New albums: CeeLo Green; Ellie Goulding; Eric Church
With Heart Blanche, CeeLo Green has made the smartest, sharpest album of his career. It needed to be: He has a comeback to make. Green stands large in the history of Atlanta's hip-hop scene, soulful Southern rap, and showy, adventurous R&B. He was popular
CeeLo Green
Heart Blanche
(Atlantic ***1/2)
nolead ends With Heart Blanche, CeeLo Green has made the smartest, sharpest album of his career. It needed to be: He has a comeback to make. Green stands large in the history of Atlanta's hip-hop scene, soulful Southern rap, and showy, adventurous R&B. He was popular as a playful coach on NBC's The Voice. His stature suffered after he was hit with a felony charge for furnishing ecstasy to a woman without consent, then unwisely tweeted his personal, tangled view on rape, Twitter activity that lost him his reality-TV show. All this made the big-voiced singer seem small. But Green did his time and is hoping audiences can look past it all. From the jubilant sparkle of Heart Blanche, it sounds as though he can.
"There ain't no problem music can't solve," Green sings in "Working Class Heroes (Work)," one of several hook-laden tracks (e.g. "Est. 1980") paying homage, subtly and not so subtly, to the synth-driven New Wave and hair metal of his youth. Other touchstones of Green's past are here, too, the smoothest being the jazzy Bob James samples that give "Sign of the Times" its rosy, ambient bed. Some platitudes ("We've got to laugh away the pain") threaten to oversweeten CeeLo's comeback, but velvet melodies and vocals save tracks such as the soft-disco "Better Late Than Never" and the summer-breezy soul jam "Race Against Time."
- A.D. Amorosi
nolead begins Ellie Goulding
nolead ends nolead begins Delirium
nolead ends nolead begins (Interscope/Cherry Tree ***1/2)
nolead ends Ellie Goulding is a hit machine. Singing on tracks by Calvin Harris, Skrillex, and Zedd hasn't hurt her exposure, either. She can also craft songs herself, penning them for other artists before releasing her own. On this, her third LP, she reaches for dance-floor domination and gets a good grip on it. She's never been far from the big-sounding, radio-ready pop hit field, but with Delirium, Goulding settles into it comfortably with 16 well-produced tracks that capitalize on her momentum. Working with Max Martin and Greg Kurstin, two giants in the studio, she achieves new heights with tracks like "Army," "On My Mind," and "Something in the Way You Move."
Her voice may be singularly high-pitched (her light-lyric soprano pipes span 31/2 octaves), but when couched in stirring beats, synths, percussion, and production, it's undeniably catchy. She's one of only two Britons to top the annual BBC Sound Of poll and win a Critics' Choice Award at the Brit Awards (in 2010). Previous hits "Lights," "Burn," and "Love Me Like You Do" have gone platinum several times over. Deeper-down songs shine bright here, too, like the wonderful, woozy "Codes" and the AlunaGeorge-flavored "Don't Need Nobody." Goulding can even carry a ballad, albeit a modern, polished one. "Lost and Found" is surprisingly sweet, and "Devotion" starts out maudlin but gets groovy with a '90s bounce beat and filtered vocals.
- Bill Chenevert
nolead begins Eric Church
nolead ends nolead begins Mr. Misunderstood
nolead ends nolead begins (EMI Nashville ***)
nolead ends His last album was The Outsiders. Now comes the surprise release of Mr. Misunderstood. Eric Church really does like to cast himself as the eternal misfit, even as he has become one of country's biggest stars.
It's a tough balancing act, much like the one he attempts here by ranging from the bombastic outlaw saga "Knives of New Orleans" ("I did what I did, I have no regrets") to the almost squishy sentimentality of the lessons-of-fatherhood tale "Three Year Old." But for the most part, Church continues to pull it off.
Like Chris Stapleton's, Church's music has an unvarnished feel that makes it sound like nothing else coming out of Music Row, and that enhances the power of the best songs here. They include the tempo-shifting title track - who else would give a shout-out to the vastly underappreciated Ray Wylie Hubbard? - and a duet with Susan Tedeschi on the after-hours ballad "Mixed Drinks About Feelings." Other standout numbers speak to the power of music and how it inspires Church and fires his audacious ambition - "Mistress Named Music" and "Record Year," a title that turns out to be a clever pun.
- Nick Cristiano