Reviewed: ‘BLACKsummers’ Night’ by Maxwell, ‘Party Rock’ by LMFAO, ‘American Central Dust’ by Son Volt

Maxwell

“BLACKsummers’ Night”

Sony

* * * *

The best way to listen to Maxwell’s new “BLACKsummers’ Night” is with the volume turned all the way up. The R&B; artist didn’t take a turn toward heavy metal during the eight years he’s spent between releasing albums; this one, like his previous three, is full of meditative jams written on the continuum between ardor and heartache. But as genteel and deceptively traditionalist as is Maxwell’s veneer, he’s always been bent on taking urban music forward: He just takes obsessively careful, small steps, best appreciated through close attention.

And he believes, passionately, in dynamics. Many of the songs on “BLACKsummers’ Night,” the first part of a trilogy Maxwell plans to unfold over the next few years, are structured around a short musical phrase, played on a keyboard or guitar, on which everything else loops and builds. (Doesn’t that sound like Radiohead’s approach? That’s an inspiration Maxwell has cited in interviews.)

These details are different from the hooks usually heard on the radio. They don’t grab; they’re not compressed for maximum brightness. Sometimes one recedes and another momentarily dominates -- a horn line might burst through, or a kick drum completes the thought of a bassline.

Maxwell’s vocals move in conversation with these elements, growing into the space above and around them. He sings about relationships -- many songs here are about a cherished but disappointing love affair -- and the music replicates the experience of an intimate connection, its ebbs and surges, its sometimes frustrating turns.

Compare this sound with the showiness of other current urban hitmakers, like Jeremiah or even the more laid back Trey Songz. Those singers telegraph their moods, whether they’re getting down or opening their hearts. Their music is meant to be catchy and quickly absorbed. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just not Maxwell’s approach. Even when he’s not too proud to beg, he stays true to his own internal clock, timing his pleas as they might unfold in real time instead of on the stage of pop seduction.

This doesn’t mean Maxwell isn’t a great seducer. He’s known as a ladies’ favorite and purveyor of “baby-making” soundtracks, and many songs here, whether the directly seductive “Stop the World” or the mournful but still sexy “Pretty Wings,” drip plenty of candle wax.

But let’s give Maxwell’s female fans a little credit for intelligence. His music is libidinally compelling because it is complex. Following the example of his acknowledged influence Al Green, Maxwell’s singing teases out the subtle gradations of feeling in a lyric -- even a dubiously “poetic” one like, “Hell hath no fury like the flurry of your snow” -- to express how sexual joy intertwines with loneliness, or anger at a love lost collides with guilt and self-loathing.

“BLACKsummers’ Night” spends much time exploring those less comfortable emotions. For all the talk that Maxwell’s covered in thrown panties wherever he walks, he often sounds somber, resentful and wrecked. Pop doesn’t get much more desolate than “Playing Possum,” an elegy for a sweetheart who’s literally departed. And “Fistful of Tears” is a plea for mutual catharsis that’s so raw it almost fails to communicate.

Maxwell promises more hopeful fare on his next installment, and overall “BLACKsummers’ Night” does seem like the first movement in a larger piece that won’t offer total satisfaction until it’s completed. Still, for those who like their pop delicate and unapologetically deep, this is one for turning up loud and wallowing.

-- Ann Powers

--

Rapping duo gets right in your face

LMFAO

“Party Rock”

(Interscope)

* * *

Lyrically speaking, there isn’t much on the debut album from local club-rap duo LMFAO that can be quoted in a family newspaper. What is safe for these pages, though, says just about everything you need to know about these guys’ worldview: “Get crazy, get wild / Let’s party, get loud,” shouts MC Sky Blu in “Get Crazy,” one of the 14 virtually interchangeable odes to night life naughtiness here.

Sky Blu and his producer partner Redfoo already are well known within the bottle-service set for their high-energy remixes of hits by A-listers like Fergie, Kanye West and Katy Perry. And though it consists of the group’s own material, “Party Rock” offers the same pleasures as those remixes: thumping ‘80s-inspired beats, instantly catchy synth hooks, shouty catchphrases about how “what happens at the party stays at the party.”

Provided you speak English -- an ability that might actually work against enjoying LMFAO’s music -- Sky Blu’s constant appeals to remove various articles of clothing can get pretty tiresome. Yet like will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, the rapper at least views hedonism as a participatory endeavor not just something to be creepily observed from the VIP section. That gives tracks such as “La La La” and “Leaving U 4 the Groove” a welcome sense of conviviality.

The result is simple but effective: mindless fun that makes you wonder what’s so great about having a mind anyway.

LMFAO plays a record-release party today at the Roxy in West Hollywood.

-- Mikael Wood

--

Reveling in such sad, sad times

Son Volt

“American Central Dust”

Rounder

* 1/2

Son Volt singer-songwriter Jay Farrar casts his gaze around the good old U.S. of A. and isn’t happy with what he sees. The economy has tanked, greed runs rampant and dreams come crashing to the ground. Even if all that’s true, does it really help to sound this mopey?

Farrar’s dour perspective courses through most of these dozen songs, the gloom broken only sporadically by the band’s musical interplay. Too often, his melodies are Spartan vehicles for his lyrical prose, which is ambitiously artful but would be served just as well -- perhaps better -- as spoken-word exercises.

“Man’s power over nature/Hubris and greed let the fossil fuels burn,” he laments in “When the Wheels Don’t Move.” It’s a position that’s been argued for ages, but Farrar comes across like the grump at a dinner who grumbles invectives at whatever target comes up. “Pushed Too Far,” a glum reminiscence of pre-Katrina times in New Orleans and elsewhere, takes the band into a late-night country Stones vibe that’s bittersweetly colored with steel guitar. In “Sultana,” his recounting of a Civil War-era maritime disaster, Farrar mistakes historical narrative for art.

The album’s sound is raw, but “raw,” even in the Americana circles that Son Volt travels in, doesn’t always equate with primal power. Sometimes it’s just undercooked.

Son Volt plays July 16 at the Wiltern.

-- Randy Lewis