The Decemberists: The King Is Dead (2011)

(Capitol)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Read my album review for the Metro Times.

Buddy Holly: Greatest Hits (1957-59)

(MCA)

!!! A+ COMPILATION !!!

but around probably like 11, other people started to show up and i was amused by how wrong i was to feel abnormal when i was younger at my fascination with all things outdated. pretty much it’s an epidemic. the dance floor ERUPTED when he played buddy holly. it was "oh boy." i have listened to a LOT of buddy holly lately; i fucking love him, he is so angry and his songwriting was fucking sick. and there was nothing quaint about his sound on those enormous speakers for serious. anyway that wasn’t the song i expected would start to tear off the roof but it was.

Pretend you've never heard of Buddy Holly for a moment. Therefore, pretend that you didn't grow up hearing "Everyday" and "Peggy Sue" on oldies stations and never glimpsed the telecine images and promo photos of the gawky chemistry-teacher physique and iconically clunky spectacles. Pretend it's just a thing that happened half a century ago and all that's left of it is maybe some records or mementos in a dusty attic somewhere, a forgotten teenybopper indulgence, and then do me a favor and listen to "Not Fade Away." I want you to do this because I want you to hear the carefully controlled but unvarnished human cry in Holly's voice, the tense, precise, but calm press of his band, the immediate, homey, beautiful upside-down Bo Diddley rhythm. Or take the swagger, the cunning John Wayne reference, the teasingly brutal brokenhearted subtext of "That'll Be the Day." It's not about importance; it's not about laying groundwork; it's about the unobstructed delivery of base emotion, the feat Buddy Holly achieved in his insanely short recording career, the feat no one else will ever have the balls or the blank slate to duplicate.

If we must, let's say this: from 1955 to 1959, Elvis Presley may have been the lightning rod, but Holly was the man who did it all from his gut. Yes, he did turn rockabilly around from its elements into a force of unmatched nature that would quickly become the line of the rock family tree that would see the most fruitful development in the coming decades; only Chuck Berry eclipses in influence, and even Berry might not have as many disparate subsequent notions easily traceable back to his catalog. A better comparison to Holly might be his friend Sam Cooke; it's not that rock & roll wasn't enough for them, it's that they saw how far rock & roll could be taken, then were silenced before they got the complete opportunity. In their wake, new fragmented branches developed, but never the unity of black and white, country and soul, aggression and peace, bullshit and expression that they envisioned. It would be a generation before any pop music could match the ruthless ambition and concise, stabbing directness Holly provided. His roadmap died with him, and the world was left hurtling in his wake.

Holly's twisting of rockabilly and his absorbing of R&B and gospel influences was quite directly the creation of rock's second wave. It was Presley that inspired him to begin -- all roads lead back to Elvis, no doubt -- but the many explosions for which Holly was the catalyst are unimaginable in the rock story without his presence. Most of them continue unabated as cultural forces. We have the dawn of the geek, the obsessive, the awkward as the rock & roll artist -- the true outsider, the true emotional force; on "I'm Looking for Someone to Love," track two here, he's staying at home while she runs around and finally learning to bust the fuck out -- it's joyous, and scarred. There is the invention of the rock band: the Crickets, the model of every group to follow, plus guitar solos that are to the instrument as "Hamlet" is to the theater. Holly offers, in turn, the dawn of the rock & roll artist as adventurous innovator -- the celesta and intimacy on "Everyday," the alarmingly moving compressed exotica of "Not Fade Away," the thrillingly obtuse confrontation of "I'm Gonna Love You Too," the moody, bottom-heavy shake of "Peggy Sue." The dawn of so much, maybe everything, that we as music fans care about.

And of course, the Beatles cribbed all of it. It's blatant. This compilation illustrates so much of the direct lineage it's initially shocking. How can the supposed dictators of the form have received such a jump start from outside? But all of it is here -- the inventively odd and lovely songwriting, the charged and clever but minimal lyrics, the spare, forceful production, and especially the expert application of so many crazed, bent and intricate vocal tics, the caterwauling that would become highest cultural art. The neuroses that the Beatles seemed to bring to light like Elizabethan orators, well, Holly's celebration of vast fuckedupness, the exposure of his emotional fray, his fearless and economical application of his darkness: there is no kitsch to be derived. No innocence, only purity: rock & roll as humankind's sole unmuddied line of communication -- a thing of screaming beauty and importance. After this moment, never again, for the baggage would build, but nothing could spoil these songs. Nothing linguistic or subtle could truly diminish their reach. His command is audible; he seems to understand more than was known by anyone else about his artform by the time he died.

