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Nothing gets folks on your team like losing your fiancé to a Hollywood bombshell. So just imagine what Alanis Morissette has been doing since her ex, actor Ryan Reynolds, traipsed off with Scarlett Johansson. Writing about post-romantic stress disorder isn’t new for Morissette, but her latest album doesn’t rage like “You Oughta Know” — it sounds more like grief. Producer and co-writer Guy Sigsworth (Björk) frames Morissette’s candid lyrics with a vaguely New Age grandeur — electro beats, Eastern percussion, orchestral arrangements — amping up the drama on her octave-hiccuping catharsis. On “Citizens of the Planet,” the production alternates between ringing tablas and head-banging guitars for an oddly stirring Enya-meets-System of a Down opener. “Moratorium” uses swirling synths and Read the rest of this entry »

These New York dance rockers are definitely not virgins. Their debut screams debauchery, with its funk- and disco-spiked odes to oversexed debutantes and every club kid’s favorite meal, “cocaine brunch.” Such subject matter has inspired some bad records over the years, but the Virgins have a knack for songcraft — scrabbling funk verses that surge into singalong rock choruses — and a charismatic frontman who delivers stellar aphorisms and insults. “Maybe if you change your hair/You’d be good enough,” Donald Cumming sneers in “Fernando Pando.” He knows of what he sings: Cumming has been a fixture of New York’s downtown demimonde since he was 16, making films and modeling for hip young photographer Ryan McGinley. But he’s done plenty of book learning, too, drawing on Lou Reed and the late-Seventies Rolling Stones: “She’s Expensive” lifts its groove from “Miss You.” Cumming has the swagger Read the rest of this entry »

Indie rock is undergoing a folk renaissance, which has spawned some great harmony singing. Case in point: Fleet Foxes’ debut opens with a woozy a cappella that’s part sacred-harp-choral tradition, part Beach Boys, and it resolves into a Celtic-flavored march with a searing Richard Thompson-style guitar line. The 11 songs are mostly pastorals — the sun rises, snow falls, spring comes, birds fly and, on “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” the “tall grasses wave/They do not know you anymore.” (Dis!) This style is what critics used to label “freak folk” before the term became verboten, though plain freakin’ lovely is more to the point. A lower-dosage Animal Collective, the Foxes stuff their free-form songs with rich, swirling melodies; billowing clouds of organs, tom-toms, bells and assorted stringed instruments cloak Read the rest of this entry »

On last year’s Cassadaga, Conor Oberst left his home in New York to wander the country’s byways. On his latest album, recorded in Mexico, the Omaha, Nebraska, native is still drifting, having ditched both his Bright Eyes moniker and longtime producer Mike Mogis. A rough-hewn, death-haunted travelogue, this set proves that while you can run from home, you can’t run from yourself. And sometimes that’s OK. Largely, this is the introspective folk rock of Bright Eyes, though there’s some welcome shift away from autobiography: “Danny Callahan” is about a doomed child, and “I Don’t Want to Die (In the Hospital)” is a piano-driven rave-up whose narrator could be Oberst’s grandfather. The sketchbook Read the rest of this entry »

When you’ve made your name and fortune on fierce weirdness, the most drastic thing you can do is flaunt some restraint. In System of a Down, singer-guitarist Daron Malakian’s bright yelp was already the more normal voice next to Serj Tankian’s operatic harangue. But as Scars on Broadway, with System drummer John Dolmayan, Malakian shaves System’s punk-dervish and metallic-vengeance extremes into straight-on rock glazed with New Wave keyboards and impish-angel harmonies. It is a cleverly barbed normality. “Funny” is a catchy death wish that somehow evokes Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” amid burbling Eighties synthesizer. “Insane” is steady, rolling darkness with a Who-ish Read the rest of this entry »

Carter’s multihorn mastery is always dazzling, whether he’s playing jazz funk, Pavement covers or the traditional numbers he and his sextet perform here. The highlights are “Hymn of the Orient,” a Clifford Brown fave illuminated with blasts of free-form baritone sax, and “Bro. Dolphy,” creamy bass clarinet moving from tender ballad coos to post-bop caterwauls. It’s presidential Carter: soulfulness and technique in perfect balance. Read the rest of this entry »