New Music

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NICKI MINAJ

PINK FRIDAY: ROMAN RELOADED (UNIVERSAL)

EMINEM has Slim Shady. Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce. Nicki Minaj has Roman Zolanski, her apparently gay male alter ego. And despite its confusing title, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, is not just a deluxe version of her first album, Pink Friday, it's actually a completely new full-length recording.

But then again, confusing seems to be what Nicki Minaj does best.

Her polarizing, schizophrenic delivery -- that generally falls somewhere between a cackling Wicked Witch of the West and a British hyena gnawing on a bone -- is in overdrive here. And much like her multiple personas, Roman Reloaded has several very distinct feels.

The first half targets the urban crowd, with militant rap tracks like I Am Your Leader with Cam'ron and Rick Ross. From there, she briefly flirts with slow jam R&B, like the regal Champion with Nas, Drake, and Young Jeezy, before switching to circus synth, pink wig-wearing techno-pop like the tweaky, dance floor-ready one-two punch of Pound the Alarm and Whip It.

In the end, it's a real mixed bag. For every hit, there's a definite miss. Grating opener Roman Holiday sees Minaj doing her best Sharon Osbourne impression, while first single, Starships, and Stupid Hoe are just plain abhorrent. Sex in the Lounge will have you waiting for an Andy Samberg appearance, as it teeters on the verge of SNL parody.

Perhaps next time she can rein in her multiple personalities for a more coherent experience. Two and a half stars

-- Steve Adams

OUR LADY PEACE

Curve (Coalition/Warner)

MORE like curveball. On their new album, Curve, the Toronto rock veterans challenge themselves and their fans by experimenting with arrangements and instrumentation.

There are still at least two obvious hits here, the hook-filled Heavyweight and hand-clap happy As Fast as You Can, but the majority of Curve finds the band following its own muse, radio singles be damned. There are spacey keyboards and double-tracked vocals on Allowance; a guitar solo that marks the climax of the ballad Find Our Way (sure to mess up your slow dance); Richard Wright-evoking keys help fuel the moody Rabbits; and Mettle includes spoken word samples that balance frontman Raine Maida's restrained sing-speak vocals.

Not everything works -- the annoying repetition of Fire in the Henhouse, for example -- and sometimes atmosphere takes over for melody, but it's nice to see Our Lady Peace not simply following the path of least resistance. Three stars

-- Rob Williams

HIGH ON FIRE

De Vermis Mysteriis (eOne)

IN stories by Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft, De Vermis Mysteriis -- Mysteries of the Worm -- is a fictional grimoire filled with arcane and hellish secrets. For High on Fire, the book of magic becomes a jumping off point for a pseudo-concept album about Jesus's time-travelling twin brother who pops in and out of his ancestors bodies like Scott Bakula did on Quantum Leap.

You don't need to know the story since riffs and solos rule High on Fire's kingdom, balanced by a rhythm section able to keep up with every twist and turn while adding its own sense of menace to the program.

After the relatively bright production on Snakes for the Divine, the group gets back to its raw live sound thanks to Converge's Kurt Ballou (the man behind the boards for KEN Mode's Juno winning album, Venerable) who leaves all the power trio's rough edges in while it cranks out apocalyptic speed blasts like Spiritual Rites and Serums of Liao and proggy stoner sludge King of Days and Madness of an Architect. There are numerous tempo shifts along the way with the band locking into a groove before veering off in different directions while guitarist-vocalist Matt Pike howls and growls like he is possessed by one of Lovecraft's Old Ones. Four stars

-- RW

JOEL PLASKETT EMERGENCY

Scrappy Happiness (MapleMusic/Universal)

THERE'S a chance you've already heard all the songs on Scrappy Happiness, or even own them, since the album is a result of a challenge the Halifax artist and his band undertook earlier this year to record, mix, master and release one song a week for 10 weeks.