Holly's catalog and the structure of his career now seem strangely modern -- singles plus albums divided neatly almost in half, the blazing shot-off rocker of "Rave On" and the unstoppable "Oh, Boy!" versus the hopeless romantic of "Words of Love" and "True Love Ways" both belying his modest outward appearance and polite reputation, all immaculately crafted -- but it's not hard to gather that this is the result more of racial casting off and disorganization of his black peers' recorded outputs than of his own quality control, solid though it was. There's a sense in which the brevity of his career supplies an elegance (this forty-minute fireball of a compilation covers the commercial peak of Holly's recorded output, a tiny range from 1957 to 1959), but that illusion is shattered when one hears his final recordings, which suggest a spiritually devastating potential with their beauty, charm, and dogged focus. The ambition and what it might have wrought outweighs all else, but we must compress our concern here down to the hits and all they reveal, which is plenty. After such a long life as oldies, these songs' vitality is striking; the Hank Williams-esque regret and resignation of "Maybe Baby" only seem more knowing today, and the brilliant kissoffs "Think It Over" and especially "It's So Easy" (a song that never gets credit for its bitterly adult cynicism) reveal themselves as monsters when the volume is pumped.

But it's the cheerily fractured, explosive revenge song "Early in the Morning," bothersome choral backup notwithstanding, that lays it all out. John Lennon owed the bulk of his entire fortune to this one 45. Holly's voice seems to be channeling some otherworldly force, as Lennon's later would, and it peaks and teases in the same places. His singing is something to witness, still; it alone sells many of the tender ballads from his experimental sugary sessions later on. "Fool's Paradise" and "Heartbeat" are deserved classics, both gorgeous and towering, but the lesser-by-default "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" and "Raining in My Heart" warrant attention if only for Holly's crooning, sophisticated readings of both.

And oh, impact, of course; it would be ignorant to suggest Holly hasn't had the farthest reach of any of the first generation of rock & roll performers. Of course he has. The problem is it's somewhat irrelevant. Perhaps because of that same miraculous reach, that stunning knack for unpretentious, conversational, but still brilliantly nutty expression (love, lust, hatred, dread), these songs don't age. I don't think Chuck Berry's songs have aged either, but Holly's sound as though they were preserved cryogenically and their year of origin became somehow of no consequence. After all, who in five hundred years (when I'm certain he's one of the handful who will have survived all the filters of scholarship and decay) when they listen to Holly will make a distinction between the 1950s and the 1990s? Holly's songs wonder why we do now. He sounds like he's a couple of rooms away, belting and wailing away as ever, and making it all such a workday thing, something to fight for and be passionate about. He's pissed off, he's in love, and he's hungry. In our illustrious career as humans we've yet to come up with any three ideas that cut to the bone more. I doubt we ever will.

Indeed, when rock & roll is studied seriously in however many centuries, there will be a giant thick bold line. Below it will be almost everyone, in small 10 point text. Above it will be James Brown, the Beatles, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. It's not that no one else matters. It's that they created a form in which no one else would ever really have to matter, because the thesis was written. Every brilliant stretch of the form after (and there are many, no doubt) is somewhere in those four texts. And Holly could lay claim alone to one title: the most innovative pop musician of all time. It remains dismaying that he died so young. The tiny bit of work he got to put down on tape is so lively, universal, and ahead of its time, anticipating almost every subsequent movement in popular rock & roll, I think his full body of work would have been unbelievably dangerous. But what does it matter when kids still connect to him now as it is? And don't tell me they don't because I've witnessed it -- dancing and freaking out and declaring their love for him, fifty years after his death. It's like he's permanently ours, whoever's young enough. The man was the fucking tops, is all I’m saying.

