“808s &Heartbreak”
Kanye West
WHY CARE? Kanye West returns with an album all about heartbreak.
TRIVIA: While West calls Chicago home now, he was born in Atlanta.
HIGH POINTS: On first single “Love Lockdown,” West hints at the sound of a broken relationship with the fevered rush of drums and numb vocals tweaked by Auto-Tune.
FANS ALSO LIKE: Rappers who cry
ANDY SAYS: West ditches traditional hip-hop to sing most of these songs. The move will rankle fans hoping for an obvious club hit; the closest West gets to one of those is “Paranoid,” a song that features maniacal laughter. Instead, he dials things down on this terrifically glum, cold album.
GRADE: A-minus
“Day &Age”
The Killers
WHY CARE? The Killers can put out a middling album, like the 2006 effort “Sam’s Town,” and make it go platinum.
TRIVIA: For the first single, “Human,” singer Brandon Flowers based the grammatically suspect chorus, “Are we human or are we dancer?” on a Hunter S. Thompson line about the United States raising a generation of dancers.
HIGH POINT: On “Spaceman,” the group oh-oh-ohs its way through a synthesizer-heavy story of alien abduction — or maybe it’s about a dream Flowers is having? Whatever. It doesn’t really matter when it’s this catchy.
FANS ALSO LIKE: Synth-pop
ANDY SAYS: The Killers again deliver a mixed bag, with fizzy 1980s arrangements clashing against self-serious lyrics. While Flowers spends too much time posing half-baked questions, such as, “Is there still magic in the midnight sun?” you end up forgiving him for it when he delivers infectious melodies and that chrome gleam sound on songs such as “A Dustland Fairytale.”
GRADE: B
Andy Rathbun
425-339-3455
arathbun@heraldnet.com
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