New CDs From Kelly Clarkson, Chris Cornell and Madeleine Peyroux (original) (raw)

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

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March 8, 2009

KELLY CLARKSON
“All I Ever Wanted”
(RCA)

Are we asking too much of Kelly Clarkson?

When she won the first season of “American Idol” in 2002, it was unclear what sort of fame lay ahead. And it took time for her to create a recording persona that was as popular and as sure-footed as her “Idol” one.

That those identities were somewhat at odds came as a surprise. On the show she was down-to-earth and a bit awkward, expertly running through a raft of blues-inflected classic soul, with a couple of detours to Celine Dion. But the contemporary soul of her debut album “Thankful” often fell flat, and on her second album, “Breakaway,” she was reinvented as an updated Alanis Morissette, confessional and blunt, singing big-voiced songs of disappointment: “Since U Been Gone,” “Behind These Hazel Eyes,” “Because of You” and more. It went platinum six times over.

But Ms. Clarkson, allergic to tabloids and image consultants, often appeared adrift in the pop landscape. Her songs had become famous, but she herself less so. Her third album, “My December,” seemed to be an attempt at recalibration. She squabbled with her label and rejected the hired guns (namely, Dr. Luke and Max Martin) who had molded her previous album; the results, only moderately successful, almost used up all her accreted good will.

So if her first album was the Obligation, her second the Breakthrough and her third the Reaction, then “All I Ever Wanted” plays out as Ms. Clarkson’s Concession. The most immediate parts of “All I Ever Wanted” read a bit like Kelly Clarkson karaoke: back are the Swedish writers and producers and their laser-guided arrangements, with dynamics that are particularly well suited to her voice, broad, nimble and gale-force strong.

Even though the lead single produced by Dr. Luke and Mr. Martin, it recently topped the Billboard Hot 100 is a proclamation of love, it still bears what have become Ms. Clarkson’s trademark scars: “I know that I’ve got issues/But you’re pretty messed up too.”

The rest of the album is a catalog of letdowns and ne’er-do-wells. “Cry” is a shouter of a breakup song, and on “I Want You,” slithery with girl-group swing, Ms. Clarkson, culpable but smitten, falls for a bad boy. And on the excellent “Don’t Let Me Stop You,” about a man who won’t commit, Ms. Clarkson tartly observes, “I couldn’t help but notice/the last time you kissed me/you kept both eyes open.”

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The singer Kelly Clarkson, an “American Idol” winner in 2002, has released her fourth album, “All I Ever Wanted”; above, at a 2008 performance in Australia.Credit...Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images

But as was clear on her last album, it requires a certain deftness to harness Ms. Clarkson, a gift not all her collaborators display. Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, whose concept of pain is frustratingly unspecific, drowns her under murky piano on “Already Gone” and “Save You.”

The most surprising assist here comes from Katy Perry, the pop star who is the polar opposite of Ms. Clarkson and contributed writing to two songs here. Ms. Perry is known for blithe pop candy, but these songs are appealingly dark. “I Do Not Hook Up” is about falling for an addict and dangling love as a tool for recovery, and “Long Shot” documents a relationship that constantly falls short: “I wanted for fact to come of fiction.” These songs don’t ask as much of Ms. Clarkson’s voice as Dr. Luke and Mr. Martin do, but they acknowledge that, after all these years, Ms. Clarkson’s identity is finally firm: spurned, hurt and torn. JON CARAMANICA

CHRIS CORNELL
“Scream”
(Mosley Music/Interscope)

Rockers feeling stale can always jump genres. Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish went country last year; now the rocker Chris Cornell introduces electrogrunge on “Scream,” his third solo album. Mr. Cornell, a grunge pioneer with Soundgarden in the 1980s and 1990s, wrote all the songs on “Scream,” but most of the music sets aside big guitar chords to embrace the synthetic pulse and programmed hooks produced by the hip-hop and R&B hit maker Tim Mosley, a k a Timbaland.