Old 97's: Blame It on Gravity (2008)

(New West)

RECOMMENDED

This CD, the band's seventh, was released at the height of my Old 97's fandom, a few months after I became extremely enamored of them and they rapidly found their way onto my all-time favorites list. Conventional wisdom has it as a disappointment, but I loved it at the time and played it nonstop for several weeks. Then my life sort of got derailed all of a sudden and I put it away for about three years, only to take it out today expecting to hear -- now devoid of enough bias that I saw their subsequent Grand Theatre Volume One as lacking -- the blandness everyone else has reported. Surprisingly enough, I still dig the whole thing -- every track -- and I've been away so long it doesn't even necessarily feel married to its time anymore. It's like getting a new Old 97's album out of nowhere. Rhett Miller's lyrics ("Don't tell me the world is in trouble; do you want to dance with me?") are stronger than ever, the melodies tease and slide with hooky perfection, and the band only seems to be growing tighter. I can't help thinking it's largely because they're making no artificial attempt here to be "alt-country" or to reenact Too Far to Care.

Yeah, okay, this is "soft rock," continuing the ever more commercial (and yet, ever less popular) track the band had been taking since it shifted to a power pop atmosphere in the late '90s -- the songs are friendly, calm, mature, and you could even call them dad-rock without that necessarily being pejorative. The boys have grown up, though they still occasionally lose their shit enough and get fucked up for a borderline-stalker anthem like "I Will Remain," and maybe the comparatively uneventful nature of writing music for minor albums on a tiny label hurts, but this disc at least posits maturity as a less destructive force than, say, the Replacements' last two albums. It's not what the Old 97's are really about, but its eloquent charm makes it an extension of their former selves rather than a shadow. Plus, the gently ambitious impulses that manifested themselves in playful Drag It Up cuts like the surf-rock "Smokers" fall into more fully-realized songs here: the vague Greek textures and insistence of "Dance with Me," the surprising gospel-tinged "Here's to the Halcyon," and the oblique doo wop shuffle on "She Loves the Sunset." There is finally something to be said for a slight loss of machismo, miss it though you will.

His (and Murray Hammond's) continued progression in songwriting notwithstanding, Rhett Miller's singing is less compelling than usual here, as is instantly apparent when he croons "there is looove" on opener "The Fool," and his overly relaxed adult contemporary manner may have contributed to the reception of Blame It on Gravity by fans. The rough edges are mostly gone, perhaps a consequence of the watered-down feel of his solo work, but he still does wounded and quiet like a master ("No Baby I"), and Hammond one-ups him with the magnum opus "The Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue." Some of the more derivative moments are troubling; the band plagiarizes itself on "The One" (a clone of "The House That Used to Be" that redeems itself a bit by referencing the Sandals' "Theme from Endless Summer") and "Early Morning" (dead ringer for "Four Leaf Clover," a song they've already plundered more than once), and cops a Shins riff for "My Two Feet." But little of it matters when they pull themselves together for triumphant pop (with killer bass) like "Ride" or touhctsone country-rock like "The Easy Way," either of which could fit on earlier albums seamlessly.

Inevitably, Gravity is now recontextualized by Grand Theatre, but it's surprising how well its songs hold on when compared to the often desperate grappling for passion on the newer record. No one apparently wanted the complacency this album exhibits, but I'll take that honesty over a vain attempt to bottle up youth anytime. This band always has been and will likely always remain one of the strongest, and they've earned enough goodwill for the rest of their lives, but I would honestly prefer the middle-of-the-AM-road direction Gravity suggests to the cockamamie scheme for rejuvenation derived by Theatre. Perversely, hearing this again makes me a bit more optimistic about Theatre's second installment, due out later in 2011. As I said before, that record will likely determine how much attention I pay to new Old 97's material from now on. But I'll be permanently thankful for the soundtrack they gave my early summer of '08.

[SEE ALSO:]
The Grand Theatre Volume One (2010)

R.E.M.: Eponymous (1981-87)

(I.R.S.)

R.E.M.'s never been a singles band. None of their three somewhat official hits compilations really satisfies. I seldom advocate this argument quite so strongly, but if you're shooting for an R.E.M. crash course, don't start with this or In Time. Eponymous gathers the semi-hits and commercialish songs from the band's first five albums, typically (erroneously) referred to as their "indie period" -- in fact, I.R.S. was scarcely more an independent label than Sire in the '80s -- and the band, who'd just signed to Warner Bros. in 1988, wasn't particularly keen on this record's release. A label jump usually renders a best-of inevitable, but I.R.S. was a bit rude in scheduling Eponymous for release mere weeks before the band's WB debut, Green, even forcing out a single (the chestnut "Talk About the Passion" from Murmur) for competition with "Orange Crush."

