Extinguish: Garbage - Not Your Kind Of People

Despite all appearances to the contrary, Garbage spent only eight years on an indefinite hiatus -- it only seemed like they spent over a decade wandering in the pop hinterlands. Granted, Garbage fostered this impression, presenting their 2012 album Not Your Kind of People as a grand comeback, inviting comparisons to their earlier work and happily riding the burgeoning '90s revival of the 2010s. Unlike their two W administration-era albums, there is no grappling with new sounds and styles, only an embrace of the thick aural onslaught of "Stupid Girl" and "Vox." Garbage have honed in on their essence and are unafraid to revive memories of their past glories. Old pros that they are, they're able to deliver their hooks cleanly and efficiently, accessorized in just enough ruckus to cut through the murk. There is no evident flab in either the composition or production; the album avoids the moody detours that sometimes bogged down their latter-day records, and there is a noted emphasis on the pure, simple power of melody. Every hallmark of Garbage is here, the only concessions to their advancing age arriving via Shirley Manson's keenly aware lyrics, leaving the rest of the record to stand as a simultaneous testament and revival of their strengths. And therein lies the rub: what once was futuristic now sounds nostalgic -- or to borrow a title from another member from the class of 1995, "Brand New You're Retro" -- and that's the appeal of Not Your Kind of People, for better or worse.

Based On Critics - 31/50

Based On Public - 6/50

Based On Hype - 20/50

Based On Pop Flares - 30/50

Overall:

Extinguish: Keane - Strangeland

Keane's fourth outing trades in the officious electro-pop flourishes that peppered 2008's Perfect Symmetry for a more familiar approach. Closer in tone to 2006's Under the Iron Sea, some may find Strangeland's reliable mix of Coldplay, Snow Patrol, and "Sit Down"-era James to be a bit rote, but when it comes to crafting relatively safe, achingly melodic, and terminally sincere adult alternative rock songs, there are few groups as prodigious as the East Sussex quartet. Bolstered by a pair of stadium-ready singles in "Disconnected" and "Silence by the Night," both of which occur (in classic LP fashion) early on, Strangeland works best when it sticks to the formula, providing a hook, a line, and a sinker before landing the listener with the kind of colossal chorus that results in the frantic rolling up or down of car windows. More contemplative moments, like the lilting "Black Rain," the lovely "Neon River," and the appropriately epic closer "Sea Fog" work just as well, dialing back the cymbal swells in favor of a more measured level of melodrama. Strangeland never really lives up to its mysterious title, as there's nothing on it that doesn’t feel willfully nostalgic, but like any good plate of comfort food (for those with larger appetites, there's a 16-track extended version, and a 24-track CD/DVD combo) it satisfies in a way that more adventurous meals never truly can.

Critics - 30/50

Public - 7/50

Hype - 6/50

Pop Flares - 32/50

Overall:

Extinguish: The All-American Rejects - Kids In The Street

Four years on from When the World Comes Down -- and their fourth record overall -- All-American Rejects return with Kids in the Street, an album that simultaneously finds the emo-lite quartet maturing and embracing the sugar rush of pop. Certainly, Kids in the Street finds AAR performing with a musical dexterity they didn't quite have a decade earlier, when they were just kids creating big noise, seeming almost to stumble upon their hooks, whereas everything here is purposeful, a cleanly efficient machine churning out catchy, insistent pop spangled with hints of ‘80s synth pop. Such production flourishes add depth that the perfectly pretty introspective acoustic ballads don’t quite manage to muster, yet those slower tunes do highlight the range All-American Rejects achieve here, their richest and most varied album to date.

