Black Holes & Revelations
muse
Helium 3/Warner Bros.
From its conspicuously Pink Floyd-inspired cover art to its flamboyant sonics, the fifth album from Brit trio Muse absolutely revels in its ignorance of hipper, simpler, grittier modern-rock trends. Lush, sophisticated and unapologetically operatic, Black Holes & Revelations stretches outward in several directions from Muse's dependably overwrought signature — in fact, it contains both the most plainly accessible and most ambitious songs the group has ever released — but never toward any of the familiar sounds currently dominating its milieu.
Matthew Bellamy's Thom Yorke-channeling-Jeff Buckley vocal histrionics and penchant for copious electro/keyboard embellishment remain predictably intact. It seems the band has finally learned that less really can sometimes produce more, however. The obvious single, "Starlight," scores by paring things back to a propulsive rhythm, distorted '80s bass line and infectious keyboard melody; "Supermassive Black Hole" and the waltzing "Soldier's Poem" follow similarly spare formulas, abetted by some marvelous Queen-esque vocal layering. The Iberian-flavored "Hoodoo" only gets huge when it absolutely has to.
Elsewhere, Muse delivers the hyperbolically emotional bombast that made it famous: the dynamic opener "Take A Bow," a Depeche Mode-indebted synth-rock juggernaut "Map of the Problematique," and the prog-metalicious "Assassin." As with other Muse releases, Black Holes can be a bit exhausting when taken as a whole. But it's easily the band's strongest and most easily digestible album to date. 3.5 stars
The Complete Pacific Jazz Sessions
GIL EVANS
Blue Note
During a late-'50s cluster of creativity that yielded the classic Miles Davis collaborations Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, arranger/composer Gil Evans found time for other pursuits — like a couple of splendid albums for the Pacific Jazz label called New Bottle, Old Wine and Great Jazz Standards, which have been compiled on this maxxed-out single CD. Using ensembles ranging from 13 to 15 players, Evans puts his special treatment on everything from early-jazz chestnuts ("St. Louis Blues," "King Porter Stomp") to bop and post-bop classics ("Bird Feathers," "Round Midnight," "Straight No Chaser," "Manteca"), 15 tunes in all. The mood ranges from sprightly ("Joy Spring") to sprawling and moody ("Django"). As is Evans' wont, the horns are more creamy than shrill, although they're punched up with occasional strident accents. The first eight tunes, which comprise New Bottle, feature the dazzling solo flights of alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, which, in terms of personality, give them an edge over the disc's last half, with its more integrated ensemble feel. In all, this is a bevy of great, familiar tunes, artfully arranged by a master. 5 stars —Eric Snider
Radiodread
EASY STAR ALL*STARS
Easy Star
In theory, the idea of a track-by-track reggae remake of Radiohead's OK Computer sounds terrible. Nevertheless, the project works, mainly because the guys behind it have great taste when it comes to deciding which elements to keep and which to jettison from the source material. "Airbag," which opens the album, keeps the major guitar riff that propels the original, while substituting your standard loping reggae beat in place of Radiohead's more electronic rhythm track. Like the disc as a whole, it works much better than it should. Still, the record is a compilation — there is a different guest artist on each track — and, like all comps, is prone to inconsistency. 3 stars —Cooper Levey-Baker
Post-War
M. WARD
Merge
Album number four from M. Ward arrives as proof that there's a thinner line between indie-folk and mainstream strum-pop than the cognoscenti would like to admit. Ward is really in his element here when working with a full palette, like on his bright Wilco-esque cover of Daniel Johnston's "To Go Home," or on "Magic Trick," which features some charming gang harmonies. But when Ward strips things down to get intimate, the results sound a little comatose, too close to dudes like Jack Johnson for comfort. 3 stars —CLB
This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2006.