CDs of the week

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Kings of Leon: Because of the Times

Timbaland presents: Shock Value

Macy Gray: Big

Robyn@ Robyn

Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Jef Neve: Nobody Is Illegal

Bassekou Kouyate: Segu Blue

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Macy Gray's fourth album, Tennessee's Kings of Leon, a jazz pianist from Ghent and Mali's top ngoni player all release albums this week.

POP

Kings of Leon
Because of the Times (RCA)
****
They've been labelled the Southern Strokes, supported U2 and released two rowdy albums - the Followill family of Tennessee should be huge by now. That they're not yet household names makes their third LP all the more interesting. Without pressure to make more of the same, the quartet have widened their sound with spectacular results. Atmospheric opening track Knocked Up is extraordinary: seven minutes of skeletal guitar, shuffling beats and Caleb Followill sounding both proud and scared as he sings of a surprise pregnancy. The growling Charmer sees him howling like Frank Black of Pixies, while on the otherworldly Trunk he coos and swoons with real beauty. Because of the Times is never less than inspired, revealing more with each listen. It takes Kings of Leon up to a much higher plane. David Smyth

Timbaland presents
Shock Value (Polydor)
**
The calibre of guests on his second solo album testifies to Timbaland's position at the top of the producers' tree. Nelly Furtado - the most recent star to have benefited from his studio wizardry - appears on the excellent club track Give it to Me, also featuring Justin Timberlake. In typical style, Timbaland's rumbling Southern bass and tribal beats bring out the singers' latent ghetto sensibilities. 50 Cent and Tony Yayo have no need of this kind of help on their gangster duet, Come and Get Me, which combines a jazzy, bouncing piano track with charming lyrics like: "I'm rich. I could pay to have you six feet deep." Sounding like an early Prince B-side, the oily, dated R&B of Fantasy works less well but these 19 tracks are nonetheless a worthy showcase of the considerable skills of one of the industry's biggest talents. Chris Elwell-Sutton

Macy Gray
Big (will.i.am/Geffen)
**
Unsurprisingly dumped by her label after her third album, 2003's risible The Trouble with Being Myself struggled commercially, Macy Gray has somehow managed to kickstart her career with a new deal and a new album. The raspy, helium-voiced 37-year-old from Canton, Ohio, is joined here by Justin Timberlake (on the taut highlight Okay and the lazy Get Out), Natalie Cole and Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am and Fergie. There's a reinterpretation of Dead or Alive's You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) shoehorned into Treat Me Like Your Money - but nothing can quite disguise the half-hearted nature of the bulk of Big. While Gray's voice is unarguably distinctive, it sheds its limited charms far too quickly. John Aizlewood

Robyn
Robyn (Konichiwa)
*****
For those of us who love pop music, this is a golden age. This may seem an odd claim given the demise last year of pop bible Smash Hits and TV show Top Of The Pops, but the current crop of fantastic pop acts from The Feeling to Girls Aloud are aimed as much at adults as they are kids. And grown-ups are now pop-literate: we don't need a magazine to tell us what's great - we know instinctively.
Pop used to be sneered at because much of it was so cynical and calculated. Of course, the whole X Factor/Westlife phenomenon harks back to the bad old days (but not to worry - the only people that fall for cynipop are oldies, drooling idiots and cultural barbarians).
However, there are many people now making music who grew up in the Eighties, a decade during which the boundaries between cred rock and pop became blurred.
Most of us consumers are savvy enough to realise that the genre differences between songs as great as Britney's Toxic and the Arctic Monkeys' I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor don't say anything about their quality - they're both fantastic, full stop.
Which brings us to Robyn, a 27-year-old Swede who had her first hits more than a decade ago but then apparently disappeared.
For her comeback, Robyn borrows liberally from artists as varied as TLC, Kate Bush, Missy Elliott, Peaches and Cyndi Lauper. On Should Have Known, which is underpinned by a rhythm very similar to Prince's When Doves Cry, she wearily sighs a creamy tale of being wronged before hitting the spot with the judicious use of the F-word in the chorus.
It's not gratuitous (unlike Eamon's F*** You of a couple years back) but it is effective and underlines the fact that this brilliant record marks the zenith of adult pop in 2007.
Robyn starts a little slowly with Curriculum Vitae - a rather pointless exercise in self-aggrandisement which raises a hackle or two. But Konichiwa Bitches - think Kylie and Peaches fighting like two ferrets in a sack - soon gets things warming up nicely.
After that you get 12 further tracks, most of which could handle themselves quite comfortably in the top 10 singles chart. Bum Like You is a cheeky electro rebuff to TLC's mighty No Scrubs, in which Robyn (a vocal hybrid of Bush and Lauper - imagine!) talks of loving wasting her time with a penniless man with a rubbish car and less than stringent standards of personal hygiene. The next track, Be Mine!, serves as another slap around the pop chops. Strings from Hounds Of Love-era Kate Bush and a chorus of which Abba would be proud - it's simply staggeringly good.
And the perfect pop doesn't stop. With Every Heartbeat is majestic and moving, Crash And Burn Girl is prime Seventies disco with a digital heartbeat and... oh damn it, just buy the record. Paul Connolly

Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank (Sony BMG)
****
Given their name you'd have thought Modest Mouse would be your typical quirky American indie band - high on cred and angles, low on tunes and sales.
Not so, as the seventh album from this Washington six-piece attests. Not only have they covered the cred angle by recruiting ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, but this album has gone straight to No1 in America. Lead single Dashboard has a skittery dance edge and with Marr and Isaac Brock both playing cascading lead guitar riffs, it emerges as a wee bit of pop genius. It's the best track but March Into The Sea and Fly Trapped In A Jar are not far behind. Paul Connolly

Fields
Everything Last Winter (Atlantic)
***
This Anglo-Icelandic five-piece are, initially at least, a baffling proposition. Song For The Fields, the first track on this debut album, sounds like a subdued Led Zeppelin being covered by My Bloody Valentine. You Don't Need This Song (To Fix Your Broken Heart) meanwhile, is a melodic update on Sixties English folkrock. Slowly, they start to make sense as a kind of rustic offshoot of the early-Nineties shoegazing movement who've gone native; they sound like they've made instruments from twigs and animal skins. The melodies are audible beneath the surface of layered guitars and are often of the highest quality but in underutilising the lush vocals of keyboard player Thorunn Antonia, they've missed an opportunity to add a little colour to the patchwork of green and brown. Paul Connolly

JAZZ

Jef Neve
Nobody Is Illegal (Universal/Emarcy)
****
Piano jazz endures more than its fair share of bluffers and minimalists, so it's a pleasure to recommend a fiery young newcomer of genuine talent and originality. Neve is a Belgian whose fluent keyboard technique suggests classical training, but, more importantly, he has the crisp touch and rhythmic urgency of a true jazz musician. His dynamic work with bassist Piet Verbist and drummer Teun Verbruggen is underscored by a brass choir and the carefully chosen notes of Nicolas Kummert's tenor saxophone. Neve's writing, notably the ballad Second Love, and the emotive title track, is well above the run-of-the-mill. It's time London heard this gifted gent from Ghent. Jack Massarik

WORLD

Bassekou KouyatÈ
Segu Blue (Out Here)
*****
This is a gem. Bassekou Kouyaté is Mali's leading player of the ngoni, a simple desert lute that looks like a stocky cricket bat. It's West Africa's oldest string instrument and the ancestor of the banjo. Cognocenti may know Kouyaté for his contributions to Ali Farka Touré's magnificent last album, Savane, but here he's centre stage as leader of a ngoni quartet. In a way it's possible to think of this as sophisticated chamber music with intricate lines delicately interweaving plus the female vocals of Ami Sacko and Zoumana Tereta. One of the most gorgeous tracks is an instrumental with Toumani Diabate on kora even more entrancing than those Toumani did with Ali Farka Touré. Laid-back music of the highest order. Simon Broughton

 

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