“Glory,” Jay-Z Featuring B.I.C. ()
What you hear in Jay-Z’s voice on the new song “Glory” isn’t bravado, or arrogance, or even the unchained joy of a new father wanting to pass out cigars to everyone in the room.
It sounds more like relief, an earned exhale. Earlier this month, his wife, Beyoncé, gave birth to their first child, Blue Ivy Carter, whose cries are sampled on the song. “Glory” is an openhearted ode to the baby — “A younger, smarter, faster me/ Saw a pinch of Hov, a whole glass of B” — but it’s also about fear of the unknown, an acknowledgment of the fragility that can lurk behind flawless facades.
“Last time the miscarriage was so tragic/ We was afraid you’d disappear, but no/ baby, you magic,” Jay-Z raps, seemingly pulling back the veil on the stresses and obstacles that bedeviled him and Beyoncé on the path to successfully conceiving. “False alarms and false starts,” he raps, “all made better by the sound of your heart.”
It’s humane and humble, and maybe the most naked Jay-Z song ever, though over the years he’s excelled at slipping painful autobiographical details into unlikely places. He even tried out the parent role on “New Day,” from “Watch the Throne,” last summer’s collaborative album with Kanye West, on which he rapped to his imagined child (a son, but still): “The sins of a father make your life 10 times harder/ I just want to take you to a barber.”
But even then, when fatherhood was hypothetical, he had an air of wariness: “If the day comes I only see him on the weekend/ I just pray we was in love on the night that we conceived him.”
On that count, at least, there’s no issue: In a jubilant moment of oversharing, Jay-Z points out the apparent date of conception on “Glory”: “You don’t yet know what swag is but you was made in Paris/ And mama woke up the next day and shot her album package.”
If Jay-Z isn’t at his peak flow here — think “Beach Chair,” the collaboration with Chris Martin of Coldplay from “Kingdom Come” — he’s at his peak feeling on this casual Neptunes production, all warm organ and easy drums. It’s purposefully spare, so as to not get in the way of his emotions. Or his words, which, uncharacteristically, Jay-Z is at something of a loss for. Or at least he has come to understand their limitations: “The most amazing feeling I feel/ Words can’t describe what I’m feeling for real.” Jon Caramanica, The New York Times
“Fallen Empires,” Snow Patrol (Island)
There’s a vague significance behind the title of Snow Patrol’s sixth album, a sense of eroded purpose and crumbling dominion, of great things run to ruin. And there are moments on “Fallen Empires,” the album, that halfway gesture toward political targets. Which is savvy misdirection, given that the songs derive most of their force and feeling from interpersonal tensions. What are at stake here are relationships: between former or future lovers, among friends and family, between a band and its fans. The album’s neat trick is to make those ties feel momentous, as if the republic rests on them.
And why not? Snow Patrol, a five-piece group from Northern Ireland by way of Glasgow, Scotland, transmits its distress signals and exhortations on much the same wavelength as Coldplay and U2, but with more humility and fewer theatrics. Gary Lightbody, the group’s perfectly named front man, sings in an appealingly low-gloss croon, soft but clear, and believably vulnerable. “Frightened, under attack,” he attests over the strobing agitation of the album’s titular anthem. “Fallen flat on my back.” He’s surveying some romantic rubble, or seems to be, until arriving at a sing-along refrain — “We are the light” — that ends the song on a note of determined uplift.
The electro-pop glare of “Fallen Empires” represents a new twist for Snow Patrol, whose best-known previous work, at least in this country, was the twinkling, folk-rockish 2006 single “Chasing Cars.” Putting aside the fact that even Coldplay has recently taken this plunge, it’s a sensible move: The album’s producer, Jacknife Lee, has nudged Snow Patrol just beyond its downy comfort zone.
The band recorded “Fallen Empires” almost entirely in Southern California, beginning with a pilgrimage to Joshua Tree. And whether it was the producer or the setting, the new influence manifests in the cowbell-socking chorus to “I’ll Never Let Go,” which seems meant to evoke not “Joshua Tree” but another U2 album, “Achtung Baby.” Then comes “Called Out in the Dark,” the electro-disco lead single. “As the kids took back the parks,” Lightbody sings, “You and I were left with the streets.”
What makes this all feel reasonably unforced is the abiding earnestness in the songwriting, and not just on ballads like “New York” and “This Isn’t Everything You Are.” During one steadily cresting theme, “In the End,” Lightbody makes a statement of principle in the form of a rhetorical question: “In the end / There’s nothing more to life than love, is there?” Nate Chinen, The New York Times
“Ready for Confetti,” Robert Earl Keen (Lost Highway)
If Robert Earl Keen wasn’t an avid fan of Stephen King before the holiday season, chances are he is now. The best-selling author put Keen’s new album, “Ready for Confetti,” on his “Top 20 of 2011” list, noting that Keen is “an ironist with a soft spot for both strivers and losers.” Keen is that, all right, and as countless observers have pointed out over the past 20 years, he’s boisterous, cutting and engaging, too.
“Ready for Confetti” isn’t flawless, but for those who have acquired a taste for Keen’s irrepressible spirit and Texas-honed songcraft, rest assured: He rarely disappoints this time out. Highlights? “The Road Goes On and On” is so lacerating that it brings to mind Bob Dylan’s “Idiot Wind.” The Western romance “Black Baldy Stallion” soulfully underscores Keen’s ties to Townes Van Zandt’s evocative narratives. “Who Do Man” comes across as a boastful blues novelty from the pre-rock era, and the title track toggles between Caribbean bounce and Southern blues.
Kudos to veteran guitarist and producer Lloyd Maines. He not only oversaw the making of “Ready for Confetti,” but the finesse he displays on a dozen string instruments is one of the album’s brightest charms. Mike Joyce, The Washington Post
