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By Rudy Klapper, August 24, 2010 8:00 am

Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

Capitol 2010

Rating: 4/10

Dear Katy,

I thought you were different. I used to think your sprightly personality, subtle sarcasm and jabs at more established musicians, and defined sense of style suggested a deeper dimension than your average pre-fab pop star. Despite admittedly simple, straightforward pop like “I Kissed A Girl” and “Waking Up In Vegas” along with lyrics and photos meant to stir up controversy and firmly place you into the bracket of commercial whore, I always thought there was more to you than your run-of-the-mill Ke$ha or Pussycat Dolls. You even sort of look like my future wife Zooey, and that’s always a plus.

I really wanted to like “California Gurls” when I first heard it, although there hasn’t been a more mechanical formula to Billboard success all year – faux anthemic qualities, high-priced “cool” guest spot, vapid lyrics and a brainless melody aimed straight at adolescents desperate for the sing-a-long of the summer. I dared to think Teenage Dream could be one of the better pop albums of the year. And for the first four minutes the title track actually led me on for a bit, a lovely slice of synth pop made even better by Kaskade’s remix tacked on at the end of the album. Then what did you do, Katy? You throw out a song like “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” a song so repulsively crass and soulless that it makes “Dirrty”-era Aguilera look like Mandy Moore. I used to think I partied pretty hard, but you’ve truly upped the ante on me. Maxing out your credit cards, streaking in the park Frank-the-Tank style, and threesomes (nothing screams rebellion like an Eiffel tower)?  I know you’re all for giving the finger to middle American sensibilities and expressing yourself, but when the song itself is about as musically progressive as “Hot Cross Buns,” the focus is squarely on those wretched lyrics. Tell Dr. Luke and Max Martin that that faux-saxophone solo might be the low point of their careers.

I can forgive a couple of transgressions if Teenage Dream redeemed itself with songs that were more than trashy, one-dimensional pop, but, alas, the rest of the album is just as predictable as the VMAs and only marginally more entertaining. I would bet money on “Firework,” with its inoffensive electro beat and massive chorus, on being the next single. I would also place money on “Peacock” never seeing the light of day, primarily because it’s a terrible song with a double entendre so blunt it would make Ke$ha blush but also because it doesn’t exactly flatter Ms. Perry the lyricist (I’m almost 100% certain “cock” cannot rhyme with “biotch” or “payoff,” ever). I get that “E.T.” is supposed to be “space-themed,” what with its cheesy synths and cool sound effects, but lyrically it seems more Alien Sex Files 3 than Solaris. I do like your attempt to be more of a serious artist with songs that just reek of edginess and dark, heavy emotion, songs like “Who Am I Living For?” and “Pearl,” but these are songs that nevertheless would work better in the hands of a more versatile vocalist. Plus, front-loading your record with terrible tracks makes it even harder to get to the (relatively) enjoyable tunes that close out Teenage Dream.

So, sure, I guess you could say I’m a little disappointed in you. You could have been the next Gaga, albeit less talented, less hideous, and certainly less crazy, if only you could direct that don’t-give-a-damn personality and charismatic vibe to songs that didn’t rely on hormone-baiting lyrics and sing-a-longs that collapse on their own frothiness. Maybe don’t rely on producers like Dr. Luke, who shouldn’t have been allowed around any reputable studio after his work on Animal. The potential is all there, and the American public is in the palm of your hand, bought and paid for with your limelight-stealing presence and a Snoop Dogg guest spot. You can do anything you want, so why do you spend four minutes demanding to see my tool? I hope Teenage Dream is just a minor speed bump in your career, because there’s nothing sadder than wasted talent. Get it together.

Katy Perry – “Firework”

See larger image Teenage Dream (Audio CD) List Price: $18.98 USD New From: $7.98 In Stock Used from: $6.99 In Stock Release date August 24, 2010.

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By Rudy Klapper, December 1, 2009 12:00 pm

The Bravery – Stir The Blood

Island 2009

Rating: 4/10

Second place has often been called just the first loser, and for New York City dance-rock band the Bravery, it’s been an apt description. Just another cynical band aping New Order when they wandered onto the scene in 2005 with “A Honest Mistake,” they were beaten to the dance-punk punch by the Killers and lost in the shuffle of a myriad of impersonators. Their sophomore effort barely registered a blip on the national radar, a victim of their own ability to translate their ear for a hit single over the course of a whole album. Stir The Blood, meanwhile, comes at an interesting juncture in the band’s life; singer/guitarist Sam Endicott seems to have found his calling as a pop writer, co-writing three Shakira songs and an unreleased track off the new Christina Aguilera CD. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know it from listening to Stir The Blood, a record that does little to advance the Bravery’s reputation past that of a middling rock band still coasting by on a tired sound.

It’s not that the Bravery don’t know how to write good songs. The hazy folk of “She’s So Bendable” reveals a pleasantly surprising side of the band, while tracks like “The Spectator” and opener “Adored” prove that the Bravery have refined their dance-floor rock shtick to a glossy sheen. Even a song as terribly titled and disturbing as “Hatefuck,” where singer/guitarist Sam Endicott desperately asks one to “love me mercilessly,” succeeds on raw sexual aggression and the band’s relentlessly driving pulse. And while Endicott continues to make his case as one of the genre’s worst lyricists on terrible metaphors like “Sugarpill,” the song’s trippy Velvet Underground vibe and haunting atmosphere close the album out in fine fashion.

