VELVET REVOLVER
“Libertad”
(RCA)
Velvet Revolver is: 1. a middle-aged hard-rock supergroup; 2. the flagship band of the fifth decade of Hollywood rock; and 3. releasing its second album. It is awfully hard for this group, starting from any one of those terms, to feel free, even if it’s going to make a record called “Libertad.”
“Libertad” sounds old, heavy, wrapped in a tough skin. At the same time, by virtue of sheer outdated flamboyance, it seems almost willfully naïve. Experience here starts to take on characteristics of innocence.
Scott Weiland, the singer, compounds various kinds of rock-star affect, from Iggy Pop to David Bowie to Kurt Cobain; Slash, the lead guitarist, plays with a heavy hand and a light imagination. The album’s sound and songwriting fuse together the work of hard-rock bands that have pop-radio hits, including Aerosmith, Van Halen and Nirvana. Those groups had a foundation of youthful craziness, but this one is founded in caution; the joy in these songs usually comes with a warning.
Most of them — if the bad lyrics can be parsed — are about various kinds of need. (As one song title puts it, “Pills, Demons & Etc.”) The members of Velvet Revolver — Mr. Weiland, once of Stone Temple Pilots; Slash, the bassist Duff McKagan and the drummer Matt Sorum, all, during various periods, of Guns N’ Roses; and the guitarist Dave Kushner, once of Wasted Youth — have a fairly decent knowledge of substance abuse. Drugs crop up here and there as perfect deceitful enemies, the kind that promise escape, but then take your family away.
Let’s see: drugs, rock ’n’ roll and... right, sex. This music is pole-dancer rock with lyrics haunted by lips and legs and sexy-lethal dancers. Does the record contain a fantasy about a boy getting intimate with his high school teacher? And does that same song have glammed-up Chuck Berry licks in its guitar solo? Yes ma’am to both, in “Just Sixteen.” Does the album have another about being almost fooled by a transvestite hooker on Sunset Boulevard? Sure. How about vaguely critical songs about American entitlement, which manage to be both castigating and pompous? Why not? It’s a free country. BEN RATLIFF
ST. VINCENT
“Marry Me”
(Beggars Banquet)
St. Vincent is Annie Clark, a 24-year-old singer and songwriter and guitarist from Dallas who evidently doesn’t believe in starting small. Her debut album is “Marry Me,” an extravagant collection of songs that show off everything at once: her warm and versatile voice, her nimble and precise finger-picking, her love of old-fashioned torch songs and new-fangled electronics. All this in 44 minutes, though it’s no criticism to say the CD feels much longer.
Like Feist, Ms. Clark has an indie-rock pedigree (she has played guitar with Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree), and like Feist, she flirts with the idea of being an old-fashioned chanteuse. But this music floats away from any fixed reference, new or old. "Now, Now" is one of the songs that first got people excited about St. Vincent, when it circulated as an mp3. It has a crystalline guitar figure and a stiff drum beat, but it mutates as Ms. Clark sings those two words, which could be a reprimand or a plea. The title track starts with romance and then grows elusive, as she sings, “Oh John, come on, we’ll do what Mary and Joseph did/Without the kid.” Hmm. What does that leave, exactly?
It is possible to wish that some of these songs had more straight lines, and possible to suspect that Ms. Clark is still figuring out what she wants to do with that voice and that guitar and that omnivorous interest in 20th-century pop. But it’s also a thrill to hear her trying things most young singers wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) dare. “What Me Worry” is a velvet-upholstered ballad, with teasing, mannerly lyrics that could easily have been written in an era before rock ’n’ roll:
Do I amuse you, dear?
Would you think me queer
if, while standing beside you,
I opted instead to
disappear?
These days all sorts of aging indie-rock stars seem to be finding new life in musical theater; it’s not hard to imagine Ms. Clark joining them, and maybe even outshining them. Or, if she feels like it, doing something else altogether. KELEFA SANNEH
CLASS OF 3000: Music Volume One
(LaFace/Sony BMG)
Yes, it’s a cartoon soundtrack, and yes, it’s barely half an hour long. But it also happens to be the newest album from André 3000, of the hip-hop duo OutKast, though he’s credited here under his real name, André Benjamin. He’s a creator and executive producer of “Class of 3000” on the Cartoon Network, and he also does the voice of the main character, Sunny Bridges, a jaded pop star who reinvents himself as a stupendously unjaded music teacher. Mr. Benjamin produced all 14 of these songs, and wrote them too, with help from Kevin Kendrick, the keyboardist whose nimble, playful style helped nudge “The Love Below” and “Idlewild” toward neo-ragtime.
This CD gathers self-consciously silly songs from the first season of “Class of 3000.” And although some members of the cast (which includes Cree Summer, the “Different World” alumna who made a brief run at rock stardom) uphold the rule that says animated characters must squeak and giggle, Mr. Benjamin has wisely — and accurately — decided that his normal singing and rapping voice is cartoonish enough. He has been in a youthful mood lately, contributing verses to remixes of kid-friendly songs like Unk’s “Walk It Out” and Lloyd’s “You”; maybe this project is a cause of that giddiness or an effect of it.
Either way Mr. Benjamin sounds great on “We Want Your Soul,” revisiting rhymes enlivened by the unpredictable stress patterns he’s known for: “I’m already gold in the ’hood, pass the plate-inum/Sell a million records? I can’t wait, and I’m/Gonna do whatever it takes ’til I’m straight.”
“Throwdown” is a daffy singalong that evokes OutKast circa 2000. Only OutKast completists (or cartoon cultists) will want to suffer through the whole CD, much less buy it. But even casual fans might be interested to know that in its new season “Class of 3000” has gravitated toward harder, techno-influenced beats: promising news, perhaps, for the next OutKast album. KELEFA SANNEH
KELLY WILLIS
“Translated From Love”
(Rykodisc)
On “Translated From Love,” her first proper album in five years, the country singer Kelly Willis applies her sweetly reassuring voice to a couple of the more unlikely songs of her career. The first single, “Teddy Boys,” written by Adam Green of the Moldy Peaches, finds her assuming the voice of “a man, maybe two.” He (she? they?) purports to be “looking for something nasty,” goaded on by a Moog synthesizer and rockabilly guitars.
Then there’s “Success,” the Iggy Pop classic (written with David Bowie and Ricky Gardiner) that casts a sardonic eye on the trappings of ... well, you know. She croons the lyrics — “here comes with success,” “here comes my car,” “here comes my Chinese rug” — with a chuckle, momentarily shrugging off earnestness for satire. And this time the gamble pays off: On a relentlessly sure-footed album, “Success” is the orneriest and most rewarding track.
Those anomalies aside, “Translated From Love” grounds Ms. Willis in familiar territory, singing about heartache, aspiration and reassurance against an impeccable backdrop that stops just short of twangy. Produced by Chuck Prophet, who also composed with Ms. Willis her six original tunes, the album never falters.
But neither does it soar, despite the opening inducement of Damon Bramblett’s “Nobody Wants to Go to the Moon Anymore.” While Ms. Willis can make decent songs feel like good ones — and "Too Much to Lose" with background vocals by her husband, Bruce Robison, is wholly decent — the album feels oddly unbalanced. That’s not a sign of eclecticism; it’s a symptom of mild confusion. NATE CHINEN
