Quick Spins
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Big Kenny
SHARE THE LOVE
Formerly the big half of the iconoclastic Nashville duo Big & Rich, Kenny Alphin is a garrulous, openhearted fellow who, as the title of the sunny benediction that closes his new solo album attests, wants nothing more than to "Share the Love." This isn't just bromidic humbug. Alphin has been an outspoken supporter of relief efforts in the southern part of Sudan. He's also been active in the movement to stop mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.
As a musician he favors melodic, genre-crossing arrangements -- country, rock and soul with a soupcon of hip-hop -- and let-it-all-hang-out lyrics long on uplift. In the barnyard stomp "Happy People" he sings of watermelon, swimming holes and barefoot throw-downs with people "pickin' and grinnin' " and "DJs spinnin'." "Free Like Me" is an ambient, blues-steeped paean to the virtues of self-determination.
Kenny can lay the down-home shtick on a little thick at times, as when he refers to himself as "a longhaired farm boy with jukebox dreams" in the mid-tempo rocker "Long After I'm Gone." In "Be Back Home," a banjo-flecked ballad with henlike squawking in the background, he raves about his granny's "fried corn and chicken bread."
As "aw shucks" as some of it is, he's as sincere as he can be, and he imparts it all with such a pleasant, self-deprecating tenor that it's hard not to be warmed by the good vibes he's spreading. Plus, here's a guy who just doesn't sing about building schools in Sudan; he goes out and does it.
-- Bill Friskics-Warren
Robbie Williams
REALITY KILLED THE VIDEO STAR
It's been 10 years since Robbie Williams, the onetime British boy band frontman and enduring tabloid staple, first attempted American crossover success. Several tepidly selling releases later, Williams may have to resign himself to being one of those uniquely British preoccupations that never catches on stateside, like beans on toast, or Sienna Miller.
Don't think Williams hasn't noticed. "Message to the troubadour/The world don't love you anymore," he intones glumly on "Morning Sun," the opening track of his new disc, "Reality Killed the Video Star." The disc's title is a play on the Buggles' famed "Video Killed the Radio Star," but Williams, who has watched reality-show singers like Leona Lewis find the American stardom he surely dreams of, couldn't sound more serious.
Williams recently dabbled in electro-pop and novelty rap, but consumer indifference may have finally freed him to make the album he wants. He has historically thrived on florid ballads, awkward puns and schmaltz, and "Reality" is happy to oblige. It's ballad-heavy and louche, its best tracks pivoting between winking narcissism and an exaggerated self-pity that, for Williams, is as necessary as air.
