Shortly after Sunday’s stunning Grammy performance, Justin Timberlake unwrapped another jewel of a single with the epic “Mirrors,” from his upcoming album, due next month. (
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Downloads of the Week
Justin Timberlake
“Mirrors”
★★★ 1/2
FOLLOWING his show-stealing Grammys appearance, JT has released another taste from “The 20/20 Experience” (to be released in March), which almost matches Frank Ocean’s level of R&B ambition. “Mirrors” is an eight-minute epic that incorporates producer Timbaland’s signature bounce with a symphonic production, all of which is weaved around Timberlake’s silky croon. Stellar stuff.
Foals
“My Number”
★★★
THIS British dance-punk outfit might just end up replicating some of their UK success over here this year, thanks to the new album “Holy Fire,” on which you’ll find this track. Seductive disco beats entwine with needling guitar riffs and a chorus that takes the song’s breakup theme and turns it into pure euphoria.
Fall Out Boy
“My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light ’Em Up)”
★ 1/2
A decade of being patronized as goofy pop-punk chumps has obviously irked Fall Out Boy, whose new single (their first since going on hiatus in 2009) finds them reinventing themselves as homeboys, complete with a video that depicts rapper 2 Chainz burning a stack of their old records. The symbolism may be strong, but if this cheesy stab at Top 40 hip-hop is an indicator, their new direction sounds anything but.
Pissed Jeans
“Teenage Adult”
★★★
THIS Pennsylvanian quartet has developed a solid fan base over three albums of unrelentingly brutal noise punk, and the closing track from their fourth album, “Honeys,” carries on that fine tradition. They sound like an even more thuggish version of the Stooges as singer Matt Korvette growls his work-cubicle-born disaffection like a feral dog. If you see him at the water cooler, avoid!
James Blake
“Retrograde”
★★★ 1/2
POST-DUBSTEP just got another shot in the arm thanks to Londoner James Blake, whose new single (lifted from his second album, “Overgrown,” due in April) takes his introverted warble and marries it sublimely with a stately beat and spectral piano. Comparisons to latter-day Radiohead are there to be made, but if you ask me, they could only sound as good as this in Thom Yorke’s wildest electro dreams.
Albums of the Week
The Bryan Ferry Orchestra
“The Jazz Age”
★
POINTLESSNESS has a new form thanks to Bryan Ferry. For his latest album, the Brit has taken some of the finer moments of his often-brilliant 40-year career as both a soloist and leader of Roxy Music and reimagined them as jazz instrumentals.
Ferry’s passion for the genre is long established, but it’s hard to give points for sincerity when listening to a brassy pastiche of “Love Is the Drug” and a laugh-out-loud take on “Slave to Love” that sounds like it should be getting piped into an elevator.
The fact that Ferry recorded the album in crackly mono to re-create the bluntness of 1930s vinyl, only adds to the feeling that “The Jazz Age” is ultimately the product of a man with too much time on his hands.
Bullet for My Valentine
“Temper Temper”
★ 1/2
IT’S not often that metal bands from Wales are found in the upper reaches of the Billboard Top 100 chart, and for that reason alone, Bullet for My Valentine deserve respect. However, the success of their last two albums (both hit the Top 5) seems to have softened the band, because for all their supposed rage, “Temper Temper” is sterile and overproduced.
The riffs come thick and fast, and singer Matt Tuck tries his best to bluster through angrily titled songs like “Leech” and “Riot,” but there’s a distinct lack of real venom to any of it. As a result, a band once lauded for redrawing the boundaries of their genre now sound more like a formulaic ’80s hair-metal group. And we definitely don’t need another one of those.