New Kids on the Block
"The Block"
Interscope
****
On their first album since 1994, the thirtysomething members of New Kids on the Block make unusually little try to conceal their ages. There's one song called "Grown Man," for model, and there's another in which the hook goes, "I'm a big boy / You're a big girl now."
"The Block" even ends with a snatch of in-the-studio chatter between Donnie Wahlberg and one of his children -- not the most efficient way of distracting us from the fact that these backstreet boys ar well on their way to becoming middle-aged workforce. (On the other bridge player, the record album does include a track called "Sexify My Love," which is certainly a mistake cipher over the age of 16 should make.)
Perhaps the surest signal of the New Kids' maturity here is the surprising forcefulness of most of the material. They've been roughly long enough to experience what a hit sounds like, and they're wise enough to know that they don't have evermore to reconstruct a undermentioned. So "The Block" comes loaded with sure-thing collaborations with radio-pop rainmakers such as Timbaland, Akon, Ne-Yo and Polow da Don, each of whom treat the propose with deference, not condescension.
The best cuts exude an understated confidence the old New Kids never had: In "Click Click Click" they layer sleek blue-eyed soul vocals over a hushed computer-music groove, piece "Twisted," the Timbaland cut, sets angelic harmonies against a ominous synth riff. "Grown Man," produced by new jack swing maestro Teddy Riley, even makes clever manipulation of a sample of "Chain of Fools."
Considering Top 40's predilection for seamless young faces, "The Block's" unexpected caliber is no guarantee of a commercial rebirth for NKOTB, world Health Organization play the Staples Center on Oct. 8. Believe it or not, though, they've got the right stuff.
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Mikael Wood
A country soul in a strange world
Rodney Crowell
"Sex and Gasoline"
Yep Roc
*** 1/2
Affairs of the heart have tenacious been the domain of esteemed nation singer and songwriter Rodney Crowell, and he hasn't abandoned that territory in his up-to-the-minute effort, in stores today. But the real fire ignites in the title track and several other songs in which Crowell tries to sort out a culture where "it don't make much sense that usual sense don't make no sense no more," as his peer John Prine once assign it.
"Sex and Gasoline" decries the destructive messages about the female body that pummel women and girls by the minute. With Dylanesque bite, he boils the problem down succinctly: "Pop faith, bullwhip thin / Say you ain't nothin simply the soma you're in." Then in "The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design," he questions long-held assumptions about the ever-forward march of progress. Joe Hen- ry's edgy production amplifies the muscle of Crowell's lyrics and the immediacy of his vocals.
Along with peers such as Emmylou Harris and John Hiatt, world Health Organization also launched their careers in the '70s, Crowell seems to have establish the fire to just keep acquiring better.
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Friday, 5 September 2008
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