1. Lloyd - King of Hearts
If this album started on track 3 and ended after track 13, it'd be a strong candidate for album of the year. But even with the jarringly horrendous "Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)" and to a lesser extent "World Cry" and that stupid Game intro dragging down the album's batting average, it's still really damn good. Really the meat of the album is pretty much my ideal concept of a Lloyd album produced by Polow Da Don, which is a pleasant surprise given that Polow has never quite lived up to his potential as an album exec producer in the past with Rich Boy and Keri Hilson's albums. And Lloyd, even though he's definitely leaning a little too hard on a 'grown up' persona at times, really reserves his place as one of my favorite voices in R&B -- he doesn't willfully evoke Michael Jackson the way so many of his peers do, but it just comes out so effortlessly in his high register and the kind of naive sweetness in his delivery. At the moment "Jigsaw" and "You II" are particular favorites, but "Naked" and "Shake It For Daddy" and "Cupid" are all so great.

2. They Might Be Giants - Join Us
I can be very loyal as a fan, once someone is one of my favorite bands for even a while, I will probably check out every new album they make forever and ever. And sometimes that can result in a kind of loyalty fatigue, especially with a band who's released as many albums since the last one I really loved as TMBG have since Factory Showroom. So I kind of checked out this one without any real hopes of it leaving more of an impression than The Else or Mink Car, and suddenly after a few listens, when I started trying it out on headphones, it just clicked for me and somehow has a little bit of the special blend of whimsy and songcraft that I associate with their first few albums. I mostly like the Linnell songs like "Can't Keep Johnny Down" and "Canajoharie" and "When Will You Die" (which feels a little less funny than it probably would have when it was written, now that Osama Bin Laden has died and the song's sentiments have kind of played out on the world's stage without irony), but Flansburgh's sometimes wearying wackiness has been toned down or honed into a more subtle absurdity on his songs, which is really refreshing.

3. Dos - dos y dos
After a six year drought of pretty much no new records from Mike Watt (not counting sidemousing for the Stooges), it's been pretty awesome to have three in the past 12 months alone: the debut of his new group Floored By Four, the solo album hyphenated-man, and now the fourth album by his long-running bass duo with ex-wife Kira Roessler. Dos is not really one of my favorite Watt projects, sometimes the commitment to such a minimal sound, with no percussion or really any treble at all, aside from Roessler's occasional vocals, gets a little limiting and monochromatic, but there are some moments of beauty on this album and it really is kind of a cool idea for a band that leads them to some interesting writing and arranging.

4. Gucci Mane - Writings On The Wall II
Fair weather fan that I am, I only check out Gucci mixtapes now if there seems to be a good amount of buzz around them. And I guess it says something about the frequency of his output or my opinion of it that this is probably my favorite of the last three or four tapes I've heard but still not that great. "Supa Cold" is awesome and "MVP" with Jagged Edge puts every R&B joint on Gucci's major label albums to shame, and the songs with Yelawolf and 50 Cent are cool. But in general the trap talk-heavy slant of this tape is not my favorite lane for Gucci to be in, and "Tragedy" and "Lil Friends" affirm both that I don't like him on Lex Luger beats and that sometimes Gucci's hooks all sound the same in a really half-assed repetitive way.

5. Kelly Rowland - Here I Am
Much like the Lloyd album would be much better with its undesirable bookmarks lopped off, Here I Am is a pretty solid 8-track modern R&B album that happens to have two annoyingly overdriven Eurodance tracks tacked on at the end. Given that Kelly sang on David Guetta's breakthrough U.S. hit and has a good dance diva voice, I don't really begrudge her including that stuff on the album, but the way it's sequenced just makes it stick out even more, and I'm ultimately glad "Motivation" is the big hit that really gave the album its direction. The album really hits a great groove halfway through with the huge hook of "Turn It Up" and the gorgeously intimate "Keep It Between Us," and I never thought I'd like a Runners track that sounds like "Hey Daddy" as much as I like "All Of The Night." This album really features the worst collection of guest rap verses ever on an R&B album, though, by Lil Playy, Big Sean and Rico Love (I still hate Wayne's verse on "Motivation" but those other ones are a whole other class of terrible).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 3:33 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.