Pet Shop Boys: Inner Sanctum
Showing they’re canny judges of their own catalog, this well-timed live album chooses the correct three and a half tracks from the honorable but unnecessary Super to rescue (with the roleplaying of “The Dictator Decides” improved by the implied audience), as well as the correct zero tracks from Elysium. Electric, their other album since their last live one, is very necessary, and it doesn’t really matter which other two besides “Love Is a Bourgeois Construct” they select, as long as the flow gives them fresh purpose — the previously album-closing “Vocal” becomes a lead-in to the debauchery of “The Sodom and Gomorrah Show.” A good time was and will be had by all, except for those weirdos who’d rather hear “Heart” than “Go West.”
Grade: A MINUS (“Inner Sanctum”, “The Dictator Decides/Inside a Dream”, “Heart/Go West”)
Elizabeth & the Catapult: Keepsake (2017)
Fourth album from adult alternative veteran Elizabeth Ziman, whose mildly successful career has taken her all the way from Greenwich Village to Brooklyn: if she has kids, I’m sure they’ll end up somewhere around Jersey City. The record consistently sounds inventive (a testament to the production by Ziman, Dan Molad, and the late Richard Swift), and her writing holds up its end. While nothing here demands to be a fluke hit or Apple sync, the tunes and pizzicato strings develop both within and across verses. Even when mired in past mistakes or nests of lies, her optimism is relentless — and it’s not the dumb kind of positivity, it’s the “your mom is terminally ill and you have to keep your chin up because she demands it” kind.
Grade: A MINUS (“Underwater”, “Method Acting”, “Ambrosia”)
Loona: [X X] EP
Their gimmick — a girl for every month! — makes it impractical to identify individuals, though whoever does the lyric soprano deserves a bonus and to never meet Mariah Carey. In the aggregate, the vocals tend light and breathy, like they’re trying to blow butterflies off each others heads without disturbing each others’ immaculate coiffures. The synths, too, are trebly despite it being clear that the producers have had DJ Snake on repeat for the last few years. Throw in the odd odd chord change and you get detailed yet surprisingly robust miniatures that you don’t have to be a fan of the gender binary to find quite lovely. (Some editions package the new material with their debut [+ +], which is the sum of its parts.)
Grade: A MINUS (“Butterfly”, “Curiosity”, “Where You At”)
Day6: Daydream EP (2016)
Second-tier Korean boy band that’s actually a band — one’s a synth player! The drummer’s there to drum as well as look pretty! More interesting than that are their harmonies, heavily treated as if they’re Jellyfish with Auto-Tune. The rapping is a little incongruous amidst the power-pop elements, but it has its goofy charm, and I’ll never not be down with chanting “3, 2, 1, fight” on a song that from the English lyrics I choose to believe is about period sex. It’s twenty minutes and there’s only one slow one, so what’s there to lose? After hearing some of their later recordings: their innocence.
Grade: A MINUS (“Hunt”, “Wish”, “First Time”)
Sir Babygirl: Crush on Me
We get the right amount of too much of middle school feeling, from right at the point where grown-ups and peers stop finding gender nonconformism cute: as if Sir’s saying the only way to make sense of one’s current baggage is to start from where one started getting forced into choices one didn’t want to make. Middle school sucks, of course — even the highs aren’t as high as what hormones can drag you to in a few years, except you don’t know that, so you cling to whatever appears to have the best chance of adapting to the next apocalypse. For a few particularly maladjusted individuals, that means the eternal renewal of the pop chart: even if some kid on a horse smashes it to pieces, you can pick up the shards and build an identity out of them. It’s not enough to hang a life on, it turns out, but thank you, next.
Grade: B PLUS (“Cheerleader”, “Flirting with Her, “Haunted House”)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Lizzo: Cuz I Love You
Inefficient soul singer — in high runs she’ll hit a proportion of notes ugly to show you how emotional she is (try to find Aretha doing that) — so program the singles and bonus cuts to reveal an excellent pop singer-rapper (“Juice”, “Tempo”, “Truth Hurts”)
Red Velvet: The ReVe Festival: Day 1 EP
Lead single “Zimzalabim” is as exhausting as its name, but after that, as at many a good festival, there’s high-calorie food, pleasant sounds in the background you can’t quite identify, and some space to chill halfway the fjuck out (“Parade”, “Bing Bing”, “Milkshake”)
Ariana Grande: Thank U, Next
This rush job flattens her character to she’s-real-and-she’s-spectacular, yet the hits are really good and the filler is good enough for the superfans and numismatists who listen to albums these days, so bank you, next (“Thank U, Next”, “Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored”, “7 Rings”)
Chung Ha: Flourishing EP
She does better in ballad hell than in mid-tempo purgatory, which isn’t to say you need more than the fast ones (“Snapping”, “Chica”)
Ingrid Michaelson: Stranger Songs
Never seen an episode of Stranger Things, but I can identify as a freak without actually being one, plus this has a Christmas song with as much melancholy beauty as whichever Nat or Bing you prefer (“Christmas Lights”, “Freak Show”)
