville. On her first recording of new material since Time* Sex* Love* in 2001, Carpenter surrounds herself with old friends and new faces. Carpenter co-produced the set with Matt Rollings and John Jennings, two musicians who have regularly appeared on her recordings over the years. Newcomers include fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Viktor Krauss, guitarist Dean Parks, Rob Ickes on Dobro, and vocalists Mac McAnally and Garrison Starr. Carpenter's musical palette is much wider than ever before; it is a record full of textures and shapes rather than musical frameworks for lyrics. While the songs are still the most important construct, the manner in which they emerge is far more expansive. And even though there is more steel guitar and fiddle here than on any of her previous recordings, and the record was done in Nash Vegas, it's about as far from a country record -- in the modern sense of that word -- as can be. Carpenter's cosmopolitanism is certainly a sound for its time. The concerns experienced by the protagonists of her songs are those of everyday life at the dawn of a new century in the aftermath of September 11. That's not to say her melodies aren't timeless or that these songs do not transcend the present era (only time will reveal that to be true or false), but they tell the truth in a present tense we all recognize. There is an interesting fissure in these songs. As a body, they reflect transition and travel interior as well as actual byways, and impart the emotional sensibilities of being adrift, not in the present or in the past (though recollection of the previous is constant, if fleeting), while the future is still a blurry impression on the horizon. These songs are fissures; they exist in the gaps where real emotions are allowed to articulate themselves quietly and insistently before being blotted out by changes in circumstance and location as they appear like mirages, shimmer, and disappear. While there are standout tracks -- "Luna's Gone," "Goodnight America," "My Heaven," "Beautiful Racket," "Grand Central Station (the most devastatingly beautiful cut on the album), and "Elysium" -- the entire record holds together like a narrative mosaic; bits and pieces show up again and again, from song to song, without exact repetition. Between Here and Gone will hopefully garner some singles and get radio play, but it's hardly that kind of outing. In fact, one has to wonder if radio is brave enough to deal with the complex yet nearly universal emotions Carpenter explores in these gorgeous songs. Musically, this is a sophisticated but very accessible recording, pleasant in its tempos and in its lush presentation. But there is no ear candy here, nothing to while away idle moments by; it is not a "dark" or "melancholy" record, but it is a serious one. Between Here and Gone quietly demands the listener's attention and dives deeply into a labyrinth of emotions before emerging as a validating, affirmative, and instructive experience; it is an album not only to experience, but to hold on to. That's a lot for a pop album to promise, let alone deliver, and Between Here and Gone is marvelous; it does both.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

It's called Van Halen II not just because it's the band's second album but because it's virtually a carbon copy of their 1978 debut, right down to how the band showcases their prowess via covers and how Eddie Van Halen gets a brief, shining moment to showcase his guitar genius. This time, he does his thing on acoustic guitars on the remarkable "Spanish Fly," but that temporary shift from electrics to acoustics is the only true notable difference in attack here; in every other way, Van Halen II feels like its predecessor, even if there are subtle differences. First, there's only one cover this time around -- Betty Everett's "You're No Good," surely learned from Linda Ronstadt -- and this feels both heavier and lighter than the debut. Heavier in that this sounds big and powerful, driven by mastodon riffs that aim straight of the gut. Lighter in that there's a nimbleness to the attack, in that there are pop hooks to the best songs, in that the group sounds emboldened by their success so they're swaggering with a confidence that's alluring. If the classic ratio is slightly lighter than on the debut, there are no bad songs and the best moments here -- two bona fide party anthems in "Dance the Night Away" and "Beautiful Girls," songs that embody everything the band was about -- are lighter, funnier than anything on the debut, showcases for both Diamond Dave's knowing shuck and jive and Eddie's phenomenal gift, so natural it seems to just flow out of him. At this point, it's hard not to marvel at these two frontmen, and hard not to be sucked into the vortex of some of the grandest hard rock ever made.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

When the 16-year-old singer Sean Kingston came on the scene it was with the single "Colors 2007," a nightmare walkin'/psychopath talkin' type track with dramatic bells, hardcore swagger, and a couple shoutouts to his Jamaican homeland and homeboys. Then came "Beautiful Girls," a pop-rap tune that took a bit of Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" and twisted into a pouty "she left me" lament that used the word "suicidal" as if it meant "kinda sad." If you thought "Beautiful Girls" was the greatest sin against urban music since "Fergalicious" then Kingston's self-titled debut is not for you. The album claims "Colors 2007" as a bonus track and then loads up on enough gimmicks, high-profile samples, hooks, and ridiculous lyrics that it's the textbook definition of love it or hate it and shouldn't be approached by anyone who considers themselves "hardcore." Good news is that a slick swagger suits Kingston much better than the hardcore baller stance, and that he's more at ease comes through loud and clear. The unexpected side effect of this move towards pop and polish is that the Jamaican roots pay off splendidly as he takes more of a dancehall attitude towards his vocals, and trades reverent for playful, and serious for exciting. "Me Love" reclaims Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er" for the island of Jamaica with finger-snaps and glitter. "Got No Shorty" bounces on the "I Ain't Got Nobody" melody and offers "I'm lookin for love/Not askin' for much/Just a fine little shorty/With a big ol butt" without any shame. Paula DeAnda does an excellent Mariah Carey impression on the sunshine-bright "There's Nothin" while "I Can Feel It" McGyvers a great puppy-love song out of everyday lyrics, a Phil Collins sample, and an air horn. Breezy, feel-good guilty pleasures abound on this lightweight pool-party of an album.© David Jeffries /TiVo

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