Melissa Etheridge, Fearless Love
Rockin’ riffs, soaring runs and that unbreakable soul that even cancer couldn’t stop – Melissa Etheridge welcomes back the slamming sound that made her a rock goddess. Tweaked, though, with some modern U2 siren-like guitars, notably on the wailing power-anthem “Fearless Love,” her 11th album is as ’90s as it can be while still keeping Etheridge relevant. More than ever, though, she’s using her collective wisdom – nearing 50, and having wrestled with disease and inner demons, there’s a lot of it – and imparting it into a galvanized and hit-heavy album that ranks as one of her best. It’s a reflective road to self-love, finding it and then giving it, as she does on “Gently We Row” – an intimate acoustic wrap-up that builds to an intensely moving climax about her kids. She parts her own mirror on “Indiana,” a piano-guitar seesaw that’s an empowering tale of her wife’s journey, and then on “The Wanting of You,” about a woman resisting temptation. Both should be radio hits. Etheridge also gives a big ol’ “suck it” to her home state on “Miss California,” a scorching guttural-sung rant about Prop. 8 that she wails with such fiery passion and win-win sway, it could change legislation. Fearless, indeed. (Out April 27)
Grade: A-
Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
Naked as they come (and very naked in her au naturel “Window Seat” video), Erykah Badu has a husky rawness about her voice that connects to the heart and soul of her songs. She’s as crafty a writer as she is a quirky vocalist, slipping in snappy rhymes and singing about love with the kind of laid-back vibe that might conjure up a summer romance and a bag of pot. Whatever weirdness that envelopes Badu, it’s diluted with a more modern approach to R&B than 2008’s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) – a sociopolitical album as out-there as Badu herself, trippy and twisted and hard to warm up to with its unconventional sound. More lightweight and accessible, Part Two comes closer to the neo-soul smoothness of her debut Baduizm, never working too hard to work: “Window Seat” stomps and claps its way into your head, “Umm Hmm” quilts a catchy chorus with a lo-fi sample and mellow standout “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long” rides atop a hella good groove. What she loses in mind-bending mechanics, she gains in melodic reverie. Only at the end does she truly venture out with a loungy-launched ballad that morphs into a hypnotic 10-minute-plus emotional cry – proof that, even with slighter material, we’re missing a lot more than we think in that video of hers: some balls.
Grade: B+
By Chris Azzopardi
