Creed
Creed Live
DC3 Music Group
Released December 8, 2009

Love them, loathe them, regard them with a shrug of indifference — whatever it is you do when it comes to Creed, it is impossible to deny the credentials of this band. Its first three albums have gone multi-platinum and the latest, Full Circle, is on course to follow suit. Formed in 1995, Creed split in 2004 under a blaze of furious egos. Actually it was more like under a soft blanket of withheld apologies. Which makes this concert and new album a Creed reunion. Now this reformed rock group has released its first DVD, Creed Live.

Creed’s popularity lies almost entirely in North America and during its most successful period earlier this decade they remained relatively unknown elsewhere. My North American friends, I must tell you: the rest of the world was on to something.

I listened to a couple of Creed’s albums not long after they were released but I never really connected with them. Maybe there was too much pain to deal with and at the time of 1999’s Human Clay and 2001’s Weathered, there was a wave of new rock/metal bands that dealt in misery. Even when the lyrics were not dealing with tough emotional issues they still sounded like they were complaining about something. But on listening to these albums I could tell that drummer Scott Phillips and co-songwriters guitarist Mark Tremonti and lead singer Scott Stapp (the band had bass player issues) were obviously capable musicians so maybe with the help of this Creed Live DVD I would finally complete my Creed puzzle [...]

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD
Composer: Randy Newman
Walt Disney Records
Release Date: November 23, 2009

Disney’s The Princess and The Frog is coming out in just a few days…could I be more excited? Not likely, as a new Disney Princess is more exciting here in my house than the impending coming of the world’s most famous jolly old elf. And what better way to await the arrival of Princess Tiana? Listen to the soundtrack of course! It’s filled with music from Disney’s newest animated feature, and is a great way to get to know Princess Tiana and her friends before meeting them in the movie.

A nice feature of this CD is that it not only includes the vocal tracks from the movie, but also the instrumental score. With everything from strings to brass, the score seems to carry you along with Princess Tiana and her friends on their New Orleans adventures. Not having seen the movie yet, I can’t wait to place the tracks with the scenes and see if I’m close in my imagination as to the goings on!

The opening track, “Never Knew I Needed” by Ne-Yo, is sweet and catchy and sure to be a radio hit. While its musical flavor is much more pop/R&B than the rest of the more New Orleans/gospel/blues tracks, it’s still a nice addition to the entire collection. And it follows in the Disney tradition to include a theme song by a current popular artist [...]

‘Cause I Sez So
New York Dolls
Produced by Todd Rundgren
Atco
Rhino
Released May 5, 2009

In 1973 a young band from New York released an album into the world. The cover featured a black and white photograph of a group of men dressed in women’s clothes. In stark contrast to the photo was a line of pink lipstick which spelled out their name: New York Dolls. A band too Punk for Glam Rock and too Glam Rock for Punk.

In 2006 came the release of One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This after a thirty-two year studio album absence (granted there was a break up in that time). This was a new New York Dolls, New York Dolls Part 2, even. A band that had time to reflect on their rock ‘n’ roll lives, who had suffered the heartache of losing loved ones. They were more laid back and David Johansen’s voice had succumbed to years of hard living, becoming a gravelly growl rather than a cocky yell. This was the sound of the New York Dolls growing old gracefully (whoulda thought it?) not re-hashing their best work of thirty years ago in a desperate attempt to re-capture that popularity.

Sylvain Sylvain and David Johansen are the only two surviving original members. There is always a question mark over whether bands should keep the name when so many line up changes have occurred (yes, Axl Rose, i’m looking at you, too). To many, the New York Dolls just isn’t the same band without Johnny Thunders and Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane. Its true, without those guys the band is very different, but there are some similarities…

Préliminaires
Iggy Pop
Produced by Hal Cragin
Astralwerks Records
Release date: June 2, 2009

For over 40 years, James Newell Osterberg, Jr. has shrieked, crowd surfed and wriggled his wiry, leathery torso for our entertainment. His music is often ahead of its time, even providing a catalyst for at least one significant music genre and his influence continues to shape the music of his contemporaries. Iggy Pop has not released a studio album since 2003’s electrifying Skull Ring but now the ‘godfather of punk’ is back with…a jazz album? Quite frankly, Préliminaires is nothing like I expected.

The album opens with a French jazz song from the 1940s. “Les feuilles mortes” sounds like ‘Whats Going On’ by Marvin Gaye over Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ with Iggy performing the vocals in spoken French. Unfortunately the language of love sounds a little like the language of the creepy old man as he talks his way through it.

What at first listen sounds like the creepy old man in English, “I Want To Go To The Beach” is actually beautifully melancholic. Iggy sounds great with a big band orchestra which he uses to great effect on the swaggering “King Of The Dogs” and this is one of the best tracks on the album [...]

Green Day — 21st Century Breakdown
CD | MP3
Producer: Butch Vig
Reprise Records
Released May 15, 2009

Five years after the release of American Idiot, Green Day returns with its latest studio album, 21st Century Breakdown.

