Album reviews (Bruno Mars, Big Boi, Green Day, Nashville ...

Bruno Mars
Unorthodox Jukebox
(Atlantic/WEA)
First, it must be said that Bruno Mars deserves some stick for having buried an ancient Billy Joel song deep in this listener?s mind-ear thanks to his own hit Just the Way You Are. Not cool, Bruno.
But an accident, albeit one that leads into a discussion of the quiddity of Bruno. Who is this guy? Is he a guy who reminds you of other guys?
When you spend your pre-star days riffing on convincing impersonations of both Elvis and Michael Jackson, you?re either about to have an impressively galactic career, or an impressively generic one. Mars has got the musical chops, plays every instrument, and has semi-famously proclaimed that no genre will hold him. There is something unorthodox about his insistence on whooshing through the entire corpus of popular music ? pop, R&B, soul, reggae, rock, hip hop, even a touch of alt. What, no country-metal? No bluegrass fusion?
Young Girls opens with a twinkling reminder of Doo-Wops and Hooligans, his boffo debut record; that hyper retro/neo fusion is something of a musical signature.
But he never signs the same way three times. Locked Out of Heaven is an ear-catching, eye-popping, hiccupping stab at new wave, at least inasmuch as the Police represented it. It?s crazy enough to work.
Others, not so much. You?ll have to buy into the personality shift represented by the attempted R&B/pop menace of Gorilla ? and I know ?R&B/pop menace? has no business being a phrase. Natalie is similarly ?tuff,? and these aren?t simply repudiations of the nice-boy image that sold The Lazy Song; the issue is whether or not these street swaggers work with his youthful voice.
The costume changes keep coming, and some are gaudy. The slapbeat of Treasure is DNA-encoded in anyone who lived through the ?80s. In Moonshine, Mars and Mark Ronson do something striking with those influences, weaving them into spacey drama. You can feel Mars?s bristling ambition in When I Was Your Man, and the paradoxical constraints of his limitations. It?s not a cookie-cutter ballad, but the big vocal echoes so many other singers that it?s hard to name them all. And as cool as it would be to hear the reggae-ish Show Me on radio, the nasty Money Make Her Smile is probably unnecessary. If I Knew is retro soul, closing the album on the right note.
It feels almost miserly to censure a (co-)songwriter who reaches across so many platforms. Then again, there are five songwriters listed on Young Girls: three too many. He?s no Martian ? he?s from Planet Teflon, sticking to no genre as none sticks to him. He?s a timely reminder of the current pop personality graph: you can at once be everywhere and nobody.
Rating: 3 out of 5
?Mark LePage, Postmedia News

Big Boi
Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumours
(Def Jam/Universal)
While OutKast fans remain in limbo awaiting a reunion and consoling themselves with the sporadic sightings of Andre 3000, hardworking partner Big Boi returns with his second solo album. As he proved with prot?g?e Janelle Mon?e, the rugged rapper ? real name Antwan Patton ? has an ear for originality. He puts it to work here, rounding up another batch of innovative tracks over which to drop his steady-flowing rhymes. Big Boi is nothing if not reliable, and while he doesn?t hit it out of the park here, he impresses with an array of boundary-pushing songs. He nails a romantic anthem on the Kid Cudi collab She Hates Me; goes south with Little Dragon and Killer Mike on Thom Pettie; does ?80s-era Prince with the Kelly Rowland gem Mama Told Me; and flirts with indie rock on Shoes for Running, produced by Wavves?s Nathan Williams. By and large, hip hop has lost its experimental edge; Big Boi brings it back.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
?T?Cha Dunlevy, Postmedia News

Green Day
Tre!
(Warner Music)
Green Day sound tired. As they?ve released three albums in four months, that?s both understandable and entirely forgivable. But it?s also largely un-listenable, as it?s resulted in yet another lethargic collection of what sounds like hungover Elvis Costello B-sides.
There was punk in Green Day once, but as with ?Uno! and ?Dos!, there?s little of it on their 11th studio album. In fact, there?s even less attitude that the two previous instalments in what could be a massive three-part rock opera about falling asleep beside a Coachella campfire while some dude in a puka shell necklace breaks strings on an acoustic guitar. There?s some life in the crescendos of Dirty Rotten Bastards, or the catchy chorus of Walk Away. But the promisingly named Sex, Drugs & Violence sounds like the band?s trying to teach ABCs in a juvie hall, and 99 Revolutions has all the rebellion of Wii U ad.

Rating: 2 out of 5
? Al Kratina, Postmedia News

Various Artists
The Music Of Nashville: Original Soundtrack
(Big Machine)
Among the characteristics the network TV drama Nashville gets right about its namesake city is the music. Guided by musical director T Bone Burnett, the new series presents a passable and often entertaining facsimile of country radio hits as well as samples of the less commercial side of the city?s music scene.
The hour-long evening soap features vocals by several of its main characters. The most convincing work comes from an upstart acoustic duo played by Clare Bowen and Sam Palladio, best represented on the album by If I Didn?t Know Better, and a rising starlet portrayed with convincing fierceness by Hayden Panettiere, who has received radio airplay for her pop-country dance tune, Telescope.
Actors Connie Britton and Charles Esten, as a veteran country star and her longtime guitarist, don?t have the vocal chops of the top singers in Music City. But they perform well enough onstage (especially on the ballad No One Will Ever Love You) while displaying their dramatic talents when the microphones are off.
The biggest musical disappointment is the shaggy rocker Jonathan Jackson, who lacks the charisma of the others. On the soundtrack, he fails to sharpen the edge of Twist of Barbwire, an Elvis Costello composition.
Still, most of the recordings on the Nashville soundtrack rate with what Music City regularly produces ? thereby achieving the show?s goal.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5
? Michael McCall/The Associated Press

Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/12/11/album-reviews-bruno-mars-big-boi-green-day-nashville-soundtrack/

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