Based On Critics - 32/50

Based on Public - 5/50

Based on Hype - 15/50

Based on Pop Flares - 30/50

Overall:

Extinguish: Sleigh Bells - Reign Of Terror

"Push it push it push it!" Alexis Krauss shouts at the beginning of Reign of Terror, and that's exactly what she and Derek Miller do on their follow-up to Treats. Despite its in-the-red volume, Sleigh Bells' debut was a fragile, almost alchemical blend of wispy melodies and crushingly heavy beats and riffs. How could they top an album that was already turned up to 11? By turning things up to 12: on Reign of Terror, the duo brings the nods to metal that added a headbanging thrust to Treats and to center stage. From the album's name down to song titles like "D.O.A." and "Never Say Die," Krauss and Miller allude to metal's flirtations with death, which makes a strange kind of sense: Treats was a blend of sounds that shouldn't have worked but did, and changing that formula is riskier still. Oddly, though, the duo sound more gimmicky with a narrower focus than they did when they were tossing drumline beats and P-Funk samples into the mix. With Miller playing a shred and squeal-friendly Jackson USA Soloist and a slicker production, Reign of Terror has a chilly, harsh edge that makes Sleigh Bells' debut sound downright quaint by comparison. Despite the album's hyper-saturated sound, everything feels more polarized; Krauss' vocals are often more sugary than ever, and next to Miller's guitar heroics, it often feels like a hesher giving his chops a workout while someone blasts teen pop next door. The duo's alchemy resurfaces on the songs that sound the most like Treats: On "Crush," Krauss sounds like a revolutionary cheerleader toying with a captive enemy when she sings "I've gotta crush you now"; "End of the Line" echoes the Treats' hit "Rill Rill"'s breathy pop poses; "Leader of the Pack" boasts a tooth-rottingly sweet melody, and "Comeback Kid" balances the album's heaviness with humor and finesse. However, when the band goes deeper into metal territory, they aren't always as successful: The aptly fiery "Demons" sounds extra-vengeful with strutting fretwork and rapid-fire kickdrums, but "Born to Lose" and "Road to Hell" just get weighed down with heavy riffs. Indeed, Reign of Terror falls off precipitously when the guitars overtake everything else, as on the album's meandering last three songs. Miller and Krauss deserve credit for branching out and taking risks, but as the album veers back and forth between inspired and irritating, and as they scramble to fill every nook and cranny with some type of sound, Reign of Terror ends up being a fatiguing reminder of how remarkable a feat Treats was. Sleigh Bells may have topped themselves here, but it's a case of more being less.

Based On Critics - 38/50

Based On Public - 10/50

Based On Hype - 5/50

Based On Pop Flares - 32/50

Overall:

Extinguish: Ingrid Michaelson - Human Again

Guys just keep breaking Ingrid Michaelson's heart. Five albums into her career, she's still singing about lost loves and bad breakups, filling every sad-eyed song with lyrics like "Open-heart surgery, that is what you do to me" and "It's a wonder that I survived the war between your heart and mine." It's dramatic, but don't expect Michaelson to wallow in her own misery. By surrounding her Lilith Fair melodies with lush, layered arrangements and movie soundtrack strings, she manages to turn even her most downtrodden songs into anthems, sounding proud and resolute despite her malfunctioning cardiac organ. Her voice has changed since 2009's Maybe; the light vibrato and quirky, almost bookish phrasing are still there, but so is a full-bodied belt that gets unleashed whenever the melody starts climbing upward. Michaelson simply sounds stronger, as though one final breakup was all she needed to find her vocal mojo. Or maybe she just needed to find super-producer David Kahne, who replaces Dan Romer -- Michaelson's longtime collaborator, as well as one of the driving forces behind the summery, frothy, ukulele-fueled songs that filled 2009's Maybe -- and helps give her a wintry makeover. Romer's influence is missed, particularly on the peppier songs, which tend to feel too heavy-handed in Kahne's hands. ("Blood Brothers," an uptempo tune about loving your neighbor, aims for the Ingrid equivalent of "We Are the World" and falls short.) When Human Again ditches the feel-good stuff and goes straight into drama-queen territory, though, it feels like we're finally getting to watch Michaelson come to grips with her broken heart, realizing that the only way to make things better is to fix the damn thing herself.

