Blake Shelton is not a stoic like Trace Adkins, a sunbleached hobo like Kenny Chesney or an avatar of rural pride like Jason Aldean. He’s not a guitar hero like Brad Paisley, a moody bruiser like Toby Keith or a repository of living history like George Strait.
What a relief that turns out to be. Shelton is among the most versatile of contemporary country singers, an amiable rapscallion one minute and a thoughtful brooder the next. His new EP, All About Tonight, is a variety-pack of country styles, each song a different pose for Shelton to try out, with varying success. (It’s his second EP this year, after Hillbilly Bone in March.)
On All About Tonight he’s soused, flirty and convincing: “Tomorrow can wait ’til tomorrow,” he insists. But Suffocating, a slow dirgelike ballad about being stuck in the past, asks more of his voice than it’s prepared to give.
That’s because as a singer, he wrings feeling from emphasis and flexibility, not strength. On Got a Little Country, about seducing a city girl, he pronounces Manolo Blahniks “Milano Blahniks” though you sense he knows perfectly well what he’s doing: The gaffe is funnier.
Really, mischief is Shelton’s game — it’s telling that the funniest song here is the one with his fiancee, Miranda Lambert. Draggin’ the River is about a couple who fake a car crash in order to steal away for a secret wedding — a tale that would make Tim McGraw and Faith Hill blush.
— JON CARAMANICA, NY Times News Service
At the beginning of Deja Vu, which arrives midway through Mike Posner’s debut album 31 Minutes to Takeoff, the 1990s R ’n’ B greats Boyz II Men appear, performing some of their signature post-doo-wop, all slick, airy harmony and crisp fingersnaps. Twenty-four seconds later they’re gone, and one second after that they’re deeply missed.
At that point Posner’s vaporous electro-soul returns to its natural state, unfettered by depth or texture. A vocal and emotional naif, Posner has an easy way with harmless melodies, which are all over this flat album, notable only for its odd choices: frat-boy come-ons (“Get Your Red Bull on/’Cause I’m ready”) and what’s probably the first-ever sample of a Ray LaMontagne tune (Do U Wanna?).
Posner released a pair of mix tapes while still a student at Duke, from which he recently graduated. The sense of humor, however slight, that he showed on songs like Drug Dealer Girl is nowhere to he heard here. Instead, he toggles between petulant cad (Gone in September) and wounded child (Save Your Goodbye), convincing at neither. He has a grating voice, heavily nasal, with a seeming inability to wrap his lips around all of the necessary syllables, meaning that even when he’s at his angriest, he sounds as if he’s holding back.
Sometimes, though, Posner feels the need to make things uncomfortably clear. On Cheated, he actually names the woman who he’s lashing out against: Boyz II Men would never be so gauche.
— JON CARAMANICA, NY Times News Service
Haven’t we been here before? Deja vu, the new album by the pianist-composer-producer George Duke, answers that question in the affirmative. Proudly slick, it’s a throwback to the sounds of Duke’s early career, in the 1970s: funk, fusion, Stevie Wonderish soul and the milder stirrings of then-nascent smooth jazz. Neither a stretch nor a new strategy for Duke — Dukey Treats, from 2008, had a similar scope — it’s a way to play to his strengths, and to the tastes of a core audience that has stayed with him over the years.
For all its familiarity, Deja vu is not a complacent album. Duke has seized the chance to dust off an arsenal of keyboards — Minimoog Voyagers, Fender Rhodes and clavinets — in the service of his vintage ideal. Some songs are impeccable period pieces: Oh Really? has him playing a Wurlitzer electric piano in unison with the guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, against a pocket funk groove. The title track, which features a Nord synthesizer solo meant to evoke soaring electric guitar, feels like his nod to first-generation jazz-rock bands like Return to Forever and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Elsewhere the album adopts more of an adult-contemporary gloss. Stupid Is as Stupid Does enlists a sharp horn section, with Hubert Laws on flute, Nicholas Payton on trumpet and Bob Sheppard on tenor saxophone, but never surmounts its own glibness. What Goes Around Comes Around, written with the saxophonist Everette Harp, sounds like hold music, or something heard in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. Ripple in Time resembles an outtake from the Miles Davis album Tutu.
Those aren’t the greatest lapses of judgment here. Duke sings on half of the tracks on Deja vu, in a style blandly geared toward Quiet Storm radio programming. His soggy lyrics on Bring Me Joy and Come to Me Now might have worked with a more remarkable singer. You Touch My Brain probably never had a chance, despite its strong approximation of a Parliament-Funkadelic groove. And 6 O’Clock Revisited has Duke’s voice multi-tracked like a one-man Take 6, cooing about a lover’s untrustworthiness. As the title implies, it’s a redo of an older track from his own discography. But he did it better the first time.
— NATE CHINEN, NY Times News Service
When the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces 50 years ago this week, it prompted a mass exodus of some 2 million people — hundreds of thousands fleeing perilously on small boats across open water to escape the communist regime. Many ultimately settled in Southern California’s Orange County in an area now known as “Little Saigon,” not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where the first refugees were airlifted upon reaching the US. The diaspora now also has significant populations in Virginia, Texas and Washington state, as well as in countries including France and Australia.
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
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As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
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