After years of hanging out with millionaire porn stars and pop tarts, Snoop Dogg makes a stunning return to his “gangsta roots” on The Blue Carpet Treatment (Polydor ****), dishing out grimy, street smart rhymes from the trenches of the West Coast that call for racial harmony amid low riding, funk fuelled grooves cooked up by Dre, Timbaland and the Neptunes. One of his strongest albums to date.
US alt rockers Incubus unleash their sixth album Light Grenades (Columbia ***), bristling with complex chord progressions, passionate vocals from lead singer Brandon Boyd and shiny production. Still, it lacks both the muscular funk and melodic beauty of their earlier work. One for diehard fans only.
Much like All Saints’ Studio 1, Take That’s big comeback album Beautiful World (Polydor **) fails to relive past glories, bypassing celebratory disco pop trash for the kind of bland mid tempo balladry Keane would even bin in the name of good taste. In the distance, somewhere off the coast of the Mediterranean, Mr. Williams quietly laughs.
Still, it’s nowhere near the atrocity that is Katie Price and Peter Andre’s A Whole New World (K and P Recordings *), a duets album comprising lovey dovey cover ballads in which things go spectacularly tits up. You really have to have a sense of humour about these things.
POSTED...
Tue 28 Nov 2006 at 8:01pm