“Scream” is Mr. Cornell’s assertive move out of his old niche and toward the sound of the current Top 10. Goodbye, Pearl Jam, and hello, Justin Timberlake (who adds backup vocals in one song, “Take Me Alive”).

Singing about lovers’ quarrels and deeper anger and self-doubt Mr. Cornell remains as sullen as he was in his rock songs for Soundgarden and then Audioslave. In “Get Up” he intones: “You got a losing hand. You built a house of cards. On a hill of sand.”

He still sings with the chesty intensity that lets him project angst without weakness. But his complaints and confessions now arrive in clipped melody lines punctuated by automated arpeggios and snappy beats, as well as Timbaland trademarks like quick, sampled shouts.

Converging on pop from two different directions Mr. Cornell and Timbaland often end up sounding, oddly enough, like Michael Jackson in his semirockers (“Billie Jean,” “Dirty Diana”) or like Gnarls Barkley placing a gutsy voice in an artificial matrix.

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"All I Ever Wanted" by Kelly Clarkson.

Timbaland reframes Mr. Cornell. The first five songs on “Scream” pump along like a club D.J. set, staying at virtually the same tempo. And the whole album segues; each track ends with a transition to the next.

But only half the album aims for dance floors. Some of Mr. Cornell’s best older songs, like Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” were desolate ballads, and Timbaland would never disdain a dramatically ascending chorus. It’s easy to imagine songs like “Take Me Alive,” “Long Gone,” “Never Far Away” and “Scream” itself in smoldering rock arrangements rather than Timbaland’s Bollywood exotica (“Take Me Alive”), layered chorales (“Long Gone” and “Never Far Away”) and chattering double-time beats (“Scream”). The new environment rejuvenates Mr. Cornell for good and bad: he sounds shallower than he was before but pithier too. JON PARELES

MADELEINE PEYROUX
“Bare Bones”
(Rounder)

On each of her previous three solo albums Madeleine Peyroux kept the focus on her voice: a small, distinctive thing with all the weathered charm of a flea-market antique. Her new album, “Bare Bones,” features her singing no less purposefully than the others, but it presents her as more of a songwriter than before. Each of its 11 tracks has her name in the credits, and together they add up to a declaration of selfhood.

As the title suggests, this is an album about core principles: love and solitude, rumination and survival. On songs like “I Must Be Saved” and “Instead,” Ms. Peyroux urges a strict focus on matters of the heart, imploringly or insouciantly. Elsewhere, on the title track and “River of Tears,” she tunes out the world to better savor her grief. And she takes asceticism to rather uneasy extremes with “Homeless Happiness,” which idealizes a life without shelter or possessions. (“No hurries, no worries for me,” she coos. Really?)

Most of the songs were written with collaborators, notably the album’s producer, Larry Klein, whose soft touch can also be felt throughout. Along with Ms. Peyroux’s vocals and acoustic guitar, there are vintage keyboards and parts for mandolin, violin and pedal steel. It all feels tasteful, companionable and often saggingly dull. Perhaps a steelier singer could use this much gauze; for Ms. Peyroux, it’s Vaseline on the camera lens.

But a few songs cut through, none better than “Love and Treachery,” written with Joe Henry and Mr. Klein. Here Ms. Peyroux combines concrete imagery with weighty pronouncement, evoking the style of Leonard Cohen, whose songs she has often covered.

“But in your voice I’ll hear my own and recognize the crime,” she sings, softly but evenly. “That all your love and treachery has ended up as mine.”

Madeleine Peyroux performs on Tuesday at Joe’s Pub; joespub.org. NATE CHINEN

A correction was made on

March 12, 2009

The Critics’ Choice column on Monday, about new CDs including Kelly Clarkson’s “All I Ever Wanted,” misidentified the nationality of the musician and producer Dr. Luke, who worked with the Swedish songwriter and producer Max Martin on Ms. Clarkson’s second album. He is American, not Swedish.

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