Album of the week
Tune-Yards
“Nikki Nack”
★★★
“Let’s not pretend that the world around us isn’t falling,” Merrill Garbus — a k a Tune-Yards — croons on “Look Around,” from her third album. Her music can be chaotic, with bold harmonies and odd instruments zooming in at unexpected angles.
But even as they skewer deadly serious topics like institutional racism (from “Real Thing”: “I come from the land of slaves/Let’s go Redskins, let’s go Braves”) and global drought (“Water Fountain”), Garbus’ songs are catchy and wildly creative, a pleasure to hear even at their heaviest.
Shame about the pseudo-kids’ story “Why Do We Dine on the Tots?” though.
Downloads of the week
Usher
“Good Kisser”
★★★
“The Voice” host’s latest single-only salvo (his new album is due in the fall) is a spare, inviting throwback.
Over a bare drumbeat full of silences, Usher praises his latest woman while the arrangement builds into a live-instruments groove that’s reminiscent of ’80s Isley Brothers.
Röyksopp & Robyn
“Do It Again”
★★
Great idea for a team-up: Norwegian electronic-dance cult favorites Röyksopp with Swedish dance-pop expert Robyn.
But the lyrics about the reckless hedonism of clubbing-as-lifestyle — “We do what we want, and as soon as it’s done/We just do it again” — are so literal you only need to hear them once.
Santana feat. Samuel Rosa
“Saideira”
★★
Hard to blame Carlos Santana for wanting to jump on the speeding Latin-rock train, especially since he helped invent it in the late ’60s.
This jumpy number with Brazilian singer Rosa (of the band Skank) is so slick that you could water-slide on it — and no deeper than that.
Ben & Ellen Harper
“A House Is a Home”
★★
Ben Harper’s always been a shameless cornball, but enlisting his mother for an album takes the cake.
“A House Is a Home,” which kicks off the duet album “Childhood Home,” has Ben’s easy tunefulness and negligible lyrics, a formula that makes him perennially popular but all too easy to dismiss.
Lily Allen
“Sheezus”
★½
On the title track of her third album, British singer-songwriter Allen skewers reality TV and fellow pop stars (“We’re all watching Gaga/LOL, like haha”) on the way to declaring, “Give me that crown, bitch/I wanna be Sheezus.”
The tune’s too tepid to deserve a crown, though.