The Magician is back with a deep house / house / garage mega-mix.

I want to fuck Lana Del Rey.

After hearing Ultraviolence, I realized I’d better do it soon, because she once again reminds us just how perishable she is.

Would Marilyn Monroe be the timeless icon that she’s become if she’d reached old age? Everyone wanted to fuck Norma Jean, too, so much so that even 50 years on, other women dress up like her to imitate the bar she set for how the perfect female sexual object should appear. Would the reality of aging have diluted the beauty of her youth? Is her mystique solely the product of her premature death?

The character Lana Del Rey has created shows the same cadre of Monroe-esque qualities: seductive, vacuous, manipulated by tycoons of her industry like de Beers manipulates the diamond market. The image on the screen, on the canvas, on the page — it never changes, frozen at twenty-seven forever. This is what a Lana Del Rey looks like, and there is only one.

Ultraviolence reminds us how lonely that is, even when she’s singing Lou Reed songs with her heroin addicted guitar playing boyfriend. And considering that this album was heavily produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and preceded a breakup with her boyfriend of the time, who that man seems questionable.

But now she’s lonely, like that lonely pornographic house wife waiting for a delivery. It’s an essential part of her sexuality. It’s the plot of her sex driven life, always there but only as a distraction from her certain doom.

Ultraviolence is the expiration date on the Del Rey box.

Ultraviolence is Del Rey saying she wants to be with you forever, exactly the way she is.

Ultraviolence is an invitation to rip her from her package and consume her.

“I fucked my way up to the top,” Del Ray tells us, and there’s only one place to go from there.

Has Jack White lost his edge? Vote below!

Inevitably, this will be known as Jack White’s divorce album.

Announced in 2011, the former White Stripes’ frontman and ex-wife Karen Elson have had a strained, very public split. From leaked emails that caused a stir over comments he made about The Black Keys to storming off stage because fans weren’t sufficiently stoked to his liking, the last few years have taken their toll.

And now, there’s Lazaretto, his second solo record, and it’s straight to the point.On the track, “Just One Drink,” White muses

You drink water I drink gasoline One of us is happy One of us is mean I love you Honey why don’t you love me?

Other tracks include the ominous “Would you fight for my love?” where he sings,

It’s not enough that I love you There’s all these things I have to prove to you

Are these songs all about his ex wife? Considering he’s also estranged from his first wife, the eponymous Meg White, it’s entirely possible that the heartbreak he’s singing about goes beyond the obvious. Either way, this is his album of hardship, the woebegone record of his sordid departures.

But where does it fit in the Jack White canon? Certainly, this is no Elephant, no De Stijl. This is no Horehound,  no Broken Boy Soldiers. This album has a purpose. It is a carrier pigeon for the words and feelings he hasn’t — or can’t — say to the women in his life. It isn’t great for great’s sake, as those aforementioned masterpieces are. It’s great for the sake of something else.

And it is great. It’s beautifully arranged, well written, and of course, musically superb. But there’s still something there beneath the surface, some ulterior motive that makes it heavy and duller than the Jack White that didn’t give a fuck about anything but making your ears bleed from an overload of awesome.

One day, Jack White will release a record that doesn’t carry the cultural significance of his early work, much like the later McCartney records are just not as seminal as his early work, even post-Beatles. I’m not saying this is that record — clearly, I’m still writing about it — but I think this record is inching in that direction.

Hear this exclusive premier of the new album: First Listen on npr

Sometimes when I hear a new album, I find myself thinking, “Who is this album for? Who’s the audience?”

With Sunbathing Animal, the answer appears to be disaffected 20-somethings, still angsty about being underemployed after two undergraduate degrees and thousands of dollars in debt.

But in reality, I think there’s a wider audience this album can reach: this is the soundtrack of punk-tinged dive bars with shot-and-a-beer specials. It’s not an album for today’s disaffected youth, it’s an album for every generation’s disaffected youth. It’s an album for those who like their drum beats the way they like their women: fast and sloppy when they’re drunk.

Is it a punk album? In the way that the Velvet Underground was a punk band, I guess so. It has those simple, predictable punk rock elements, the same smokey, spoken-word vocal delivery and chunky guitars. But their not shy about using the clean channel either, which is more reminiscent of the Kinks.  One thing is clear: this is a record that could slide right into the stacks of a store in 1979 and not miss a beat.

I feel like this kind of sound has been filling the black walls of dingy New York venues for the better part of four decades now, and once in a while, one of those bands escapes their familiar haunts and joins the national conversation. Not quite as commercial as someone like The Strokes, this isn’t an album you’ll hear climbing up the charts even though it has the same kind of referential style that an album like Is This It? had. It might clean up on Shazam, as people pull out their phones to find out what song this is that they almost can place, but can’t quite pin it down.