Based on Critics - 37/50

Based on Public - 10/50

Based on Hype - 5/50

Based on Pop Flares - 33/50

Overall:

Extinguish: Vanessa Carlton - Rabbits On The Run

Shifting to indie Razor & Tie after a four-year hiatus following her 2007 album, Heroes & Thieves, Vanessa Carlton turns inward on her fourth album, Rabbits on the Run. Embracing all the spectral elements that ran underneath the surface of her music, Carlton avoids any of the surging orchestrations or any suggestions of cheer, spending long stretches of the album alone with her piano, and when the arrangements are fleshed-out, they’re done so subtly that it often seems as if she’s singing alone in the studio. Even if it has the effect of turning Rabbits on the Run into something of an unintentional Tori Amos homage, it’s an appropriately austere setting for Carlton’s melancholy introspections, ruminations that don’t offer any easy way inside. Unlike “A Thousand Miles” or the two albums that dealt with the repercussions of her initial success, this is music made with no audience in mind: it is strikingly personal, to the extent that it suggests that Carlton needs to get this soul-searching out of her system in order to move forward.

Based on Critics - 34/50

Based on Public - 2.5/50

Based on Hype - 5/50

Based on Pop Flares - 35/50

Overall:

Extinguish: Joss Stone - LP1

LP1 marks the third successive album from Joss Stone where she’s attempting to hit the restart button on her career, to usher in a new beginning for the neo-soul diva or, better yet, find the right setting for her considerable gifts. This journey began with 2007’s splashy modern R&B set Introducing Joss Stone, a makeover she rebelled against on her major-label kiss-off Colour Me Free, and now that she’s truly independent, she’s aligned with Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart for LP1, returning to the classicism of her earliest work. There is a difference. Stewart is naturally reluctant to present Stone in a strictly soul setting; R&B is the foundation, but he dabbles in tight funk, folk, blues, Euro-rock, and modernist pop, giving LP1 just enough elasticity so it breathes and just enough color so it doesn’t seem staid. Then, there’s Stone herself. She may still have a tendency to over-sell her songs, but she doesn’t sound like she is patterning herself after her idols; she’s developing her own style, somewhere between classic soul and the pyrotechnics of modern divas, her settings leaning toward the former and her phrasing the latter. LP1 doesn’t always achieve a balance between the two extremes, not to the extent Stone and Stewart desires, as some of the ballads are a little formless and some of the funk a little too restricted, while some of Joss’ posturing is a little affected, but it has more moments that work than anything she’s done since her actual debut in 2003. If this winds up being the first album of many that mine this style, LP1 will serve its purpose well.

Based on Critics - 30/50

Based on Public - 7.5/50

Based on Hype - 5/50

Based on Pop Flares - 32/50

Overall:

Extinguish: David Cook - This Loud Morning

This Loud Morning is a curiously appropriate title for a David Cook album. Unlike so many rockers, Cook makes music not for the dead of night but for the crack of dawn, music that greets the day with a modicum of measured inspiration. This is particularly true of this 2011 sophomore set, an album that sands down any lingering rough edges from his 2008 post-American Idol major-label debut. Strangely enough, these rough edges include not only the faster songs that peppered David Cook but anything resembling a discernable hook. Every cut marches along with a stately purpose and each track is colored with countless guitars, so many that it stands to reason that this album would sound loud, yet it never does. Everything is tempered and deliberate, which isn’t to say it’s insincere: Cook emotes with gusto, never stopping to consider that his singing is lacquered over by all those guitars. So, This Loud Morning winds up as an album that’s primarily textural mood music for the morning, and one that’s not all that loud either.

