Album review: Beyonce’s Renaissance a euphoric, celebratory swerve into club music
On this euphoric, celebratory swerve into club-infused music, Beyonce embraces refreshed senses of sexuality and an awareness of her own power as a woman, mother and culture-shifter.
Album reviews for week of August 19, 2022:
POP/R&B
Renaissance
Beyonce
Parkwood/Columbia Records
Beyonce Knowles-Carter knows how to make an entrance. Just as Bianca Jagger became a pop culture moment when pictured astride a white horse at the famed Studio 64 in 1977, the arrival of Beyonce’s seventh album Renaissance – a euphoric, celebratory swerve into club-infused music – re-establishes the artist as not simply contributing to pop music’s current zeitgeist. Rather, Knowles-Carter reminds us all that she is the zeitgeist. What Renaissance does incredibly well is capture the contained energy many of us have been feeling while stuck in varying stages of lockdown across the past two years. The album takes the tension and frustration of being stuck inside and releases it through a kaleidoscope of uplifting sounds that makes the listener want to dance. The artist has noted that Renaissance was created for both herself and her fans to enjoy a space that was “free of perfectionism and overthinking”. And while the production of Renaissance is as crisp and meticulously delivered as any of her projects before it, the singer delivers each lyric with a carefree tone that hasn’t been heard since her 2013 self-titled album set a new industry standard for surprise releases.
Lead single Break My Soul was a clever way to crack open this new chapter, as it offered the first taste of the wider homage Knowles-Carter pays here to the black queer and club culture that has nurtured generations of fans and the community as a whole. That sparkling track set the mood of Renaissance perfectly: there’s no deeper meaning or need for academic breakdowns with this music. With album No.7, which runs to 16 tracks across 62 minutes, Knowles-Carter provides salvation for fans who’ve missed being together; salvation for herself, as she embraces refreshed senses of sexuality, empowerment (Cozy, Alien Superstar) and awareness of her own power as a woman, mother and culture-shifting performer (Virgo’s Groove). Like 2016’s Lemonade before it, Renaissance is yet another defining snapshot of 40-year-old Beyonce as an artist; a snapshot determined by herself alone. It’s not the first time she has celebrated black excellence and beauty in her art, yet Renaissance re-centres not just the artist, but the black culture that – in the mainstream – is both demonised and objectified, as strong entities whose power cannot be diluted.
Sosefina Fuamoli
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INDUSTRIAL
What Normal Was
Billy Howerdel
Alchemy/BMG
Fifty-two might seem an unconventional age to be making a debut, but this solo endeavour from multi-instrumentalist Billy Howerdel is far from a maiden voyage. In the 2000s, Howerdel came to notability as mastermind of A Perfect Circle, the alt-metal side-project of Tool singer Maynard James Keenan that delivered equal doses of lush passages and crushing heaviness across two exceptional albums. That knack for arrangements has translated to some degree on What Normal Was, Howerdel’s first under his own name. The dreamlike Bring Honor Back Home matches a four-on-the-floor groove with a unique reverberating zither, while the synth-driven Ani feels like it was cut from the Blade Runner soundtrack and sports a killer high-end bassline. Howerdel’s middling vocals are somewhat of a drawback; there’s a reason he sought out another singer for A Perfect Circle 20 years ago. The album’s sense of similarity, too, doesn’t offer much incentive for repeat listens. Still, Howerdel has delivered a commendable – albeit imperfect – effort.
David James Young
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INDIE ROCK/DANCE
Life Is Yours
Foals
Warner / ADA
It takes mere seconds of listening to the opening strains of the title track to realise two things; Life Is Yours is unlike any previous Foals record, but it’s undeniably the British trio through and through. From the cascading lead guitars to the infectiously groovy basslines and frontman Yannis Philippakis’ unmistakeable vocal yelp, this seventh collection can be clearly traced back to the scatterbrained math rock of earlier albums. It also brims with the same energy as the more feral rock heard on 2015’s What Went Down, albeit here trading riffs for dancing shoes. Some of these tracks have one foot in the ’80s rock revival favoured by their festival main-stage contemporaries The War on Drugs and Gang of Youths, but the influence of Talk Talk and Rufus Du Sol is just as strong, with Crest of the Wave more akin to club banger than a reflective anthem. Not until album closer Wild Green — coincidently, the album’s high point — do things take on the more ethereal, mysterious atmosphere that made earlier indie hits Spanish Sahara and Olympic Airways so enticing.