Music is a dialogue, and this is another piece of the conversation. It might not be a thesis statement or a complete change in the lexicon, but it’s still saying something. Whether this album is a topic of conversation or a soundtrack for the background of whiskey-induced hazes at the bars where you can still smoke in if you know the right guy, well that remains to be seen.

I had no idea who Haunted Hearts was when I put this album on, but within seconds, I recognized that striking tremolo and powerful, direct delivery. “That really sounds like Dee Dee Penny from Dum Dum girls,” I thought.

That’s because it is. This is her side project with husband and Crocodiles frontman Brandon Welchez, and it really sounds like a blend of their two bands. There’s the fuzz and grime of the Crocodiles guitar laden noise rock with the same kind of thin electric piano melodies guiding the songs. But there’s the sweet melancholic lyricism and simplicity of Dum Dum Girls to balance it out. Almost every lyric, every ooo and aaah is sung by the two of them too, further combining their respective sounds.

The result is a mix that sounds so distinctly like Garbage: the same bass driven, simple rhythms stacked beneath a wall of nondescript, guitar static. But Haunted Hearts isn’t stadium rock; these are not power-rock anthems. There’s youngness to these songs, a childlike simplicity in lyrics like, “Up is up / But so is down” or “Something that feels bad / Is something that feels good”.

On the whole I’d say it feels a bit underdeveloped, a bit starved for ideas. Every track is composed of a series of loops that seem to carry throughout the duration of the song, maybe pausing for a bit of drama here and there, but mostly, rolling on beneath the verbed out vocal tracks.

You know the stereotype of hipsters standing around at shows, staring with blank faces and not so much as a head nod? That’s what this album sounds like. It’s still. It’s paused. It hangs around like kids on a corner with nothing to do but wait.

I have to say, the EP they released last year, with two earlier versions of “House of Lords” and “Something That Feels Bad Is Something That Feels Good” far outpaced the full length with raw energy and emotion. Plus it featured a very NSFW picture of someone’s very exposed lower half on the cover. That’s kind of the root of it: the EP felt like fucking a smoking hot babe in thigh-high boots and the full length feels more like making love after a nice dinner.

Don’t get me wrong – it has some cool sounds and some good songs (“Initiate me” and “House of Lords” are the high points), and I could see it being great for the afternoon commute back home from work. But given the choice, I think I’ll take their respective bands over this collab.

Stream the album via Grooveshark below

Well the Sam Smith album is here, and I think he’s still on pace for meteoric fame, though maybe on a different trajectory than I expected.

This is ballad heavy, Sunday afternoon music. This is the album you put on between Ray La Montagne and Norah Jones. You cook dinner with this album on. You stare wistfully out a window with a hot cup of tea on a rainy fall afternoon. You read in your bay window in your jam jams with this album playing in the background.

But this album has a more frightening, insidious side. This album was made for romcom montages.

Seriously, play this track, and read on.

It’s that moment in the movie, where the guy fucks up and the movie keeps cutting back and forth between him and the girl while they do chores around their house and keep coming across the little trinkets from their relationship. The sweater he left at her house. The earring she lost under his bed. They both go out with their respective friends to talk things over.  ”I can tell you one thing, girl. If it doesn’t feel right, just let him go,” her best girlfriend tells her over a glass of chardonnay at some bougie wine bar. “What about Tina? Dude, Tina’s so hot man,” his drunk sports buddies tell him at the pub. “Yeah bro, you should call Tina.” And then as their walking home alone, heads down in thought, they bump into each other at a dimly lit intersection lined with brownstone stoops and old oak trees. “Oh hey,” he says. “Hi,” she says. “I was just headed home from the Chesterfield,” he awkwardly tells her. “Oh, cool,” she timidly responds, “I just had coffee with Amy. I.. I should probably get going.” “Yeah. Yeah me too,” he says. They realize that they’re both oddly going the same direction now, so they walk together, some uncomfortable distance between them, but an overwhelming look of relief on their faces. Some hidden looks, some secret smiles. He gets to her door, and says, “Well. I guess this is goodbye.” “I guess so,” she says, and he turns to leave. “But you know, I… I didn’t mean what I said,” he tells her, referring to whatever dumb shit he said to get them here. “I know,” she says, looking up at him gently. “And it was you, you know. It was always you.” “Really?” she says as he starts dashing up the stairs at her. “Always. It was always you.” And they kiss. Cut to wedding bells. Roll credits where the next track, “I’m Not the Only One,” plays during the reception, where we see all his friends shacking up with her babetastic bridesmaids, even the awkward comic relief and the goofy chick with a lazy eye are hitting it off. Bam. Summer blockbuster done.

That’s basically this album. It’s a PG-13 sex scene, heavy on the lips, lots of strategically placed upper arm. Sam Smith is about to soft-core fuck your ears, and no one is getting off.

