POP/ROCK
Alicia Keys, "The
Element of Freedom" (J)
Through most of this CD, Keys sings processionals. They're slow, clean songs with semi-classical piano, soft-pop chord changes and simple, prominent hip-hop beats. They nearly have a social purpose: They underline acts of inspired dignity, or informed desire, or virtuous defiance. Even when she's singing about losing it over a guy, as she does eight or nine times on the disc, it comes across as the weakness of the mighty. Keys has enough presence of mind to reflect that love is a calculated risk, and can sometimes produce greatness squared.
Keys started out within the notion of neo-soul, but has moved on. This steadily anthemic music harks back less to the 1970s -- soul's golden age -- than to the late '80s. Many of these songs carry echoes of Prince's wakeful ballads and Richard Marx's adult-pop nuzzle. The self-possessed swoons line up into something like a concept album.
But all that queenliness, and the sameness of the tempo, start to wear you down. It's not until the 10th track, "Put It in a Love Song," that the record starts to bristle with a less regal impulse: flirting. Swizz Beatz comes in as the producer and Beyoncé as guest singer, and the two women knuckle down, extracting promises from a guy to bare his heart in a song or at least a text message. It has a quantitatively different energy. Shortly after that, the record ends on yet a different note, with "Empire State of Mind," an acoustic and sung version of her recent collaboration with Jay-Z. It's tense and drumless until nearly the song's last 30 seconds, and you hear the scratch and rip in her voice as she sings about poverty and ambition in her city, New York. Finally, she's celebrating something outside of her control.
BEN RATLIFF, NEW YORK TIMES
Tegan and Sara, "Sainthood" (Sire)
Twins Tegan and Sara Quin have made their bones in the Calgary music scene since 1998 as a punk-pastoral duo known for contagious, piano-based power pop. Before the prissiness of Feist or the roustabout ideal of Rilo Kiley, the Quin girls were hitting pop hard and moving on fast -- stopping only at 2007's "The Con" for spaciousness and texture. Their return to the rapier-swift thing of its start makes "Sainthood" punchy and blunt with "Northshore" showing off the sisters' spunky indie-rock roots. If "Night Watch!" doesn't curl your eyelashes, nothing will. This CD also clarifies the differences between the two singer/songwriters' respective skill sets. Tegan likes her tunes simple and sharp, a la the rip-snorting anthem "The Cure," while Sara's melodies, choruses and subject matter are slightly more elusive and open-ended ("Alligator"). Despite their differences, this is their most potent full-length yet.