But the band, presumably to protect their name, went along with the project and contributed, for the effect that unlike subsequent attempts to canonize their I.R.S. years -- including their own sanctioned retrospective, And I Feel Fine -- feels somewhat like an R.E.M. album. It doesn't have the wise sequencing or mood variance of the albums from which it lifts its twelve songs, but it has a confounding R.E.M.-like cover plus an annoyingly clever title, contains typically oddball elements like a yearbook photo of Michael Stipe with the words "THEY AIRBRUSHED MY FACE" slathered over it, and Stipe not only contributed the clipped, bizarre liner notes ("philomath is located between lexington and crawfordville and used to have its own post office") but directed a sobering video for "Talk About the Passion." The result is still a mess of abbreviation and compromise.

In 1988, R.E.M. had roughly the clout that Arcade Fire has now; not huge by 1988 standards, but huge by today's, and worlds bigger than the bands they tend to be lumped with (The Replacements, Husker Du) in revisionist essays about college rock in the '80s. They are remembered as an underground phenomenon, but all of their albums charted, and they were lifted up and celebrated by a massive scene in their hometown that spread across the country, followed swiftly by critical adoration that would stay with them for nearly two decades. Five albums in, they'd reached a commercial breakthrough with Document, buoyed by the ominous hit "The One I Love" and its horrendously ugly, butt-stupid video (directed by the man responsible before for the hideous cover of the Replacements' Tim and later for the cinema classic Johnny Mnemonic). This landed them on the cover of Rolling Stone, which billed them as "America's best rock & roll band" (within the space of a year, they'd say the same thing about a different band).

As alternative rock in general slid toward the mainstream, R.E.M.'s music grew more commercial, a decidedly positive development for them that allowed them to craft their best album, 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant, a massive-sounding southern rock opus with verve and life and personality. It's represented by one song on Eponymous. Conventional wisdom has their masterpiece as 1983's Murmur and there is, you guessed it, one song from Murmur on this disc. We end up with hardly an evolutionary tract -- the songs chosen for this collection are either outliers on their respective albums or the most radio-friendly country-leaning selections thus far. It's not even a complete set of I.R.S. singles. "Wolves, Lower" was pushed to radio as the lead track for the Chronic Town EP but isn't here, nor is the Murmur retake on "Radio Free Europe," the Fables of the Reconstruction oddity "Wendell Gee," or -- most glaringly -- the classic cover of the Clique's "Superman" from Pageant. The prospective buyer would find any of the five I.R.S. releases a richer method of exploration than this.

The fan, however, needs it for a few rarities, two of which are essential. The very first track is the slamming, crazed original version of "Radio Free Europe," R.E.M.'s first-ever release on the Hib-Tone label in 1981. Vastly different from its familiar Murmur revision, the track suggests a wholly different path for R.E.M. as maxed-out garage rock merchants. Next, Chronic Town is represented by the undisputed "Gardening at Night," but this version with a throatier, more masculine lead vocal by Michael Stipe trounces the one that made the EP and deserves to be canonical. Without the context of the strange, atmospheric enigmas of the rest of Chronic Town, "Gardening" sounds like a further pushing of the garage aesthetic.

The other two semi-exclusives come later and won't really generate excitement for the fan, much less the newcomer. "Romance" is a soundtrack stray that got left off Dead Letter Office; it's extremely annoying and to the best of my knowledge, this is still the only place to buy it. Usually R.E.M. b-sides and leftovers are extraordinarily good, so it's a bit of perversity that the one that ends up on their best-of is so awful. Lastly, one of the remixes of "Finest Worksong" makes the cut -- the one with horns that was usually played on the radio -- but one misses the riskier strokes of the "lengthy club mix."

As for what else is here, you've got "So. Central Rain" to "Rockville" to "Can't Get There from Here" to "Driver 8" and all of those are wonderful songs, but they're illustrative of two specific aspects of R.E.M. -- the sentimental jokesters and the banshees of Appalachian-rock dread -- that simply felt like interludes in album context. Yet again, it's not necessarily the fault of the compilers, it's just that we have here a band that's extremely tough to pare down, and this LP vainly attempts to summarize five albums that are pretty much essential anyway, that even the most casual fan should own. That'd be okay if it were a straightforward singles collection, but it's not.

