Your backstage pass to the DFW music scene and beyond.
Sade
Soldier of Love
For her first disc in eight years, English chanteuse Sade doesn't do something off-the-wall like team with Lil Wayne or T-Pain to try to reach "the kids." Instead, she does what she has always done: craft suave, adult pop that's at once sleek and soulful. While she might have turned up the groove just a notch -- the title track may be the funkiest thing in her catalog, ever -- the overall feel is her usual sense of romantic hush fused with minimalist but loose-limbed rhythms. It's hardly revolutionary but it's still effective.
Download this: Soldier of Love
Hot Chip
One Life Stand
The British techno-pop outfit Hot Chip's latest album is a softer, gentler follow-up to 2008's Made in the Dark. It's rich with emotional resonance, evoking love at every possible interval, a rarity among dance-pop records. Hot Chip's hyper-evolved tracks can be soft-shoed to in a state of contemplative agony this time around. Think Joy Division but classier. The delightfully bitter taste of One Life Stand triumphs throughout much of the album. On Hand Me Down Your Love, sweet-and-sour piano hooks and tremolo vocals ache for the dance floor and the bedroom.
Download this: I Feel Better
Nneka
Concrete Jungle
Nigerian-born rapper and singer Nneka's U.S. debut unfolds like a 12-track wake-up call -- an unrelenting mishmash of horns, trumpets and, sometimes, steel drums. "God is knocking at the door, could you let him in?" she asks on Showin' Love. She summons "Jezebels, Judases, bangers, prophets, men of God, prostitutes, popes, teachers, lawyers, all you scholars, rulers, chosen few ..." to take a hard look at what matters in life. Even when her honeyed vocals are poured over the swinging horns of Uncomfortable Truth, her message doesn't lose its bite.
Download this: Mind vs. Heart
