TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010 MUSIC


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THE CLASSICAL BEAT Post critic Anne Midgette offers her take on the classical music world at voices. washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat.


QUICK SPINS


The Gaslight Anthem AMERICAN SLANG


Though many have tried, Gaslight Anthem might be the first millennial band to truly crack the Dad Rock market. “American Slang,” the Jersey quartet’s third salvo, grinds their Petty, Springsteen, Strummer and Westerberg- isms to a wickedly fine edge, while leader Brian Fallon heaps on enough grandiose blue-collar poetry to fill a hundred skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets. The 10-track album radiates a sweaty, radio-ready rock vibrancy that could easily sweep across demographic boundaries.


KYLE GUSTAFSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST LEADING MAN: Drake, here at the 9:30 club on Sunday, has a winner in “Thank Me Later.” Drake: Confident, conflicted drake from C1


“Successful,” “Forever”) that be- gan to coat American airwaves and bandwidth last summer. He eclipses those hits with his


album’s first single, “Over,” a song that finds the ascendant star casting a suspicious glare over his own coronation. With ribbons of brass trilling behind him, he sings with a furrowed brow, “I know way too many people here right now that I didn’t know last year.” The track approaches club- land delirium, but the rest of “Thank Me Later” sounds far more spare. Across the album’s 14 cuts, beats are parsed to their thundering essence while syn- thesizers billow on some distant horizon like strange fog. Each track feels only half full, provid- ing ample space for the rapper to deliver his boasts and confes- sions in high definition. Even with “Fancy” — an up-tempo ode to women who spend hours primping in preparation for Sat- urday night — the beat eventual- ly dissolves into a misty coda. All the while, Drake toggles seamlessly between the twin roles of rapper and singer. His rhymes evoke Lil Wayne’s manic croak transposed into a suave, sonorous purr. As a singer, he croons each refrain with con- versational ease — a nuance in- herited from 50 Cent. But what should truly endear


Drake to the masses is his su- preme self-awareness. “My 15


Bun B’s cameo on “Miss Me” is limited to five quick words. Though he’s been champi- oned as incumbent rap royalty, Drake’s strongest analog resides in a neighboring star system. Her name is Taylor Swift. For generations, both country


minutes started an hour ago,” he declares on “Fireworks,” simul- taneously projecting himself as a braggart and a pawn trapped at the crossroads of celebrity and reality. With “The Resistance,” his mind races from his ailing grandmother to a one-night stand that resulted in an abor- tion. Dazed by the fast life but still unable to resist its pull, he raps, “I’m holding on by a thread / It’s like I’m high right now /The guy right now / And you can tell by looking in my eyes right now / that nothing really comes as a surprise right now / ’cause we just having the time of our lives right now.” He sounds conflicted at times, but the confidence in his deliv- ery makes his marquee collab- orators seem smaller than they are. Rap heroes Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy and T.I. make guest turns, but all are relegated to supporting roles. On “Up All Night,” larger-than-life newcom- er Nicki Minaj sounds drowsy.


singers and rappers have traded with the same currency: the no- tion of authenticity. Accordingly, both Drake and 20-year-old Swift are pushing their respec- tive genres forward by retooling what it means to be “real.” He gets his heart crushed in the tab- loids, she gets her heart crushed after sixth-period biology. Both can flip these painful personal experiences into supremely pleasurable hooks. Yet as similar as they are,


Swift’s songbook galvanizes fans with its youthful charm. Drake’s output feels far more downcast, much more remote. He’s tugging on a strand of pop music that feels both magi- cal and rare — the kind that brings us all together by remind- ing us that we’re all alone. richardsc@washpost.com


Recommended Tracks: “Over,” “The Resistance,” “Fancy”


ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM To read a review of Drake’s Sunday night performance at Washington’s 9:3o club, visit www. washingtonpost.com/clicktrack.


Gaslight Anthem began as an earnest, Warped Tour-style punk troupe, but gained widespread notice with 2008’s “The ’59 Sound,” which pundits lauded for its tactile emotionalism and brawny singalong moments. “American Slang” continues that approach, but trims the bluster, steaming by in 34 minutes. Keyed by the title track — a sharp reworking of “Damn the Torpedoes”-era Petty — Fallon’s husky lead vocals are beefed up with fist-pump harmonies and punkish backbeats. “Stay Lucky,” “Boxer” and the tightly wound “Orphans” all pump like well-lubed pistons, aided by production that strikes an adroit balance between gritty and sensitive. Fallon does sensitive pretty good, though, as “The Queen of Lower Chelsea” and the we-ain’t-as-young-as-we-used- to-be ballad “We Did It When We Were Young” prove. (The hint of Tom Waits wistfulness that appears in the latter bodes well for the Anthem’s long-term prospects.) The album’s linchpin, though, is “The Diamond Church Street Choir,” a slick ditty with just enough finger-snapping Motown swing to have Fallon’s supporters rhapsodizing over his artistic growth. That point’s debatable; that “American Slang” will considerably raise the Gaslight Anthem’s profile is not. — Patrick Foster