Alasdair Belling
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CLASSICAL
Frederic Rzewski: No Place To Go But Around
Lisa Moore
Cantaloupe Music
Based in New York since 1985, the Australian-born pianist Lisa Moore has been described as “the queen of the avant-garde”. She has produced more than a dozen albums, many featuring the music of Frederic Rzewski, the iconoclastic renegade who became her “signature composer”. Last year, she recorded five of his pieces for this album, 70 minutes in all. The earliest is relatively well-known, Coming Together, in which she recites the letter of a black prisoner killed during the Attica riots; the most recent is the enigmatic Amoramaro, one of the last pieces Rzewski wrote before his death in June 2021, commissioned by composer Martin Bresnick, Moore’s life partner. In between, Moore reveals the gamut of her awesome artistry, from the Bjork-like delivery of Andrew Marvell poetry to the thunderous battering of her hapless Steinway. Here, Moore’s music is never less than dazzling and breathtaking, offering a take-no-prisoners manifesto that is urgent, vital and life-affirming.
Vincent Plush
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ROOTS
I Am The Moon: II. Ascension
Tedeschi Trucks Band
Fantasy
The second in an ambitious four-part album series predicated on the unlikely combination of 12th century Persian poetry and 21st century pandemic, Ascension accents the innate musicality and ensemble prowess of one of America’s classiest contemporary bands. While Susan Tedeschi’s soulful singing and Derek Trucks’s stinging guitar licks lead, this is a searching collaborative work involving all 12 members. Nine-minute centrepiece All the Love is alone worth the price of admission. A song that urges love not be taken for granted morphs into a magnificently atmospheric instrumental combining swirling keyboards, swelling brass and spiralling guitar in a melange of jazz and flamenco-informed nuance. In the hymnlike Hold That Line and the country humdinger La Di Da, Indian-inflected guitar and subtle Tex-Mex horns provide colouring. The set starts with scorching retro-soul feel singing, funky brass lines and scything guitar. Elsewhere, a Robert Johnson-like bottleneck Delta romp and an electric blues rocker up the ante.
Tony Hillier
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Album reviews for week of August 12, 2022:
POP
Special
Lizzo
Nice Life/Atlantic Records
“Hi motherf..ker, did you miss me?” is a bold lyric to open any album, but for American pop sensation Lizzo — aka Melissa Jefferson — it feels perfectly on-brand. It sets the scene for her unapologetically cheesy and often profane persona: it’s 21st century feminism, irreverent self-love and body positivity on steroids, all wrapped in a bubbly pop shell. The entire Special album — her fourth LP — is peppered with anthemic bops, meaning it’s not a release that lends itself to background listening. Special is best served on blast when you need a self-confidence boost, while you’re going through a break-up, or for something to boogie along to during the weekend house clean. That opening track, titled The Sign, is full of expletives about being “that bitch” and claims that one “don’t need that energy / ‘cause bitch I’m a Tesla”, all while riding along to a catchy groove and featuring an impressive, however slightly buried, guitar hook. Standout first single About Damn Time flows with a boogying, 70s-inspired bassline and singalong lyrics that rightfully inspired a record-breaking dance trend on TikTok.
If the album ever treads into more subdued territory it’s on jazzy interlude Naked, acoustic-led ballad If You Love Me, and on Break Up Twice — a subtle song featuring candid laughs and a chorus interspersed with Lauryn Hill’s Doo Wop (That Thing). 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready) features a fabulous call-and-response chorus, and Birthday Girl’s celebratory “you’re looking like a present” will no doubt be played at many birthday parties the world over. Lizzo also offers a tribute to British rockers Coldplay on the final track, which samples its famed 2000 single Yellow. This album has not been immune to criticism, with the Grammy Award-winner coming under fire when listeners called out an ableist slur on the third track Grrrls, which seemed at odds with her typically all-accepting and inclusive lyrical content. But Lizzo has been praised for her response, having immediately switched out the lyric, re-releasing the track and apologising by saying: “I’m dedicated to being part of the change I’ve been waiting to see in the world.” In uncertain and stressful times, it’s voices like Lizzo’s that bring much-needed optimism and confidence to the culture, no matter how corny, and remind us that, indeed, we’re all “gonna be okay”.