So beyond the two nifty opening rarities, what's the point? Well, there's "Romance" (ugh) but there's also this little detail -- Eponymous has been superseded by a 2006 compilation called And I Feel Fine, which adds a second disc and gathers everything here, including the stray singles I bitched were missing, plus lots more unreleased stuff and a considerably fleshed-out introduction to R.E.M.'s first eight years of existence. Problem: it sounds like shit, maxed out and compressed, and it's about twice as expensive as this thing, and I don't care who you are, you still are going to need the albums it references. Four of the first five R.E.M. albums, plus the debut EP, are as delightfully mysterious and resonant as alternative rock gets; you need them more than you need any condensation of them. But if you gotta, grab this one; at least you can still chuckle at the yearbook photo when you don't really need the record anymore.

Radiohead: In Rainbows (2007)

(s/r)

!!! A+ RECORDING !!!

The press narrative for In Rainbows managed to largely sidestep its music; there are times when it's easy to wonder if this was intentional, as it's so much more unassuming than perhaps any other Radiohead album, and at the very least their prior four. The story goes -- this, the seventh album by one of the biggest bands in the world, was released without a price point, internet-only for three months, etc. Its effect on the music industry was staggering; it shocked everyone by opening at #1 upon its physical release a few months later, proving this or that point about music consumers. But little of that matters now. What does is that it's their finest, loveliest effort, by now mostly eclipsing the bulk of their other work for me. Radiohead's been a pervasive part of my life since I was a preteen, loved, resented, idolized, second-guessed, feared, criticized, revered, obsessed over, neglected. In Rainbows is the album I waited ten years for them to make, the heart-to-heart regrouping to follow the loneliness of OK Computer.

That isn't to say I disliked the further loneliness of Kid A, a fine record and most folks' choice for top of the decade, but its electronic meanderings are less striking than Radiohead is as a performing band, and it doesn't have anything on The Bends or OK Computer. But an interesting, bold effort, yes. I can't say that for Hail to the Thief, which failed to reward my repeated listenings, or the direct Kid A sequel Amnesiac, which failed to reward my first listen. The best songs Radiohead released before In Rainbows were b-sides: the proto-Coldplay drunken singalong "How Can You Be Sure?" and the warm, reassuring hug of "Worrywort." It was a shock when a love song as straightforward as "I Might Be Wrong" made it to Amnesiac -- its unquestionable highlight -- and even found release as a single. Afraid of their feelings? No, just too obsessed with coldhearted quality control to give proper vent to anything so human. At least, that's the way it felt.

So along comes In Rainbows, an album consisting almost entierly of woozy, intensely pretty ballads about relationships, the Radiohead album on which Thom Yorke sings the line "I don't want to be your friend / I just want to be your lover" against a minimal mutation of an Al Green backing. The record's mood is beautifully sustained, its opening dance and rock salvos fitting as more than mere tokens; "Bodysnatches" might be the one thing here that isn't really new for them, but it's a stronger burst of energy than the last three albums offered. On the whole, this is an elegant cycle of songs about falling for somebody, losing somebody, learning to accept that, being too far away from somebody, and finding somebody new, not necessarily in that order. It's decidedly un-Radiohead, and the musical (and lyrical) stretch suits them, coming off as their calmest, broadest evolution to date. A couple of weeks after the record was issued, as I found its mood remarkably coalescing with mine, I struggled out loud about whether it or The Bends now deserved the edge as their best LP. Three years later, as I've found deeper, lasting comfort with it in any number of states, there is no doubt. Radiohead here show their ability as something beyond politically-conscious rock stars; the record is a personal fireside chat that circumvents any need for posturing.

It can be difficult to deconstruct an album that hits you like this one has me -- it already holds considerable nostalgic punch -- but I think what makes In Rainbows such a stunning album is, in simplest terms, the refined band arrangements (a carryover from the more elaborate Thief that was heading in this direction) and the singing. Thom Yorke’s performing is absolutely the best it has ever been on this album; he is enormously wide-ranging, felt, impassioned, loud, powerful, pained, warm. Even most of Radiohead’s detractors admit there’s something about that voice. Now, for the first time in ten years, the voice wraps around real songs. And they are some pretty wonderful songs. "Nude," a leftover from the OK days when it was "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)," tackles personal defeat with Brian Wilson-like grace, underscoring its pain rather than its absurdity, all with the most starkly beautiful, expressive vocal I can recall from Yorke. The pure professionalism of the band behind it (that bass!) only helps to provide a platform.

