MUSIC ZONE
Ciara — Fantasy Ride
(La Face)
Saurabh & Gaurav

Ciara’s highly anticipated effort Fantasy Ride has all the right elements: good producers, catchy hooks and beats packed with dance, pop and R&B flavours. The first single Never Ever featuring Young Jeezy, is produced by proven hit-maker Danja. The song is a fairly mid-tempo track, which channels elements of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes classic If You Don't Know Me By Now. Like most contemporary R&B records, Fantasy Ride is loaded with guests, some of which shine (The-Dream is dreamy as a duet partner on Lover’s Thing), while others (Justin Timberlake’s Love Sex Magic and Young Jeezy’s Never Ever) fade away instantly. Ciara is the most impressive when she ventures into an almost operatic territory with the Ludacris-assisted High Price. Turntables features a seemingly inevitable post-Slumdog Millionaire A. R. Rahman sample. From the snappy electro-pop acrobatics of Work to the hyper-operatic harmonies of High Price, Ciara has the dance floor aglow. Produced by Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, the vocals are manipulated to sound like opera, creating an innovative ethereal effect. Ciara has clearly grown as an artist and that growth is a step in the positive direction.

Best track: Never Ever

Worst track: Like A Surgeon

A former keyboard player in the contemporary Christian group Starflyer 59, Richard Swift struck out on his own at the turn of the decade. Swift’s previous efforts, particularly 2007s Dressed Up For the Letdown were well-received 1970s-style piano pop records, which had him heralded as a sort of Nilsson revival. The lyrics can be bleak, romantic and, at turns, simply evocative. On Ballad of Old What’s His Name, over a saloon swagger piano and a sharp jangly guitar, Swift sings, "I really don’t know, I said I really don’t know/I wasn’t talking‘bout your mother, I wasn’t talking‘bout your mother." Swift has clearly studied his masters (Paul McCartney, Todd Rundgren, Harry Nilsson) well, and does an impressive job of synthesising their strengths. Swift’s expansiveness is evident from the opening title track, which outfits its bouncy piano with effects and competing synth lines running on parallel tracks. The End Of An Age is the highlight here, creating an atmosphere of disillusionment and sadness that becomes flagrant by the end of the song. The collection builds on Swift’s penchant for cheerful piano with synthesisers that lend subtle texture to Already Gone and provide a stunning melodic foil on the deceptively upbeat, title track and Hallelujah, Goodnight! Death is the concept that drives The Atlantic Ocean: The End Of An Age and R.I.P. deal bluntly with unwelcome conclusions, and even the title track chorus cheerily suggests "Atlantic Ocean, you’re gonna drown, drown."

Best track: The End Of An Age

Worst track: Lady Luck

Rating ***

Steve Earle’s feelings for his mentor, Townes Van Zandt, are no secret. He famously proclaimed the late Van Zandt "the best songwriter in the whole world" and he named his son, Justin Townes Earle, after him. The songs selected for Townes were the ones that meant the most to Earle and the ones he personally connected to. Some of the selections chosen were songs that Earle has played his entire career (Pancho and Lefty, Lungs, White Freightliner Blues) and others he practiced specifically for recording. There’s a bluegrass feel in the combination of fiddle, guitar and banjo that drives White Freight Liner Blues and spare, stomping rhythm on Loretta, which features vocal harmonies from Allison Moorer, Earle’s wife. Tennessee Blues, the first song, brings Earle full circle as he sings about leaving the "Guitar Town" he first wrote about 20 years ago. The album celebrates New York City’s diversity with City Of Immigrants, featuring the band Forro In The Dark, who bring their style of traditional Brazilian Forro music to the song. Fort Worth Blues was the song Earle wrote on hearing of Van Zandt’s premature death in 1997, aged 52, but there can be no better monument than this version of Mr Mudd And Mr Gold, in which he’s joined by aptly named son Justin Townes Earle for a truly enthralling duet."

Satellite Radio, bizarrely enough, begins like Portishead, then opens out into an improbable kind of folk rap that’s one of the best moments here. The track Lungs is produced and mixed by the Dust Brothers’ John King and features Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine on electric guitar. Van Zandt may have indeed been Earle’s "headmaster", but it’s Earle who does Van Zandt’s artistic legend justice in these 15 diverse, yet stripped down performances of his songs.

Best track: Lungs

Worst track: Brand New Companion

Rating ***