The get-in-there-and-crank-it-out approach seems to have worked well for Plaskett, a prolific songwriter whose last album was the triple-disc set, Three. Scrappy Happiness shows off all of his strengths, from acoustic folk pop (Harbour Boys) to melodic rock (You're Mine, an ode to rock 'n' roll and the greatness of Hüsker Dü) to gentle balladry (I'm Yours). There's an overall sense of nostalgia and a nod to artists like the Kinks, Big Star and Bruce Springsteen, but reflected through Plaskett's own songwriting prism.

Scrappy Happiness started as a challenge and resulted in an album better than releases that take far more time. His fans should be pretty pleased. Three and a half stars

-- RW

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SAID THE WHALE

Little Mountain (Hidden Pony)

LISTENING to the new album from Vancouver's Said The Whale had this reviewer searching for the core difference between the adjectives "portentous" and "pretentious." While we learned that one means "self-important or pompous" and the other "a deceptive outer appearance of great worth" they can both be used accurately to describe this wild and woolly album and band.

On its face Little Mountain is listenable enough, but proves difficult to get through even more than one full listen. The problem lays not so much with the musicianship, which is sassy and tasty by turns, but the overall delivery which, when combined with the light-as-a-feather boyish vocals of Ben Worcester and Tyler Bancroft, comes off just a little north of unchallenging. Not that every vocalist needs to have the booming gravitas of a Bruce Springsteen or Tom Waits, it's just that these dudes sound like they need to find a boy band to front.

Climb this little musical mountain with care. Three stars

-- Jeff Monk

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LOST IN THE TREES

A Church That Fits Our Needs (Anti/Epitaph)

YOU don't need to know that the latest album from North Carolina collective Lost in the Trees was inspired by the suicide of songwriter Ari Picker's mother, an artist whose picture graces the CD's cover. However, it does add depth to one's appreciation of his questioning lyrics, sung in a frail, high voice.

It's not the mournful outing you might expect, although there's plenty of pathos, especially in the classically trained Picker's use of lush strings and a dramatic wordless choir on tracks that sound almost like a folky Radiohead. Picker seems to be using the songs to work through sadness, rather than wallow in it; some of the more orchestrated tracks are downright uplifting, if melancholy. The gloriously beautiful Golden Eyelids is similar to Timber Timbre's mixture of '60s soul/R&B with haunting, eerie effects, while the delicate, affecting The Villain (I'll Stick Around) finds Picker musing, "She's neither here nor there... mess me up." Four stars

-- Jill Wilson

JAZZ

SUSIE ARIOLI FEATURING JORDAN OFFICER

All The Way (Spectra Musique)

MONTREAL singer Susie Arioli and guitarist Jordan Officer remain a formidable musical pair on 13 laid-back tunes mainly from the Great American Songbook.

Arioli's voice and delivery are made for standards such as My Funny Valentine, All The Way, Time After Time and the Gershwins' Looking For a Boy, which has some very bluesy guitar by Officer, who is a constant on all tracks.

Former Winnipegger Cameron Wallis plays tenor saxophone on four tracks, baritone sax on two and arranged the horns on three tracks -- all done well.

Arioli's take on these songs is soft, nuanced and with subtle accompaniment from Officer. Four stars

-- Chris Smith

CLASSICAL

ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA, STÉPHANE DENÈVE

Roussel: The Spider's Banquet; Padmavati (Naxos)

STÉPHANE Denève's fifth and final disc of the orchestral music of Albert Roussel (1869-1937) features two ballet scores in vivid performances. The Spider's Banquet is a human-focused musical equivalent of silent insects: a military march of ants, dancing butterflies, slithering fruit worms, warring mantises, an ill-fated mayfly and a spider-protagonist. Those promising implications are nicely fulfilled in the cool, brilliantly orchestrated score that recalls Debussy, though without the same degree of individual personality in the music.

Padmavati is Roussel's nod to The Orient, inspired by his travels to the ancient city of Chittor in Western India. The music is concentrated and absorbing with Roussel's colour palette drawing plenty of Indian tang in the soundscape. The best Roussel is contained in his Symphony No. 3 (included earlier in this series), but this is still a fine place to start if you're new to this often under-regarded composer. Three and a half stars

-- James Manishen

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 7, 2012 G4