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closeWednesday, Nov. 04, 2009
New CDs: Weezer, Dolly Parton and Swell Season
Weezer
Raditude
***
Weezer’s latest appears barely a year after last year’s self-titled effort (or The Red Album, if you’re so inclined). Rivers Cuomo must have piles of songs laying around; despite the burst of productivity, Raditude suffers from a lack of focus. Some tunes, like the Lil Wayne-augmented Can’t Stop Partying, feel less like Cuomo mocking the zeitgeist (good) and more like Cuomo shamelessly appropriating a popular style for no discernible reason (bad). Despite the record’s patchiness, there’s enough to warrant a few spins for fans.
Download this: Tripping Down the Freeway
— Preston Jones
Dolly Parton
Dolly
*****
Hard to believe, with all she has done, that Dolly Parton has never been on the receiving end of the box-set treatment. The four-disc, 99-track Dolly rectifies that oversight, although it leaves off before the 2000s and her reinvention as a bluegrass queen. Beginning with the baby-voiced Puppy Love, Dolly deftly traces her evolution from scrappy songstress to genteel country legend. Few artists, then or now, have the range to pull off the dizzying shifts in tone and mood that Parton has managed. Dolly also puts her occasionally overlooked talent as a songwriter in sharp relief, proving once more they don’t build ’em like they used to.
Download this: Jolene
— Preston Jones
The Swell Season
Strict Joy
*****
Heartbreak and unease have rarely sounded prettier. Maybe it’s the circumstance — the Swell Season’s Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová were a real-life couple before they played one in the movie Once and subsequently broke up just as the accolades, including an Oscar for Best Original Song, started rolling in. Or maybe it’s that Hansard’s weary delivery of raw, introspective lyrics fits perfectly with Irglová’s delicate harmonies and the spare, acoustic folk backdrop. In either case, the Swell Season’s latest effort shows how simple arrangements can still communicate volumes about life’s complexities.
Download this: In These Arms
— Glenn Gamboa, Newsday
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