After hearing "Black Star," "(Nice Dream)," and "Fake Plastic Trees" from The Bends several hundred times over the years, I can report that they are impossible to shake, but those days of punchy production and explosive singles can't match the aching transcendence of In Rainbows, which is rife with the strongest material in the catalog. The influences are worn more plainly than before -- the skittering beat and Prince vocals on "15 Step," the direct Beatles channeling "Faust Arp," the hazily pretty, fluid Motown of the undeniable "House of Cards" -- but by paring themselves down to a guitar band with expansive atmospherics, they plainly expose the maturity they've attained since the last time they were just that: listen to the tragic isolation of "Videotape," the menacing ease of gathering and scattering captured on "Jigsaw Falling into Place," and especially the swooning marital love letter -- overpoweringly strongarmed, not delicate -- "All I Need."

Two other cuts, though, warrant special attention. Out of the box, "Reckoner" was my choice for the centerpiece; more cathartic and less optimistic than most of the others, it sears with sonic hugeness and Yorke's impassioned exorcism. A true showcase for Nigel Godrich, it employs a remarkable, unique sound that layers a sweetly modest band arrangment over a cacophony of rhythm as Yorke swirls around. Nothing on the record is more instantly striking. But others took over my attention and it was some time before the song's thematic power hit me: their most selflessly kindly lyric since "Worrywort" dissects a communication breakdown, maybe or maybe not between lovers. It comes off as a warning of the frailty of a relationship and an admonishment that "you are not to blame," but most important is the line "Because we separate, it ripples our reflections"; that hushed moment is the climax just before a rebuilding of intensity -- it is the pleading for mutual forgiveness about distances for which no strength can compensate. If that's not the intent, fine, but it allows the room.

Perhaps it's the flipside of the most sincere yet perversely Radiohead love song to date, and coincidentally the best song they have ever recorded. "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" is a calming, almost hallucinatory force, packing an indescribable wallop. Yorke sings of infinite devotion (not desire), seeing those eyes a world apart from everything, "in the deepest ocean," while the band captures a graceful flood of sensory-filling detail: wailing and twiddling and bounding like a space age Pet Sounds, all perfectly unsentimental and calmly ecstatic. Complex, playful, winding, it sounds like love, and it is the peak of the most emotional Radiohead album, the one so good that whatever they do afterward is really OK with me.

[Editorial Note: The above contains a few sentences from my initial writeup of this album from '07 in my old journal.]

The "5" Royales: All Righty! The Apollo Recordings (1951-55)

(Westside)

RECOMMENDED

The history and legacy of the "5" Royales was explored some months back in this space, coinciding with my own discovery of the woefully underappreciated R&B legends. The King recordings I reviewed at that time are genuinely unclassifiable; far more idiosyncratic than even the shining lights of rhythm and blues of their time, those singles with their bursts of exploding guitar are unlike anything I've ever heard in any genre.

I've now gotten my hands on a set of their Apollo recordings. The big hits I knew; "Baby Don't Do It" and "Crazy Crazy Crazy" are classic R&B staples I've played in DJ sets, "Help Me Somebody" is peerless, with its appalling rhythmic shifts, and "Laundromat Blues" is a priceless curio. The rest is new to me, and I reckon it's not really proper to call it a disappointment -- this, after all, is what gave way to the stunning music the group recorded for King, but it does seem accurate to label it generally far more conventional.

To be clear: some of it is conventional and quite wonderful; the early "Give Me One More Chance" (1952) is a shot in the ear, suggestive and wild, a direct contrast to the sacred sides by the Royal Sons Quintet, the group's earlier incarnation, also included here. "I Like It Like That" has a filthy saxophone bit worth the price of the set, and "What's That" is layered, unshakeable pop displaying a clear passageway back to gospel and ahead to the Isleys' "Shout."

This is essential for anyone who loves early R&B, at the point when its lineage was so fascinatingly naked, and anyone who loves the Royales' astounding later work, but the prospective listener new to the group is advised to proceed directly to the King records. You'll love these too, but you'll love them because of how they recontextualize and validate the King 45's. Great group, well worth exploring.

