New CDs of note this week
Reviews of four new releases, including Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha
Pink Friday Nicki Minaj (Motown) 3.5 stars<br> Like Drake, Minaj was a star before she had an album, and as such, her debut arrives freighted with huge expectations. That she meets them head-on is amazing enough, but the truly impressive thing about "Pink Friday" is that Minaj displays more range in one disc than most rappers do in an entire career. It isn’t just that she comes hard on some tracks, matching Eminem rhyme-for-rhyhme on "Roman’s Revenge," while showing her sensitive side on others, such as the nostalgic "Your Love." She also sings (beautifully), does accents (hysterically) and conveys a deeper musicality than any rapper this side of Lil Wayne. If that’s not greatness, I don’t know what is. (J.D. Considine)
Cannibal Ke$ha (RCA/Sony) 2 stars<br> With Christmas on the way and Ke$ha’s "Animal" debut almost a year old, Sony comes down the chimney with an eight-song EP, presumably filled with a few of the zillion tunes the sleaze-pop star wrote but didn’t use the first time. The sound, producers (principally hired-gun Luke Gottwald) and concept remain the same: Get dirty, get the dance party started and flash your fake ID at the door. In the title track, Ke$ha extends her femme-fatale routine into a detailed description of human-eating (“I’ll pull a Jeffrey Dahmer!”). "Grow a Pear" deals a diss reminiscent of "Animal"’s gerontophobic "Dinosaur." On the single "We R Who We R," the party rides a grimy flux of drum-machine beats. Whatever the mood (maudlin, in the case of "The Harold Song"), Ke$ha sounds more and more like her generation’s streamlined version of Alanis: all id and no superego. (Robert Everett-Green)
The Battles Rage On Charlie Louvin (True North) 1.5 stars<br> The inside of Charlie Louvin’s new simply arranged album of old battle anthems shows the 83-year-old veteran of two international conflicts packing a pistol. Not sure about the gun, but the album is loaded. Singing senior-like but assuredly from the pews, the surviving half of the legendary Louvin Brothers sees enemies as heathens, with a soldier’s cemetery as a star-spangled loading ground for heaven. On the waltzing "Mother I Thank You for the Bible," a true-blue hero is saved when a bullet is deflected by that book. That there is a God who roots for the red, white and blue is a sacrosanct notion down at the legion hall. Until such hallelujah-and-hoo-rah thinking is outdated, battles will always rage on. (Brad Wheeler)
The Wreckage Shoot the Cameraman (Independent) 3 stars<br> “Pull him out, pull him out, pull him out of the wreckage.” With ragged souls, desperate imagery and bourbon-rich energy, the Toronto quintet Shoot the Cameraman debuts in often stunning ways. On a dozen songs, you will hear the influences of Wilco, Neil Young and albums made in California canyons and big, pink houses. But it is the record’s classic songwriting, towering cosmic-country sounds and a wily sense of come-with-me dynamics that wins out. "The Wreckage" is on fire, fantastically like a great barn in flames, and what these guys salvage from the ruins are some sad, beautiful things. (Brad Wheeler)