Based on Critics - 32/50

Based on Public - 12/50

Based on Hype - 6/50

Based on Pop Flares - 28/50

Overall:

Extinguish: Shayne Ward - Obsession

The official cover for Obsession

As one of the few solo male X-Factor contestants to make it past a first album, and with a million-selling single under his belt, 2005 winner Shayne Ward is entitled to feel a little aggrieved that his music career appeared to have been undeservedly held in limbo. Indeed, despite both his self-titled debut and follow-up, Breathless, achieving multi-platinum success, Ward has been missing in action since 2007, a rather lengthy time away, considering the fickle nature of the reality TV pop market. But just as he seemed consigned to the same scrapheap as Leon Jackson and Steve Brookstein, he belatedly returns with a brand new album, Obsession. Scanning the track list, it's not particularly evident what took him so long. With just ten tracks, two of which are covers, two of which sample familiar '90s hits, the whole project has an air of the Simon Cowell rushed job of his first post-X-Factor LP. And despite the likes of hotshot producers Max Martin (Britney Spears) andSavan Kotecha (Usher) on board, Obsession isn't too far removed from the slick dance-pop of his previous album. Only two concessions are made to the ubiquitous urban-electro sound that every other male vocalist seems to have succumbed to this year, the rather random synth-based reworking of Nickelback's "Gotta Be Somebody" and the infectious floor-filler "Must Be a Reason Why," which samples Wamdue Project's number one "King of the Castle." It's an admirable move, but as they are the two most convincing tracks, Ward might have been better off following the crowd, particularly considering that the rest of Obsessiondoesn't exactly show an aversion to imitation. Indeed, several tracks sound like tributes to other X Factor contestants. The clattering rhythms of "Close to Close" echo Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love" and an ill-advised cover of the Tony Rich Project's "Nobody Knows" turns the R&B classic into a Olly Murs-style cod-reggae pastiche, while "Waiting in the Wings" is a clichéd piano-led number that could have been performed by any of its male winners. Elsewhere, Ward tackles '80s-influenced rock power ballads ("Foolish"), bouncy '90s boy band-inspired pop ("Someone Like You," which borrows the melody from Spin Doctors' "Two Princes"), and falsetto-led love songs (the self-penned title track), all very competently, but all very unremarkably too. After a three-year absence, Ward really needed to step up his game to reestablish his pop star credentials. But despite being labeled the U.K. Justin Timberlake early in his career, Obsession's dated sound and consistent mediocrity are more likely to see him dubbed as the U.K. Peter Andre.

Based on Critic - 30/50

Based on Public - 36/50

Based on Album Planning - 1/50

Based on Leaked Records - 20/50

Overall:

[I Don't Mind Being Thanks]

Extinguish: Lee DeWyze - Live It Up

The official album cover for Live It Up

Winner of the ninth season of American Idol, the season that will forever be remembered as Simon Cowell’s last, Lee DeWyze somehow eked out a victory against neo-hippie soulsterCrystal Bowersox, charming with a smarmy shyness that never quite seemed to jibe with a guy who kicked around bars in the suburbs for the better part of a decade. Other Idolwinners were journeymen in disguise -- think cornball Taylor Hicks or well-coifed rockerDavid Cook -- but DeWyze’s major-label debut, Live It Up, sounds like the work of a local band that was given a chance to run wild in a professional studio. 19 Recordings team their winner with an army of professionals led by Toby Gad and John Shanks but they don’t dictate the direction of the album; they shape DeWyze’s singsong strum-alongs and MOR pop into something resembling a triple-A chart hit, letting similarities to Jack Johnson,Jason Mraz, and John Mayer stand strong. DeWyze can wrangle a pleasant melody, particularly when he’s favoring sunswept SoCal folk-pop, but he can’t resist sabotaging his slight charms with a studied hamminess, adopting a gravelly growl whenever he wants to appear soulful and leaning so hard in his phrasing that he stumbles instead of shuffles. Ironically, these affectations are best heard on the least-produced moments on Live It Up; sure, they’re more apparent when the arrangements are simple, but the shellacked attempts at glassy modern pop dampen whatever personality DeWyze may have. When things are light and simple on Live It Up, DeWyze seems like himself: a threadbare talent who floated in on the vapors of Idol’s empty tank.

Based on Critics - 23/50

Based on Public - 25/50

Based on Album Planning - 3/50

Based on Leaked Records - 30/50

Overall:

[I Don't Mind Being Thanks]