Recommended tracks:


“American Slang,” “Orphans,” “The Diamond Church Street Choir”


Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers MOJO


Tom Petty’s last album with


the Heartbreakers predates the invasion of Iraq, though it may not seem like it was all that long ago. In the years since, Petty has been a constant presence — touring, taping voice-overs for the TV show “King of the Hill,” recording a solo album, reuniting with his old group Mudcrutch and generally doing everything except the thing he does best — making records with the Heartbreakers. “Mojo,” their first album


together in almost eight years, is the Petty equivalent of a jam


SINGLES FILE A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind


She & Him: “Earth” Many of She & Him’s breezy, guileless songs sound like they were written by children, but this one actually was: It’s a cover of a kid-penned track from the all-star disc “Chickens in Love,” with proceeds benefiting juvenile literacy proj- ects.


Dominique Young Unique: “Blaster” This demolition derby of a song is one of the highlights of the teenage rapper’s terrifyingly as- sured new mix tape, “Domination.”


Black Mountain: “Old Fangs” Remember when Black Mountain used to be all Sabbath-y and menacing? These days, not as much. The new single from their September disc, “Wilderness Heart,” is a summery slice of post- apocalyptic, stoner-rock perfection.


JEFF CHRISTENSEN


Zooey Deschanel of She & Him, which gives child’s play a good name.


Young Rebel Set: “If I Was” With its impenetrable accents and winsome, Springsteenian adorableness, YRS is the U.K.’s answer to Gaslight Anthem, if Gaslight Anthem made gentle, NPR-friendly folk songs like this one.


Ciara featuring Andre 3000 and Bei Maejor: “Ride (Remix)” For reasons that are unclear, Dre emerges from his undisclosed location to contribute a verse to the pop remix of Ciara’s spiffy new single.


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band record: It’s swampy and Southern, by turns languid and languidly rocking. It takes the sort of songs Petty and the Heartbreakers usually do, strips out most of their hooks and puts them in the rustic, bluesy framework of a


Lucinda Williams record.


Rarely riotous, never thrilling, entirely solid, “Mojo” traffics in the everyday indignities of middle age. Petty worries about unemployment (the rueful ballad “Something Good Coming”), frets about relationships (“I Should Have Known It”) and hides his weed from The Man (the island-influenced “Don’t Pull Me Over,” the forgettable, less ominous cousin of Springsteen’s “State Trooper”). Reportedly recorded live


(with the band members all playing in the same room together), “Mojo” is the first album the perpetually chill Petty has ever made that’s as mellow as he is. It’s as casual, as artfully mussed, as a bunch of multimillionaire rock gods recording their umpteenth album for a major label can manage. Tom Petty & the


Heartbreakers perform at Jiffy Lube Live on Aug. 15.


— Allison Stewart


Recommended tracks: “Something Good Coming,” “Jefferson Jericho Blues”


other remote, fantastical electro- blonde.


Robyn, 31, is already on her third comeback. Her career can be measured in bytes— a leaked track here, a much- played


remix there —which helps explain the fractured nature and shortened,


eight-song length of “Body Talk Pt. 1”: It’s not meant to be an opus, just a collection of songs you’ve probably already heard and hopefully haven’t downloaded yet, a blogosphere-only greatest hits. Most of it is tremendous, like the slithery Röyksopp collaboration “None of Dem” and the fizzy “Dancing on My Own.” Even the tracks that feel lazy, like “Fembot” (which features the sort of “vocoder equals forward-thinking artistry” meme that got Christina Aguilera crucified just a few weeks ago), are irresistible. That song’s tag line (“I’ve got some news for you / Fembots have feelings, too”) is meant to advance the narrative necessary for Robyn’s career survival, that the icy singer is, contrary to all available evidence, an actual person with feelings, not an android made of binary codes and glitter. The more Robyn thaws, the


Robyn BODY TALK PT. 1


Swedish pop singer Robyn has been a star in waiting for so long that she started off as an antidote to Britney Spears and now, five years after her last release, has reemerged as an antidote to Lady Gaga, pop’s


better she is. She can sometimes overdo it (“Body Talk” ends with a Swedish-language folk ballad, and it probably shouldn’t have), but she gets it just right on the empathetic “Cry When You Get Older,” a roller-disco anthem that sounds like something Journey would have made if its members were female. And Swedish. And fascinated with robot noises. Robyn performs at the 9:30 club on Aug. 2.


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CLICK TRACK For more pop music news, reviews and features, visit ClickTrack, The Post’s pop music blog, at blog.washingtonpost.com/clicktrack.


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ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM Read a profile of Tom Petty at washingtonpost.com/style.


—Allison Stewart


Recommended tracks: “Dancing on My Own,” “Cry When You Get Older”


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