Melissa Etheridge, Erykah Badu

Melissa Etheridge, Fearless Love
Rockinâ?? riffs, soaring runs and that unbreakable soul that even cancer couldnâ??t stop â?? 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 â??Fearless Love,â? her 11th album is as â??90s as it can be while still keeping Etheridge relevant. More than ever, though, sheâ??s using her collective wisdom â?? nearing 50, and having wrestled with disease and inner demons, thereâ??s a lot of it â?? and imparting it into a galvanized and hit-heavy album that ranks as one of her best. Itâ??s a reflective road to self-love, finding it and then giving it, as she does on â??Gently We Rowâ? â?? an intimate acoustic wrap-up that builds to an intensely moving climax about her kids. She parts her own mirror on â??Indiana,â? a piano-guitar seesaw thatâ??s an empowering tale of her wifeâ??s journey, and then on â??The Wanting of You,â? about a woman resisting temptation. Both should be radio hits. Etheridge also gives a big olâ?? â??suck itâ? to her home state on â??Miss California,â? 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 â??Window Seatâ? video), Erykah Badu has a husky rawness about her voice that connects to the heart and soul of her songs. Sheâ??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, itâ??s diluted with a more modern approach to R&B than 2008â??s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) â?? 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: â??Window Seatâ? stomps and claps its way into your head, â??Umm Hmmâ? quilts a catchy chorus with a lo-fi sample and mellow standout â??Gone Baby, Donâ??t Be Longâ? 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 â?? proof that, even with slighter material, weâ??re missing a lot more than we think in that video of hers: some balls.

Grade: B+

By Chris Azzopardi