Ah, but what it takes to get there. The Bravery still have an almost compulsive urge to transform every other song into a vanilla synth-rock pastiche, a by-the-numbers creation that makes up in shiny guitars and cheesy ‘80s keyboards what it lacks in genuine substance. Tunes like “Song For Jacob” and uninspired first single “Slow Poison” seem like they could have been plucked off of any Bravery album and merely rearranged in a different key, songs that are remarkable only for their lack of anything resembling progress or growth. But even the best imitation synth-rock here, from “I Am Your Skin” to “Red Hands and White Knuckles,” is derailed by what should be their strongest asset. Listeners long ago decided whether or not they could tolerate Endicott’s uniquely whiny voice, an intriguing mix between a Brandon Flowers-esque croon and the kind of oscillating screech that stellastarr* singer Shawn Christensen is famous for. But despite Endicott’s admittedly one-dimensional range, it’s his moronic lyrics that truly magnify his weaknesses. The combination of Endicott’s overwrought vocals and lyrics like “I wanna feel everything you feel / I will be your covering” or “down I’m locked and loaded / you’re so milk and roses / and I am just a letdown of your hound” make Endicott come off as sort of a posturing creep.

Whether it’s Endicott’s tired, cliché-ridden lyrics or the recycled sounds the band routinely beats to death, Stir The Blood more often than not resembles the musical equivalent of a used condom, a slimy piece of work that left me wincing in disgust more often than not. When Endicott proclaims himself “a nerve ending without a brain” on “I Have Seen The Future,” it’s an apt metaphor for the album as a whole. The Bravery have always been good to hit the dance-floor for a song or two, but it’s when they try to make it a long-term commitment that they reveal themselves to be an unhappily shallow ordeal.

The Bravery – “Hatefuck”

See larger image Stir The Blood (Audio CD) List Price: $13.98 USD New From: $4.99 In Stock Used from: $2.96 In Stock Release date December 1, 2009.

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By Rudy Klapper, August 11, 2009 12:00 pm

Jessie James – Jessie James

Mercury 2009

Rating: 4/10

Let’s get this straight right off the bat – Jessie James is not a country singer. Yes, the marketing campaign paints her as Nashville’s newest painted-on jeans vixen, and her powerful vocals do tend to have a sort of twang about them, but James is a dyed-in-the-wool pop singer through and through. Her debut self-titled is country in the same way Taylor Swift’s latest could be billed “country” – it pays lip service to strong-willed women in the Carrie Underwood vein and throws the occasional banjo lick in here and there. That being said, James’ apparent crisis of identity makes Jessie James a hit-or-miss affair, where the singer vacillates between radio-ready Top 40 smashes and dead-in-the-water balladry or misguided genre affairs.

Alas, the biggest problem with Jessie James is that it builds up all of its glorious pop goodwill within the first few songs and then squanders it throughout the remainder of the record. Now, James is hardly the first artist to be accused of making a top-heavy album, but the drop in quality between, say, the first third of the record and everything else, is blindingly obvious. All this does is make a solid, if unspectacular, pop effort a grinding disappointment by the time the last song rolls around. Sequencing is still important, no matter how much you can belt it out or how good you look in your newest music video.

And rest assured, the 21-year-old James can indeed belt it out while looking quite agreeable, and does both in first single “Wanted.” It’s a fantastic pop single, one dripping with James’ sex appeal, saucy lyrics like her repeated commands to “put your lips on my mouth” framing a massive hook that builds up into a chorus worthy of her Aguilera-esque vocals. “Bullet” might be even better in the long run, a foot-tapping double-entendre that has a fairly awesome banjo riff. Just make sure you don’t put too much stock into the lyrics – when James brings out the immortal line “is that a gun in your pocket / or are you just happy to see me?,” it’s hard to suppress a cringe.

Most of the material here was co-written with Kara DioGuardi and Katy Perry, and some of the latter’s oddball charm (not to mention poor songwriting), shows up on tunes like the stilted “Psycho Girlfriend.” But James is at her best when she’s imitating Aguilera’s brazen sass on the rhyming verses of “I Look So Good (Without You),” perhaps the only tolerable real ballad on here, or milking her sex-kitten image on the twirling groove of future club sing-a-long “Blue Jeans.” Sadly, James purring “I homewreck in my blue jeans / I got it from my momma so I’m blessed in my blue jeans” is the tipping point of the record.

The rest of Jessie James is a series of cheap imitation efforts, beginning with the faux-country jam “My Cowboy” and featuring such low points as the cunningly titled “Big Mouth” and dreary, vanilla ballads like “Inevitable,” “Burnin’ Bridges” and the melismatic closer “Guilty.” Aside from the shimmering production of “Girl Next Door,” there’s nothing much to interest even the most casual Top 40 fan after “Blue Jeans.” For all her vocal chutzpah, James’ throaty proclamations wear thin after a while, especially since so much of the mix here features her voice almost unnaturally prominent above the instruments.

All problems with production and single-mindedness aside, the root of the problem with Jessie James is the lack of quality tunes. “Wanted” and “Bullet” seem to exhaust all the creative gas James and her team possess within the first six minutes, making Jessie James a worthy debut EP (if pop stars were into that), but a moderate failure as an album-length listen. Christina buttressed her bad-girl image with excellent pipes, and Underwood has the kind of songs that commercial gold are made of, but James finds herself in an unhappy medium – too risqué to be immediately accepted, not impressive enough to be anything more than a novelty.