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Hot Cakes

Pop and Rock

The Darkness

Hot Cakes

(Wind-Up)

In the opening lines of Every Inch of You, the first track on The Darkness' new album Hot Cakes, Justin Hawkins laments his past misfortunes: "Oh baby I was a loser/Several years on the dole/An Englishman with a very high voice." But that loser has made that very high voice work for him as the reformed glam rockers release their third studio album.

Hot Cakes just exudes fun. It seems to wipe away a period of discord during which the band broke up and its members started other projects. You can almost see the lanky rockers jumping around, causing havoc on stage. Nothin's Gonna Stop Us has a feel-good 1980s rocking chorus and guitar solos you can imagine being played atop a huge speaker in a stadium. It's a song that's perfect for warming up a Lady Gaga crowd, something The Darkness will do on her world tour.

Forbidden Love intertwines melodic harmonies and a delicate drum beat that progress into a rockier musing on love.

As the album progresses to With a Woman, it becomes lyrically more sombre and loses the cocky edge that has defined previous releases. Hawkins muses on a failed relationship, but still manages a Darknessesque squeal at the end. However, this love song isn't as strong as other romantic ditties such as Love is Only a Feeling on the quartet's 2003 debut Permission to Land.

The album stumbles somewhat when Hawkins isn't using his voice to its full range and sings bland lyrics about banal domesticities, making cups of tea and getting taxis. Four Stars

-- Sian Watson, Associated Press

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Owl City

The Midsummer Station

(Universal)

Only a year ago, Adam Young released All Things Bright and Beautiful, the follow-up record to 2009's smash hit, Ocean Eyes. It didn't sell very well, a disappointment in the wake of the worldwide stardom Young so suddenly achieved. So one year later, Young is trying a course-correction with The Midsummer Station. Usually a solo pilot, he's enlisted some friends to help breathe new life into the record. Some are surprising: Blink 182 frontman Mark Hoppus, Canadian chanteuse Carly Rae Jepsen, and frequent Rihanna producers Stargate, to name but a few.

The additions make Owl City's twinkly sound bigger, bouncier, and more driven. The spacey keyboards of 2009's infuriatingly hooky Fireflies are still here, but now they are bolstered by beats that already beg a house remix, as on the pop confection Shooting Star, or by a hint of swagger, as with semi-rocker Dementia. Most of all, Young's distinctive dreamy-high voice floats over it all, somehow both charming and painfully twee. It's a good voice for his graceful songwriting, and those fluid melodies still delight. Still, while the whole thing is fun and peppy and pleasantly inoffensive, there's nothing to make you sit up and take notice. Three stars

-- Melissa Martin

Jaill

Traps

(Sub Pop)

Depending on your enjoyment and charity for such things Milwaukee's Jaill could be just the band for you. Their particular thin slice of the indie-pop loaf comes via their ability to sound like they are actually what they are not. Some critics hear a '60s jangle pop esthetic that you would have to agree is almost there, but buried pretty deep in their crafty, layered sound. There are hints of melodies that, if gently pulled away from the bone of the Jaill sound could perhaps be shaped into something like a pop song from another age. Trouble is, singer Vincent Kircher almost steals the show on every track here and by "steal" we mean he kind of ruins. Maybe some folks will genuinely enjoy his rather carping tone -- think Billy Corgan with a nasal condition and you're close-but our bet is that after a full few listens anyone's aural patience will be tested. There are more than a few palatable moments on these eleven songs and the combo does create many impressive melodies that are as toe-tappin' as they are memorable. Ten Teardrops with its down stroking guitar figure speaks to a garage rock experience but in the end Jaill is trapped by that one voice. Two and a half stars

-- Jeff Monk

Liam Titcomb

Cicada

(Nettwerk Records)