[SEE ALSO:]
Complete King Masters (1954-60)

Madonna: Hard Candy (2008)

(Warner Bros.)

Innovators can't typically keep it up as long as Madonna has, so her slowdown in the last ten years is understandable. She still has yet to issue two bad albums in a row. Whether that remains true will be determined by the quality of her first release on the dubious Live Nation record label. For the moment, we're left with Hard Candy as her most recent statement. To those who feel comfortable being dismissive of Madonna, the record's a big joke -- its garish, ill-advised cover art; its hyperactively gimmicky, ultimately empty R&B; its half-assed vocals and half-baked songwriting. But for an actual fan of Madonna, for someone who holds her in genuinely high regard as an artist, the record feels disappointing but entirely forgivable. The complex relationship the star has established with her audience, the mainstream media-skepticism she once brilliantly spearheaded, perversely allows followers free reign in questioning her bizarre creative detours; when she's on the wrong track, it's instantly apparent.

Those disappointments are not strictly musical. Hard Candy isn't at all a bad album -- it's listenable, decent fun, and often infectious -- but it marks the indisputable point when Madonna copped to trend-following rather than -setting, a perhaps inevitable downturn she sidestepped with a couple of left-field projects in the middle of the decade, the regrettable kitsch American Life and the quite ingenious throwback Confessions on a Dance Floor. As of the dawn of the millennium, Madonna was still a leader, still in the trenches breaking ground; Ray of Light and Music were both unqualified successes setting the stage for the pop decade to follow, integrating their uncommercialisms into neatly digestable form, like most of her best records. Confessions might be a better record, but its effect on Madonna's progeny seems nonexistent. Thanks to its blatant pandering, Hard Candy will join it.

Madonna's meanderings in the commercial urban radio sound are more convincing than you'd expect, if only because she so consistently throws herself in the background in favor of performances by Kanye West, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell, and Timbaland, who are all far better at this sort of thing but none of whom reserved any real inspiration for this project. There are decent moments here, like the snakelike bumper "She's Not Me," but for the most part, the songs are too long, their thrust too obvious, the cameos are too obnoxious, the feeling of an insufferable comback bid littered and weighted with unhelpful "collaborators" deathly. Even the big hit, "Four Minutes," might be Madonna's least interesting single ever; it sounds like a b-side from Timberlake or Timbaland that happens to feature Madonna, whose relevance audibly slips away during the course of the tune.

It isn't all that fair to complain that Madonna is experimenting with something that is essentially "new" for her; the problem is that as she grew, up to and including her prior album, she continued to keep enough of an ear to the ground for her music to continue to feel fresh and trailblazing, rather than simply aping the sound of radio which is -- by the time an LP's released, inevitably -- at least a year old. It's not an exaggeration to say she's the finest solo dance music artist we've ever had, and the finest period if not for Pet Shop Boys, who were tapped to work on this then kicked off the project days later at the label's request. One wishes the Boys' ideas had been heard. Despite settling into an identifiable sound, which Madonna has not, they continue to craft memorable, inventive, commercial disco twenty-five years after their first hit. PSB sensed Madonna's capacity for new sounds early on; in 1987, they attempted to lend her the song "Heart," which they recorded themselves after not hearing back. Relentlessly banging, emotionally intense, wittily ironic, and confoundingly sensual, it would've been a smash and a classic for her. It would be nice if that dream collaboration happened one day. Timbaland and Kanye West are brilliant performers, Timberlake is a very good one, but they don't give vent to anything here that actually sounds like it matters to Madonna.

A few days ago, I heard "Open Your Heart," Madonna's 1986 blockbuster from the True Blue album. Dating from her commercial peak, before her albums became more refined and textured affairs, and long before her voice developed the nuance it's shown since the mid-'90s, the song seems to explode to escape its time, its context, any set of speakers. The track itself is steamy, but Madonna belts her part out as though it's the last thing she'll live to do; through its innumerable layers of electronic haze, she pulls herself up to evoke utter empathy, pure emotion. It's a shameless direct blow to the senses, and it's awesomely powerful. Can we ever get that magnfiicently joyous, populist sophistication back? Perhaps when Madonna's operating from a new home and not simply riding out her recording contract, we'll find out. But frankly, I'd be happy with several more Confessions on a Dance Floors... provided we get more restrained packaging than this.