A Better Tomorrow, Wu-Tang Clan, Warner Bros
Every Wu-Tang Clan album is a reunion, a measure of the power of the Wu-Tang brand to counteract all the forces pulling apart a coalition of nine rappers and at least that many agendas. Wu-Tang’s sixth studio album, A Better Tomorrow, arrives just over a year late to honor the 20th anniversary of its groundbreaking 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
That album shook up hip-hop with RZA’s brooding, grimy production and with densely allusive raps: violent street tales, raunchy boasts, abstract wordplay, science jargon, philosophical musings, rude humor, nihilism, aspiration. Its ideas have rippled through hip-hop, while a prolific jumble of solo albums and spinoffs have both defined the members’ personas and diluted the Wu-Tang imprimatur. The previous gathering of Wu-Tang Clan, 8 Diagrams, in 2007, was diffuse and half-hearted, full of fizzled experiments; this time, the group has grounded its music and rallied itself.
Self-congratulation fills A Better Tomorrow. The opening song, Ruckus in B Minor (referring to Bring Da Ruckus, which started the debut), has Method Man chanting, “Still number one!” Over gunshots and a measured backbeat, Hold the Heater insists “We keep it rugged/We keep it rough/We keep it real” and “We keep it raw.” The rappers still write dense, unpredictable verses with tricky rhythms, a rush of images and telegraphic narratives.
But this album is the work of career professionals, not wild-eyed youngsters. They’re adults who mention wives and families and staying healthy. They make sure to check in on the topics they have established in solo work: chef talk from Raekwon, astronomy and physics analogies from GZA. And many of the songs seem to originate as writing assignments based on a title. Felt enumerates feelings and memories (including memories of hearing Wu-Tang for the first time); Preacher’s Daughter uses the Dusty Springfield hit Son of a Preacher Man behind rhymed dalliances with preachers’ daughters; and Mistaken Identity offers ingenious tales of crime, cops, suspects and alibis.
The album’s sound is instantly recognizable as Wu-Tang, with measured, minor-key tracks; multiple rappers taking turns; movie-music echoes; and snippets of dialogue from kung fu films. But the RZA’s productions have evolved through the years. He meshes live instruments with his samples, and on this album, the music can change radically from verse to verse, segueing into different tempos and textures, free-associating like Wu-Tang lyrics. He also allows more melody than he used to.
There are some misfires, and the last stretch of A Better Tomorrow goes into a tailspin. Miracle, which holds some of the album’s most topical lyrics, unfortunately opens with a male-female duet that sounds like a reject from a Disney musical; it’s produced by 4th Disciple, not RZA. The album’s title track pours on its change-the-world message with a heavy hand. And the finale, Wu-Tang Reunion, has the rappers getting all buddy-buddy and sentimental atop Family Reunion, by the O’Jays. After two decades, the group can’t be rough, rugged and raw all the time; that wouldn’t be real. But even as grown-ups, Wu-Tang Clan still has sharp, startling reflexes.
— Jon Pareles, NY Times News service
Rock or Bust, AC/DC, Albert/Columbia
AC/DC’s Rock or Bust is sports bar music of the gods, the top shelf of cheap beer. There’s not a thing you haven’t heard before in its 11 new songs. What’s important is that they have the band’s traceable fingerprints all over them. Whatever this record may be missing, it’s not the band. The band is present.
Its lyrics run in basic celebration mode — rocking in bars (Rock the Blues Away), rocking on the road (Got Some Rock ‘n’ Roll Thunder), rocking onstage (Rock or Bust), rocking in bed (Miss Adventure). They aren’t witty, even when their double entendres look in the direction of wit. There is a great sameness to it all: the medium-tempo rhythm section grooves, the limited range and phrasing in Brian Johnson’s screeching vocals, the guitar riffs of Angus Young and his nephew Stevie. No putting on airs here. This is stock made with good ingredients, functional, a record to be listened to in isolated segments to accompany male bonding.
In 35 minutes, it quickens the hearing. Not only because its production, by Brendan O’Brien, protects AC/DC’s handmade sound: Its respect for space also allows you to hear the separated particulars of the band in a room, the sound of Angus Young’s fingers on the strings, the blast and decay of the riff, the tuning of the bass drum and the quality of the metal on the high-hat cymbal. But also because in this music there is nothing else to hear — no big ideas, no interruptions, no provocations. This record is content alone.
Only the news media can make it more than that, and from those quarters, you know that Stevie Young has replaced Malcolm Young, Angus’ brother, who dropped out of the band last spring, citing the onset of dementia; this is the first AC/DC record made without him. (It doesn’t sound any different.) And that the band’s drummer, Phil Rudd, has recently been charged in New Zealand with threatening murder and possession of drugs.
Anyway, Rock or Bust is a record so sure in its method across its 11 tracks that when you leave it, you might quickly and reflexively write a 12th and a 13th in your head, just as looking at the work of a great photographer for 35 minutes can make you turn a corner and see an image as the photographer would have captured it.
Beyond that, it wants no part of your life. The record isn’t paced or framed as a statement or an emotional experience. The album ends with Emission Control, a sex ode by the numbers. It doesn’t tie up any loose ends. It’s there as if to prove that the sound of the band is the whole story; nothing else matters.
— Ben Ratliff, NY Times News service
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