Hugely commercial, hugely appealing to gigantic swaths of romantics around the world, this will be the album of the summer. You will hear it everywhere. It will dominate media for the next two years. It will be on TV, in movies, it will follow you from the radio of your car to the aisles of the supermarket. You’ll hear instrumental versions in elevators and on hold with the power company. The same song will be on three radio stations at the same time.

Sam Smith has arrived. He’ll be as famous as Adele. He’ll win the Mercury Prize. He’ll be humble and say something adorable at the Grammys.

Five years from now, when he’s settled down with his new beau and they’ve adopted a couple of racially ambiguous twins, we’ll all tell stories about how he once did that song with Disclosure.

Chromeo is like a test of how much you like fun.

If you have the nerve to say you don’t like Chromeo, I immediately draw two conclusions about you: You  have no sense of humor and your idea of fun and my idea of fun stand on opposite sides of an unbridgeable rift. Let’s just go our separate ways and call it good.

If, on the other hand, you happen to like fun, Chromeo has something for you to hear.

On their newest record, White Women, the Canadian duo slide elegantly from silky smooth hook to silky smooth hook on a cavalcade of analog grooves and big four-on-the-floor beats best characterized as “the funk.”

This is the album they’ve been building toward for sometime. It’s smart, with clever lyricism that doesn’t make sacrifices to fit in a genre that isn’t always known for it’s intellectualism. There’s substance here, and it isn’t just in the break-neck beats or syncopated bass lines. All the hallmarks of Chromeo music remain — perfect, vintage 80′s patches, talkbox, well-timed call and response between the instruments and vocals — but there’s a refinement that we haven’t seen on their previous albums.

The first track, “Jealous (I ain’t with it),” is noticeably commercial (in fact, it’s already been featured in commercials), but goddamn if that hook doesn’t fit the beat better than a black spandex body suit fits Jennifer Lawrence. And they don’t stop there. As the title track of their accompanying tour, “Come Alive” features vocals from Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bundick and chorus so smooth you could spread it on toast.

And there’s so much more than just the singles — the record has some serious follow through. “Old 45′s” has a wistful nostalgia about it, and “Frequent Flyer” moves from the 80′s to the early 90′s with a mega-huge New York house chorus.

There’s something for everyone on this album.

That is, if you’re fun.

Belgian producer The Magician released the 43rd incarnation of his Magic Tape series. As usual, it’s a disco heavy journey through modern house music.

From his Soundcloud:

Hello Everyone,

Here is Magic Tape 43 ! Plenty of surprises in it…

Kisses,
The Magician

 

Cherub wants you to fuck to this record, and they’re not shy about it.

Take the lyricism of Neon Trees, the sonic palette of Chromeo, mix in a healthy dose of Prince, and then drop the tempo like panties on prom night, and  you’ve got Cherub’s second full-length release, Year of the Caprese.

“This is that disco shit / that makes you feel alive,” says singer Jordan Kelley on ”Disco Shit”, the second track on the record, and it’s true. When they disco, it is that disco shit you’ve been looking for your whole life; it’s the stuff your mother talks about with a dreamy, nostalgic look in her eye as she reminisces about the ’70s, when you start wondering just how many people could have been your dad if things had been different.

But there’s no escaping it: this album is built for sexing. These are the formative moments of the next generation of disco, the catalyst for those nights grinding to the uptempo jams that follow. This is an investment in the future of disco, an incubator to secure the legacy for the next generation that will grow out of these hip-swaying songs. You will be that nostalgic parent, and Cherub wants to get you there.

They certainly walk the line between cheesy and authentic, and at times, they fall on the wrong side of it. The most glaring example is “<3″ — starting right with the title. ”I want to take / A sledgehammer to your car / And break / Everything apart,” says the chorus, culminating in an acoustic sing-a-long that has all the hallmarks of a Chris Carrabba unplugged album. Still not satisfied, they decided to leave the studio discussion where they applaud their heartfelt performance there at the end of the track, to remind us all that that really was the take (I mean, he made it more major). It reeks of major label single-centric pressure. Mistakes were made.

Is this a brilliant album? No.

Is this a game changer? No.

Does it have some clever moments, catchy hooks, and is it fun to listen to? Yes it is.

The tennis ball sample on “This Song is for You” is great. The tempo drop on “Work the Middle” is a great way to end the track. The calypso ballad, “Strip to This,” will elicit a smile from even the most cynical critics, despite it’s tired theme and painfully obvious anti-climax (get it? Cause it’s a strip club. You never get to fuck. GET IT?!). Apparently they intend to include their biggest single, “Doses and Mimosas” on every release, but fuck it, three more beers and you, me, and Mr. Carrabba can sing along with the greatest acoustic breakdown Cherub has ever performed.

It’s a fun album. If that’s what you want, what you expect, then they gotchu.