Reviews Music
67 | Rolling Stone
BLACK KEYS / RACONTEURS★★★★★ Classic | ★★★★ Excellent | ★★★ Good | ★★ Fair | ★ Poor RATINGS ARE SUPERVISED BY THE EDITORS OF ROLLING STONE.FROM TOP: COLLIER SCHORR; EAT HUMANSBREAKINGDECKED OUT IN AN ATLANTA BRAVES JERSEY, with her auburn hair tucked under a visor,
Faye Webster cuts a distinct figure for an indie-folk singer-songwriter. Her music breaks
molds too. She released her debut on an Atlanta hip-hop label, and her excellent second
LP, Atlanta Millionaires Club, combines bedroom folk, forlorn country and modern R&B. On
“Pigeon,” steel guitar wraps around a beat reminiscent of TLC’s “Waterfalls,” and on the
standout “Room Temperature,” she desperately whimpers “I should get out more” over
and over against a silken melody. Bummer? Maybe. Alluring? Absolutely. ANGIE MARTOCCIOFaye Webster’s Southern Discomfort
RONSON’S LATE-NIGHT VIBES
The producer teams up with Miley Cyrus, Alicia
Keys and others for a chill LP BY WILL HERMESM
ark Ronson
branded himself a
nostalgia alche-
mist as a producer for Amy
Winehouse’s landmark LPs,
updating midcentury R&B
with a rare-groove-fanatic’s ear
for detail. Where superpro-
ducers like Diplo might makeit’s songwriting and processed
vocals that can feel anonymous;
boldfaced names lost in string
arrangements, pillowy reverb
and period simulacra in a way
the singers on Daft Punk’s
like-minded Random Access
Memories managed to avoid.
“Late Night Feelings” suggests a
bottle-service club jam from the
moment when late- Seventies
disco opulence pivoted into
the Eighties freestyle R&B that
birthed Madonna; Lykke Li
delivers it impeccably and unob-
trusively (she ups the soul factor
on “2 AM,” a hazy booty-call
blues). “Find U Again” sees Tame
Impala’s Kevin Parker raining
glitter over a crushed-out Camila
Cabello, who raps about doing
therapy “at least twice a week”
to get over it. You wish her well,
but may find it hard to recall a
minute later.
The lesser-knowns shine
hardest. Arkansas church belter
Yebba launches “Don’t Leave Me
Lonely” over a sumptuous house
groove you might wish was
double its 3:36 length. Diana
Gordon brings the silk-sheet soul
on “Why Hide” with a dubby
ache recalling the XX, fitting
since that group’s Romy Madley
Croft co-wrote it. Best is “Truth,”
delivered by the Last Artful,
Dodgr (a.k.a. Portland rapper
Alana Chenevert) over gnarly
saw-toothed bass, with Alicia
Keys “educatin’ ” and “elevatin’ ”
on the hook à la some great, lost
Sly and the Family Stone single.
Honorable mention goes
to up-and-coming country singer
Miley Cyrus, who conjures her
godmother, Dolly Parton, on
“Nothing Breaks Like a Heart,” a
trotting mix of “Jolene,” “I Will
Always Love You” and “9 to 5,”
perfectly positioned for the
post-“Old Town Road” gold rush.
It shows how Ronson’s precision-
tooled nostalgia is always
somehow right on time.Mark Ronson
Late Night Feelings
SONY
★★★ ★2015 LP, Uptown Special, the
latter’s dude roster swapped for
a compelling mix of women,
its brittle chromed funk
replaced with a plush, dubby
quiet-storm vibe. It’s a better
album — rangy, sexy and fairly
seamless, a record to play all
the way through after a night of
clubbing. If there’s a problem,serviceable magic with anyone,
Ronson’s classicism generally
requires the wearer to animate
it. Winehouse was an ideal
match — as was Bruno Mars,
whose Prince homage “Uptown
Funk” proved how lucrative
Ronson’s science could be.
Late Night Feelings is a sort
of feminine inverse of Ronson’sriffing storm in “Eagle Birds” and “Go.” The effect
is like 2003’s Thickfreakness, in higher fidelity.
The Raconteurs — White, Benson, bassist Jack
Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler — bust
into their first studio album in 11 years like a
street gang itching for battle, rapidly building to
the power-chord fanfare and shiny vocal chrome
in “Bored and Razed.” The buzzing-bee tone of
the main guitar lick recalls White’s attack mode in
the White Stripes, but the Raconteurs are at once
denser and more agile. Benson’s broad instru-
mental role and straighter, richer singing — next
to White’s high-pitched agitation — add a stack of
dynamics here: the synth-lined shadows of “Only
Child”; the android-choir harmonies in “Sunday
Driver,” like the Beatles imitating Kraftwerk; the
Sixties-R&B melodrama in “Now That You’re
Gone.” Lawrence and Keeler swing between
brawny funk, slicing strut and, in “Don’t Bother
Me,” high, straight speed like a runaway Grand
Funk Railroad.
“Let’s Rock” is in the emotional tradition of
most Sixties garage rock: the singer having a bum-
mer, the band making noise to raise him up. “You
get low like a valley/Then high like a bird in the
sky,” Auerbach sings in “Lo/Hi,” certifying the ex-
tremes in a wrenching soprano-fuzz guitar break.
His plaintive vocals are often closer to country
soul, haunted by betrayal and the slippery slope
of commitment in “Tell Me Lies” and “Breaking
Down,” the latter lined with electric sitar, like a
1969 Elvis Presley session. But in Carney’s drum-
ming, Auerbach has the perfect anchor and drive
for his freak-rock twang and moral punch. “Every
Little Thing” opens like a spasm of lead-gui-
tar nerves from Led Zeppelin II, then drops to
something darker, the Black Keys holding their
gunpowder until the chorus: “Every little thing
that you do/Is always gonna come back to you.”
The chattering classes will no doubt whip up
some blood-rival gossip to explain the near-si-
multaneous release of these albums. Help Us
Stranger and “Let’s Rock” are simply great records
from very different bands coming from the same
ideals: Rock is a living thing, and guitars can be
your best friends in the war on jive.