POP/ROCK: Neil Young, "Americana" (Reprise)
CD reviews 6/10: Neil Young and Cornershop
By From news services

String together songs such as "Cortez the Killer," "Pocahontas," "Powderfinger" and others from throughout Young's career, and you get a Howard Zinn-like alternative history of New World conquest, an accounting of what has been lost by indigenous people and the environment to violence and greed. With "Americana," Young funnels that worldview through a series of folk standards, some so familiar that they are now thought of as children's songs. But these songs also tell a deeper story about how America was built, and the album lays it out without sugarcoating.
In folk tradition, Young gives the songs new life by boldly reconfiguring and electrifying them with his longtime band Crazy Horse, their first collaboration since 2003. They strip the songs of easy familiarity and create a narrative of how America was shaped and at what cost. The tragedy of "Clementine" is laid bare with ghostly harmonies, thundering tom-tom drums and craggy guitars. "Tom Dula" loses the buoyancy of the Kingston Trio hit version (then known as "Tom Dooley") as Young burrows into the song's brooding, murder-ballad origins.
"Lord, I'm gonna die," Young sings with the exhausted resignation of a miner digging his own grave in "High Flyin' Bird." This tortured lament is answered by the "Wayfarin' Stranger," who quietly longs for death so that he might be released from "this world of woe." It all gets washed away in "Jesus' Chariot" (also known as "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain"). The old spiritual rolls like the Apocalyptic tidal wave described in the lyrics, growing in size and power with each verse. Young's performance with Crazy Horse delivers not just might, but something like terror. "Americana" reveals the hard truth inside songs that have been taken for granted. Not anymore.
GREG KOT, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
POP/ROCK: Cornershop, "Urban Turban" (Ample Play)
Since the '90s, Cornershop has made Brit-popping trip-hop ripe with the flavors of traditional Indian music. It's been a tightly knit family affair with singer/ lyricist Tjinder Singh, brother/ bassist Avtar Singh, and pal Ben Ayres (keyboards, tamboura). Things have changed for the Anglo-Indian ensemble, growing smaller in ranks (Tjinder and Ayres remain) yet opening themselves up, beyond their Punjabi whir, to include elements of folk, soul, and electro, as well as welcoming collaborators into their musky mix.
While their 2011 album found them working with singer Bubbley Kaur, their new album expands to include outside vocalists and duet partners. SoKo contributes on the metronomic, Lou Reed-like skronk of "Something Makes You Feel Like" and French chanteuse Izzy Lindqwister is featured on the sturdily sweaty funk of "Who's Gonna Lite It Up?" But it's the sunshiny, school-choir-backed "What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag," starring Singh alone, that makes "Urban Turban" a truly torrid treat.
A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer