The Game, David Byrne have new CDs
Also, new releases from Slipnot, Little Feat and Friends, Dooney ‘Da Priest’NEW YORK - The Game, “LAX”
The Game has long threatened that “LAX” would be his last album, so perhaps that’s why he recruited the wayward DMX to open it with one of his trademark prayers (“Devil, we rebuke you in the name of Jesus”). The table thus set, the Game goes surprisingly mellow in comparison to his first two efforts. “Touchdown” sports a lazy synth and an airy chorus from Raheem DeVaughn about jet-setting, and Ne-Yo proves himself chivalrous while the Game growls over “Gentleman’s Affair.” Common pops up on the electric piano-driven “Angel,” paying homage to his classic “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” and “Never Can Say Goodbye” depicts the Game’s creativity as he embodies the voices of Tupac, Biggie and Eazy-E just before they passed away.
David Byrne and Brian Eno, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”
Reprising a creative partnership that yielded several classic Talking Heads albums and 1981’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” David Byrne and Brian Eno are taking the digital/self-release route for their latest pairing. Working via e-mail, Eno constructed the instrumentation and Byrne crafted the lyrics and melodies. The results are their familiar mashed-up scrap heaps of electronic and industrial sounds, with a chorus of voices, strings and guitars supporting Byrne’s yelped, rubbery singing. It’s all exceedingly pleasant, from the triumphant melodies of opener “Home” to the peaceful closer “The Lighthouse.” But while “Everything” is firmly grounded in Eno and Byrne’s previous work, their mutual commitment to musical exploration ensures that the album rarely sounds like something we’ve heard before.
Slipnot, “All Hope is Gone”
A new Slipknot album means new masks, new outfits — and new sonic sojourns. “All Hope Is Gone” doesn’t disappoint in that regard. Building on the experiments of 2004’s “Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses),” the set is at once Slipknot’s most ambitious and most accessible outing to date, with a broad palette of sounds and textures that shift faster than Michael Phelps off the starting block. “Sulfur,” “Psychosocial,” “Dead Memories” and “Vendetta” are easy fits next to most anything else on the active rock front, while the melodic, acoustic guitar-driven “Snuff” is this album’s “Circle.” On the heavier tip, “.execute/Gematria (The Killing Name)” opens the album with seven-plus minutes of doomy chords and sociopolitical diatribe, and “Gehenna” is a leaded, layered sludge fest. On it, Corey Taylor howls that he “cannot maintain a semblance of normal anymore” — which Slipknot’s fans, known as the Maggots, will consider the best news of all.
Little Feat and Friends, “Join the Band”
Ask any number of musicians about a fantasy group to join and, in the absence of the Band, their choice will likely be Little Feat, the long-lived outfit that boasts superlative chops and an accomplished body of song. More than a dozen admirers realize that fantasy on this all-star exercise. There’s a gritty-voiced Dave Matthews singing a New Orleans-flavored version of “Fat Man in the Bathtub,” Brooks & Dunn lending a bit of twang to “Willin’,” Bob Seger and the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson rockin’ it up on “Something in the Water” and “Oh Atlanta,” respectively, and Jimmy Buffett (the album’s executive producer) leading a Caribbean-tinged romp through “Time Loves a Hero.” After this gets out, the Feat will be stampeded by those wanting to “Join the Band” if the offer is ever extended again.
Dooney ‘Da Priest,’ Pull Your Pants Up!
It’s difficult to know whether to address this as art, sociopolitical commentary, a frantic public health bulletin or the matrix of a moral and political maelstrom that has touched raw nerves across America. The fact is, it’s all of the above. And Duwayne “Da Priest” Brown (an ordained minister and staffer at T.D. Jakes’ Potter’s House) has without question stirred a fire in the furnace of “culture ways.” Da Priest, who wrote and produced the album’s 12 songs, lays his raps atop solid, streetwise grooves. Having publicly retracted implications of gay bashing, Da Priest pulls no punches in his treatise directed at what he decries as the wanton excesses and dangers certain aspects and offshoots of the hip-hop culture have spawned. Like him or loathe him, Da Priest has started a discussion that may well continue for some time to come.
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