Beyoncé’s “4” : A Track-by-Track Breakdown
Beyoncé's new album 4 is a change of pace for the R&B queen. While her first three solo albums were full of blockbuster jams, 4 is a more relaxed, personal set that emphasizes ballads over bangers and showcases the singer's nuances; it's very much the sort of album a pop star makes when she doesn't feel like she has anything to prove. (She seems, in other words, to have set aside her alter ego Sasha Fierce for the moment.) 4 won't be in stores until June 24th, but since it leaked this week, here's a track-by-track preview of the album's 12 songs.
1. "1+1" - The album opens with its most tender ballad, a slow-burning number that calls back to both Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" and Prince's "Purple Rain" without sounding like a retread of either tune. The song is already available as a single, but it sounds best in the context of the album, where its slow, steady build to a cathartic guitar break is the perfect introduction to a set of mostly low-key tracks about love and heartbreak.
2. "I Care" - "I know you don't care too much, but I still care," Beyoncé sings over cooing background vocals and dense percussion, delivering the words with a devastating blend of sadness and resentment. It may not be an obvious single, but it's one of the finest tracks on the record.
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The Hangover Part II: The Wolfpack Is Back, and This Time They’ve Brought a Monkey
I still have a hangover from The Hangover Part II. Initially it went down a lot like 2009's The Hangover, which is to say, tasteless and comically potent. Three men again retrace their missteps of their blacked out previous night, looking for a missing member of a wedding party as the ceremony approaches. Set in Thailand, the sequel is darker and tawdrier than the original and not quite as uproarious. Aiming for replication, it can't help being mannered. Every dirty word arrives with a sense of calculated bravado; every gander at flapping male genitalia might as well be accompanied by trumpets.
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Game Review: Mortal Kombat
The Mortal Kombat franchise has withstood the test of time. One of the few fighting franchises that decided to stick through the lull in the genre during the early 21st century, the Mortal Kombat series has gone through a reboot for the next generations of systems with moderate results.
The thing about this installment is that it seems to be a game for the fans. All the characters for Mortal Kombat I, II and III are in the game, with a few extra surprises to be thrown in. Fan favorites such as Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, Jax and Kung Lao return.
The character selection is massive, with more downloadable characters soon on the horizon. With all but two of the characters unlocked from the start, there is not one overbalanced character that will be spammed by everyone online....
Linkin Park At Staples Centre, Los Angeles – A Review in Tweets
Two days ago, Linkin Park rocked their hometown Los Angeles - one of many dates of their North American Tour 2011. There have been a lot of good reviews, but what about all those people that went there and didn't write lengthy reviews on their blogs? One medium that captures single moments in the life of us "regular" people (and the "un-regular", too, sometimes) is Twitter. So here is the first (at least the first I know of) concert review in Tweets! Follow all those people, because they must be cool - they were at a Linkin Park show!
http://twitter.com/#!/bigblueoctopus/status/41023137378344960
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Hollywood’s recent penchant for interspecies teen romance is one of modern cinema’s most worrying trends. Twilight paired human with vampire, then human with werewolf (and if you haven’t read all the books, the next one is where it gets properly batshit). Now, I Am Number Four (which is blatantly pitched at the aforementioned films’ audience) unites human with alien. It’s an area of filmmaking that’s long been catered for – normally within seedy, unspoken of circles. Rarely – as is the case with Four - by Disney....
I've decided to do album reviews here on a regular basis. You can comment this post if you want my opinion on a certain album, or tweet me @adiek84. I've already asked on Twitter and Facebook for some suggestions and the next reviews will be for the latest albums of Kings of Leon, My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park, Bruno Mars, Cee-Lo Green, Pink Floyd, Sting, Alex Band (or Alex Max Band in Germany) and Kanye West. Most of them I haven't even listened to yet, so be patient, please. I'm gonna start with Rihanna's latest album "Loud":...
When the Swedish pop ingenue Lykke Li first arrived in 2007 at all of 21, she was an adorable little thing, singing and shimmying with gumption. Her debut album, 2008's Youth Novels, was as resolute and irrepressible as the best of her compatriots -- Robyn, Nina Persson, Jens Lekman, even ABBA. And she enchanted a few notables along the way, including the rapper Drake, who sampled her "Little Bit" for an arresting mixtape deep cut. But there was a chill in the music -- sax skronks, woozy keyboards, Kewpie-ish voice lurching to the brink of sadness -- that her co-conspirator Bjorn Yttling helped install to keep things from ever getting too cute....