2004 marked a huge change for Green Day. Four years after their last album, Warning, Billy Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool emerged a different band: black hair-dyed, eye-linered, and tie wearing. This new Green Day put down their bongs, took their hands out of their pants, and sung about politics. This met with a mixed reaction. They lost fans who thought they had sold out with their emo traits. They faced some curious older fans who weren’t sure if they approved or not and most interestingly, they welcomed a new, younger fanbase. I admired Green Day for having the guts to try something so different, even though I was not a fan of American Idiot. My main problem with the album was I felt they had lost their energy which was a major facet of their sound. I know album opener “American Idiot” has pace but I felt it had no soul, I felt the agenda got in the way.

21st Century Breakdown however combines the energy and philosophy with good effect [...]

I wished Metallica would have walked away (or done the decent rock band thing and imploded in a cloud of drugs and lawsuits) after And Justice For All. The Black Album at the most. Since then their output has been pretty awful. Let’s face it: St Anger was a catastrophe. The album was shrouded in turmoil and embarrassment. Welcoming ex-Ozzy bassist Rob Trujillo into a mixture that was ready to explode, the band released St Anger, which displayed their ability to perform generic riffs to a very high standard. Gone was the boundless energy and, most interestingly, guitar solos. The documentary Some Kind Of Monster demonstrated how fragile Metallica had become thanks to, well, almost everything and as such it seemed their creativity and tolerance for each other and love for the music had vanished.

But now five years after their last studio album, Metallica is back to metal up your ass with Death Magnetic. I was very apprehensive about pushing ‘play’ on my CD player when I put this in. But one thought kept pulsing through my head: “It’s Metallica!” Whether I liked it or not, whether I was ready or not, Metallica had returned.

And what a return it is…

In my job, I’m frequently in rental cars, hotels, and airplanes, which gives me some down time to listen to tunes (though because I usually have a metric ton of work to do, I can’t contribute to GoD like I used to). So, when I received the CD of the soundtrack to ost Boys: The Tribe, I felt I could get a few listens as I drove hither, thither, and through yon cornfields.

So on my way to a small Midwestern college through the Illinois farmland, I switched off of Fred 44 on XM and popped in the CD. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much, since the movie was a rather unauthorized sequel of a movie that I always felt was OK, but not all that and a silver crucifix. Plus, it starred one of the Coreys, a dude that looked like a younger Corey, a generic hot chick, and the half-brother of Kiefer Sutherland. (What? Were Joe Estevez and Robert Z’Dar not available?)

And the first track, a remade of the theme song from the original movie (“Cry Little Sister” by Aiden), solidified my predisposition that this was not going to be a very exciting CD. That song signifies the worst qualities of the current emo/goth/hard rock/whatchamacallit scene that’s been popular since the ’90s, with bombastic choruses that offset ‘gentler’ moments that show they have ‘emotion’ but are too calculating and generic to be sincere. Yick.

However, starting with track two, a classic hard rocker called “Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast” by Airborne, things picked up a bit…

Scarlett Johansson’s first foray into music is through the songs of another artist. In her debut album, Anywhere I lay my head, Johansson decides to go the cover-tune route. With the help of producer Dave Sitek, Johansson brings together nine Tom Waits song and adds in an original song written by herself and Sitek for good measure. The big question though is, with so many actresses out there with albums, does Johansson’s album out shadow the rest?

I think the main question everyone wants answered is can Johansson sing? Well, after listening to the whole album, I can safely say I am still on the fence about that one. You really need to listen carefully to hear it. The whole album, arranged by Sitek, is so instrumentally driven and so electronically enhanced, that at times, Johansson seems to get lost in the shuffle in a number of songs. It feels as if Sitek is trying to mask or make up for Johansson’s shortcomings as a singer…

John Williams composed and conducted the score for this soundtrack from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull film.

Ry Cooder provides the score while Norah Jones and other various artists round out this soundtrack to the upcoming Wong Kar Wai film.

The band Nine Inch Nails are giving away the first 9 tracks of their new album, Ghosts I–IV, as free MP3s.

This 14-song CD is the original cast recording of the Broadway musical, based on the 1980 film starring Olivia Newton-John.

This soundtrack from the Academy Award-nominated indie smash hit features The Kinks and Mott the Hoople, along with anti-folk singer Kimya Dawson and a duet from the film’s young stars.

The former Beatle offers up a new solo album with accompanying bonus DVD.

After 20 years, the classic U2 album gets a remastering along with an extra disc is unreleased bonus tracks!

Carlton’s third release is more pop oriented and features a track with Stevie Nicks.

This is a 4-CD compilation from Rhino Records contains 77 songs of the ’60s San Francisco rock scene ranging from the predictable to the obscure.

The TV’s CD soundtrack offers up 41 tracks from nine seasons of the hit animated series.

Compositions comes off as a very tasty and well-recorded fusion of some unexpected styles and some intense tune-smithery.

The thrash metal masters offer up this 21-track 2-disc live album, recorded in Buenos Aires in 2005.