Ken Richardson

The Flaming Lips: The Terror

New release (Warner Bros.; tour dates)
Photo by George Salisbury

Telepathic surgery. Ego tripping at the gates of hell. I’ve allowed the Flaming Lips to take me deep inside myself and pull me far afield. But I can’t submit entirely to The Terror.

will.i.am: #willpower

New release (Interscope)

Has a hip-hop-related record ever opened as optimistically as this?

Good morning, welcome to the thing called life
Good morning, don’t you let it pass you by
We laugh, we cry, and then we dry our eyes
We fall, we rise, ready for another try
When life gets tough, remember, we were never born to die
When times get rough, remember, we were born to be alive

Natalie Maines: Mother

New release (Columbia; tour dates with Dixie Chicks)
Photo by Danny Clinch  © Columbia

“Lots of albums by lead singers might just as well have been made by the band, but I think this is very different from anything the Dixie Chicks could make.” So says Natalie Maines about her debut solo album. It’s “a new direction,” her press release underscores. Most common translation I’ve seen to date: It’s “a rock album.”

Daft Punk: Random Access Memories

New release (Daft Life/Columbia)
Photo by David Black

In this era of electronic dance music, you might think the pioneering French duo Daft Punk would be eager to trump the upstarts. But you’d be thinking wrong.

As Thomas Bangalter told Rolling Stone, “We wanted to do what we used to do with machines and samplers but with people.” And as Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo said, “It’s not that we can’t make crazy, futuristic-sounding stuff, but we wanted to play with the past.”