Discs
Pop
Fall Out Boy
Folie a Deux
[Island]
★½
If there is another modern pop band as consistently cloying as Chicago’s Fall Out Boy, that band has yet to surface. The best that can be said about the foursome is that it is unique in its ability to cram inane lyrics into melodic lines that defy logic, but still manage to present themselves as “hooks.” The worst is that the group constructs songs that make somewhere between very little and absolutely no sense. I’m not just talking about tabloid wonderboy Pete Wentz’s lyrics, either. FOB’s musical constructions are as willfully obtuse as are the texts that sit atop them.
“Folie a Deux” is a frustrating entry in the FOB canon, because it threatens to go somewhere repeatedly, and yet, it never does.
Album-opener “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes” — an apt example of Wentz’s flair for snappy song titles, no? — begins life with singer Patrick Stump making like a throaty Elvis Costello over subtle Hammond organ swells. It’s far too good to last, though, and so it doesn’t. One of those trademark nonsensical FOB chord progressions arrives like an ice pick in the forehead, and by the time the song limps toward its chorus hook — that being “Detox just to retox,” dude — it’s dead on the vine.
Stump is already well into his favored mode of expression — over-singing and over-emoting — by the time we’re offered “I Don’t Care,” a pop-punk throwaway that would not be out of place on Miley Cyrus’ next album.
Oh so sadly, Wentz is not averse to offering mangled reflections on his quite public marriage to Ashlee Simpson. We are apparently supposed to feel bad for the guy. Please, please, please don’t. “America’s Suitehearts” — it’s a pun, and it’s about tabloid celebrity, get it? — again starts out promising enough, as a standard power-pop chord progression is propelled by a charming, rolling drum figure. The band’s just getting started, though, so be assured, the tune swiftly follows David Byrne’s advice and stops making sense. It sounds like an amateur mash-up of divergent tunes, a dorm-room desktop project gone horribly awry.
Too many ideas, few of them strong, clutter the balance of the record, and though just about every tune on “Folie” starts out with a solid conception, not one of them has the presence of mind to follow through on that conception. Producer Neal Avron must receive some of the blame for this “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to song construction. Editing this mess down to its strongest components was his job, after all, and he blew it, big time.
Many of the band’s fans will likely mistake this lack of clarity and purpose for rampant creativity, the unfettered product of rapid-fire imaginations at work. That doesn’t change the fact that “Folie a Deux” is a symphony of sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing.
— Jeff Miers
Jazz
The Clayton Brothers
Brother to Brother
[artistShare]
★★★
A pretty good mainstream jazz disc. But the idea behind it is a truly great one — a disc devoted to tributes to jazz’s long and altogether remarkable history of brother teams: Cannonball and Nat Adderly; Elvin, Thad and Hank Jones; Jimmy, Percy and Albert Heath; Wynton, Branford and Delfeayo Marsalis; Randy and Michael Brecker; Wes and Monk Montgomery; the list could go on and on.
The idea came from terrific alto saxophonist Jeff Clayton, whose brother John is a veteran in-demand bass player. John’s son Gerald plays piano on the disc, and his “adopted” son Obed Calvaire plays drums on the disc. Filling out the quintet is Terrell Stafford, a veteran neobebop trumpet player with fat tone and a blistering attack.
In practice, the disc really only pays meaningful tribute to the Adderlys and the Jones Brothers. And when it does, there’s no way of getting around the obvious fact, for instance, that drummer Obed Calvaire is a drummer with absolutely none of Elvin Jones’ thunderous polyrhythmic genius and pianist Gerald Clayton is a meat-and-potatoes pianist of the Gene Harris school who’s clearly happiest when funkifying the blues all over the place. He’s far from the exquisite taste of Hank Jones at his lapidary bebop best.
What makes this and all other Clayton Brothers discs is alto saxophonist Jeff Clayton, who has some of the big broad tone and tenor saxophonish conception of Kenny Garrett mixed with a lot of Cannonball (including some of his rotundity), which makes him a formidable player indeed. And Terrell Stafford is a powerful front line foil for him, while brother John Clayton takes care of business on the bass (he sings too on “Walking Bass,” which was written by Ella Fitzgerald’s monstrously reliable final bass player Keter Betts).
How on earth did the tune for John Coltrane’s “Africa” wind up as a counter-melody to Cannonball Adderly’s “Jive Samba”? Who knows, but it’s a pretty clever idea. Jeff Clayton’s tune “Big Daddy Adderlys” is a direct variation on Sam Jones’ tune “Unit 7,” which was the Adderly Brothers’ theme song.
There’s such a wealth of popular jazz culture bursting out of this record that it’s too bad neither of John Clayton’s young sons — by blood and by adoption — are on the same roaring level as the senior Clayton brothers. It is, nevertheless, the sort of solid mainstream blues-soaked jazz that is never less than good fun.
— Jeff Simon
Hip-hop
Common
Universal Mind Control
[Geffen]
★★
Hearing Common — born Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., and known for a series of excellent albums blending laid-back, organic grooves with smart, socially and politically aware lyrics — reprise the chorus of Kid Rock’s meathead anthem “Bawitdaba” during the opening moments of his new “Universal Mind Control” is completely jarring. Long established as the thinking-man’s rapper, Common made intriguing hip-hop records that were much closer to Curtis Mayfield in their rhymed observations than they were to the booty-shakers and club-thumpers favored by the majority of his peer group. That kid stuff seemed to be beneath the elegant, classy Common.
So much for that idea.
“Universal Mind Control” finds Common eager to dump the serious image. Toward that end, most of the songs are about sex, and the smart melodic flourishes that made past records more musical than most are largely missing. Additionally, a bunch of “it boy” guests show up to fulfill the promise offered by a sticker placed on the album’s cover, proclaiming the record “The future of hip-hop!” Ugh. Bad idea.
Production duties are split between pop production-line managers the Neptunes, Pharrell Williams and Kanye West; guests include West, Cee-Lo, Pharrell, Muhsina and Martina Topley-Bird.
The result is sometimes generic, sometimes dumb-but-cool, sometimes overtly self-conscious, and sometimes — as when Cee-Lo joins in for the sunshine-and-peppermint chorus hook of the wonderful “Make My Day” — up to the promise suggested by Common’s previous efforts.
In his eagerness to be a bad boy and shed his peacenik image, Common makes a serious mistake. Unless he was completely “frontin’” before, this new club-going, sex-starved Lothario with a head full of lust and a heart pumping Cialis is an impostor. It’s just too tough to buy this junk from Common. He has proven far too many times in the past that he knows better.
“Universal Mind Contorl” is all about— surfaces, so it’s fitting that, on its surface, it is little more than a slightly above-average 2008-model hip-hop record. There is some bold inventiveness at work during some of the arrangements, a few delightful nods to ’80s dance music, a bit of gnarly synth gurgling and the occasional shimmering pop vista. But most of the album is grim, grimy and, dare I say it, a little cynical.
Come back, Common. After all, what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? They might not help you hook up with chicks, but they’ll serve you right in the long run.
— J. M.
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