Emily Ritchie
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INDIE ROCK
Inside Problems
Andrew Bird
Wegawam/Loma Vista
When Andrew Bird rose to indie-darling prominence in the early 2000s, he had two distinctive traits: his use of violin as the central instrument over guitar, and an astounding, virtuoso-level whistling ability. What was once special, however, has become sadly formulaic in the ensuing decades. To his credit, Bird has never released an out-and-out bad record, but it certainly has reached a point of knowing more or less exactly what you’re getting yourself in for. Inside Problems, Bird’s 14th offering, is naturally no exception. It’s another album of whimsical, pensive and entirely charming baroque indie. It’s impeccably crafted, with nary a plucked string out of place – although, it could be argued that’s to a fault. Such spotless execution has you longing for the excitement of earlier singles such as Imitosis or Fiona Apple duet Left Handed Kisses. You can’t blame Bird for carving out his niche – if it ain’t broke, after all. Still, given he once inspired such awe, you can’t help but hope for just a little more than acceptable.
David James Young
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ELECTRONIC
Produced With Love II
Dave Lee
Z Records
For the ever-growing number of DJ-producers championing classic, overlooked and contemporary disco, it’s inconceivable Dave Lee won’t be checked as an influence. The London-based Z Records chief formerly known as Joey Negro (and a number of other pseudonyms) has disco and house music in his blood, leveraging decades of experience and an encyclopaedic knowledge of music to power his Remixed With Love series that has seen him reimagine and reintroduce heritage music to today’s dance floors. On the follow-up to 2017’s original Produced with Love, Lee delivers a sublime collection of 12 original productions that traverse disco, house, soul and boogie, with long-time and new collaborators chipping in vocals and instrumentation. It’s hard to pick standouts on such an impressive body of work, but Taste My Love rises ever so slightly above the rest thanks to the combination of Billy Valentine’s vocal alongside lush keys and Julian Crampton’s brilliant bass. From start to finish, you can feel the love.
Tim McNamara
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ROCK/POP
The Storm Before the Calm
Chris Cheney
Liberator Music
Recorded across seven years in Los Angeles, Nashville and Melbourne, Chris Cheney’s solo debut is far removed from what fans of his band, the Living End, might expect. The Storm Before the Calm is for the most part melodic, starkly introspective pop and includes just three guitar solos; Cheney wields an acoustic as often as his customary electric Gretsch. Pedal steel shades two of the album’s more evocative tracks, the wistfully nostalgic Football Team and the country lament Still Got Friday on My Mind, a purging of guilt for Cheney not being around when his father died. A thread of regret runs through most of these 10 songs, even on the otherwise upbeat Springsteen pastiche Impossible Dream (“Those good old days just ain’t good enough anymore”) and Corner Shop, another major-key reminiscence (“Time is one thing we all fear”). The exceptions are California, a power-pop jewel whose middle eight fuses the Tubes, Beach Boys and Todd Rundgren, and the pub-rock throwaway Little White Pills, which closes the set.
Phil Stafford
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PROGRESSIVE ROCK/METAL
Closure/Continuation
Porcupine Tree
Music For Nations
Taking a leaf out of Tool’s playbook, Porcupine Tree waited a full decade between its climactic live sign-off in 2012 and its next album. It comes as a thrill that the ambiguously titled Closure/Continuation should sound so fresh and hungry. With the metallic-tinged riffery of Rats Return and Herd Culling – the latter featuring frontman Steven Wilson turning in a career-best falsetto wail over a ferocious chorus – and progressive adventures of Dignity and Chimeras Wreck, PT proves it hasn’t lost its skill for crafting forward-thinking rock with a contemporary edge. However, the likes of more electronic leaning Walk the Plank and the space-funk-rock odyssey Harridan show a band still capable of enthralling growth together, even as its members – including drummer Gavin Harrison, who has been touring with King Crimson’s rhythm section, and keyboardist Richard Barbieri — have been developing equally intriguing solo careers. If album No.11 is closure for the Brits, it’s a sure-fire way to cement its legacy as the modern prog band that could.
Alasdair Belling
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