Album reviews: Justin Bieber, Pharoah Sanders, & Daniel Lanois

Justin Bieber

Justice

(RBMG ** 1/2)

Good riddance. With his new Justice, Justin Bieber has finally knocked Dangerous: The Double Album off of the top of the Billboard charts, where that country release had held the No. 1 position for 11 weeks despite a racist video that emerged of singer Morgan Wallen and got him suspended by his label.

But now here comes Bieber with an album that begins with a sound bite quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” — and continues later with a lengthy appropriation from King’s 1967 “But If Not” sermon.

So this must be Bieber’s protest album, right? No. It’s a pop record of love songs to his wife, Hailey Baldwin — the subject of “Die for You,” which follows the clip of the King speech.

Beyond these abominations of performative branding, the album is solid and an improvement over Bieber’s lackluster 2020 Changes, with competent pop songs like “Peaches,” which spotlights Daniel Caesar and Giveon and now tops the Billboard Hot 100.

“Lonely,” the last track, offers something more. A collaboration with Benny Blanco and Billie Eilish’s brother, Finneas O’Connell, it’s a heartfelt performance that brings home the child star’s lot of being world famous yet utterly isolated. “Everybody saw me sick, and it felt like no one gave a s—,” the 27-year-old Bieber sings.

— Dan DeLuca

Floating Points / Pharoah Sanders / London Symphony Orchestra

Promises

(Luaka Bop *** 1/2)

Pharoah Sanders is the 80-year-old American free jazz great who made his name teaming with John Coltrane and Sun Ra. Floating Points is the stage name of Sam Shepherd, a 34-year-old British electronic musician and composer who holds a Ph.D. in neuroepigenetics, specializing in how DNA plays a role in encoding pain.

Together, they make music that soothes and heals, taking its sweet time over the course of 46 wordless minutes, patiently working variations on a simple, entrancing instrumental theme.

Promises is divided into nine movements that meld Shepherd’s ambient keyboards and minimalist electronic squiggles with Sanders’ tenor sax, not in the full-on “sheets of sound” approach he was known for when playing with Coltrane and Sun Ra, but in a more restrained mode.

Recorded over two weeks in 2019, this is music for tense times that surrounds the listener with a sense of trippy, transformative calm. It’s unhurried in the extreme, but not without dramatic tension.

Shepherd’s washes of sound are always inviting, and Sanders gears up as he goes along in the album’s latter stages as London Symphony Orchestra strings bring the music to a emotional crescendo. Throughout, Sanders’ sax is quietly commanding, speaking loudest with what it leaves unsaid.

— Dan DeLuca

Daniel Lanois

Heavy Sun

(eOne ***)

Daniel Lanois was one of the most important and influential producers in the world in the ‘80s and ‘90s, lending his atmospheric, reverb-heavy sound to classic albums such as U2′s The Joshua Tree, Peter Gabriel’s So, Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, and Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball. He’s a constant collaborator, an impressionistic guitarist (especially on pedal steel), a questing experimenter, and an occasional songwriter.

His solo works have been sporadic and varied, sometimes focusing on traditional songcraft (his 1989 debut Acadie), sometimes on instrumentals (2005′s Grammy-nominated Belladonna).

On the one hand, Heavy Sun sounds like a Lanois production. It is rootsy, but with subtle experimental touches of loops and vintage beatbox percussion. It moves in waves but nestles into comforting mid-tempos. It is moody and familiar.

On the other hand, the real star of Heavy Sun is Johnny Shepherd, the organist and vocalist and sometime leader of Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport, La. This is a gospel album, full of life-affirming spiritual messages and impressive singing with Lanois, guitarist Rocco DeLuca, and bassist Jim Wilson providing harmonies to Shepherd’s impassioned voice — and usually taking a backseat to his churchy organ playing.

Lanois is in his collaborator form here. He cowrote the songs with DeLuca and Shepherd. His guitar twines with DeLuca’s. His voice meshes in the four-part harmonies and rarely takes the lead. A spirit of community is central to Heavy Sun’s supportive and reassuring effect.

— Steve Klinge