Composed between London, England and Nashville, U.S.A., Toronto-based singer songwriter Liam Titcomb's new album Cicada has all the necessary charm to get its creator affirmative reviews practically anywhere in the world it is heard. The title track is a metaphorical take on the "cycle of love" that can sometime appear and flourish and then just a quickly disappear not unlike the life phases of titular insect. An expressive mandolin figure lifts the chorus of Richer Than We Know while Jaded delivers a convincing warning borne by Titcomb's mellifluous and tender voice. He also played nearly every instrument on here, which puts him in a pretty special league, especially since the album sounds so good. You could put this guy on a bill with Nick Lowe and James Taylor and everyone would be happy, including the girls down front. Titcomb began his musical career at a pretty young age but Cicada could be considered a fresh start, and one that could push his music further afield than ever before. Three and a half stars

-- Monk

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Shovels and Rope

Country

Shovels and Rope

O' Be Joyful

(Dualtone/Dine Alone)

Shovels and Rope took their name from an album the pair, Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst, recorded containing several murder ballads involving hangin' and buryin'. They still have a fondness for death and homicide on O' Be Joyful (Shank Hill St.), while denying temptation (Keeper) and taunting stalker fans (Tickin' Bomb) as they seek out and create beauty in the darkness.

Recorded at home, in the backyard, the van and numerous hotel rooms, the duo ooze genuine passion in their stripped down and fuzzed up sound "making something out of nothing with a scratch and a hope. Two old guitars like a shovel and a rope" (from Birmingham) alongside some seriously haunting fiddle, harmonicas, banjos, horns and organs all lustily adorned with dirty and aggressive junkyard drums. Trent and Hearst are raw, gritty, intense, beautiful, loose, sexy and undeniably primal in their White Striped approach to traditional country music. Four and a half stars

-- Bruce Leperre

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Mad Child

Electronica

Madchild

Dope Sick

(Battle Ax/Suburban Noize Records)

Hip hop stars, housewives and the homeless, the power of addiction has no boundaries. When you are right near the top, like Canadian MC Madchild was with his crew, Swollen Members, it can be a slippery slope down when the partying changes from popping bottles to popping pills.

After a chaotic four years fueled by Oxycontin that saw the Vancouver MC blow through everything he had built up as a member one of Canada's most successful hip hop outfits, Madchild has turned a corner and used the experience to craft a heavy handed album that touches on what he has been through and where he is heading. Calling himself a "bipolar narcissist with an addictive personality", Madchild aka Shane Bunting lays it all out on the table on his solo debut- the good, the bad and the ugly. Dropping intense, revealing tales that play well off the sharp drums, punchy squeals and simple, low end bass, Madchild's used the studio as his own sharing circle. Like addiction memoirs writers like James Frey or Eminem's album, Recovery, Madchild is not only channelling the pain he has experienced, but also the new hope he has embraced. Sometimes you need to move back to go forward. Three and a half stars

-- Anthony Augustine

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Glenn Gould

Classical

Glenn Gould

Best of Gould's Bach

(Sony)

GLENN Gould would have been 80 this year. He died 30 years ago, but his star has never diminished and his recordings continue to elicit awe among piano fans of all stripes.

This latest packaging of previously released J.S. Bach material is a handsome hardbacked issue containing two CDs and one DVD. Excerpted movements are drawn from T he Well-Tempered Clavier (both books), the Goldberg Variations (1955 and 1981 versions) plus The Art of Fugue and a few more items. Complete pieces include the Italian Concerto, Partita No. 1 and English Suite No. 2. All are essential listening, the organ playing especially, as Gould was no less adept there.

Here also is a piece Gould hated, the Chromatic Fantasia in D minor. Formidable virtuosity notwithstanding, only Gould could make it work with such engaging glibness.

The DVD is Bruno Monsaingeon’s 1981 film of Gould’s Goldberg Variations. If you want that film especially, opt for Sony’s three-DVD set Glenn Gould Plays Bach that also contains Monsaingeon’s other two Gould films, The Question of Instrument and An Art of the Fugue. Four and a half stars

— James Manishen