On the Stereo, 8-23-24

Sabrina Carpenter's cloying Short N Sweet, Wayne Shorter's joyous Celebration, Volume One, Illuminati Hotties have POWER, Thomas Rhett's ideal background music.

An oddly busy week here, largely due to domestic concerns (it's hard to do a lot of listening when preschool is closed). Apart from some advance listening I shall document closer to release dates, along with some research listening, these are the titles that got play on my stereo this week. As always, please subscribe if you want to keep up with the kind of record reviews I used to write for Allmusic.com (and more, of course!). 

Sabrina Carpenter—Short N' Sweet (2024)

Songs of the summer seep into the subconscious, never announcing their arrival and ignoring all hints that it may be time to leave. Sabrina Carpenter managed to compete with herself for this coveted crown this past summer, making her way toward the top of the Billboard charts somewhere after Memorial Day with "Espresso" then topping the charts around Fourth of July with "Please Please Please." With Labor Day on the horizon, she delivers Short N' Sweet, the album that intends to cement Carpenter's place as the pop star of 2024.

Short N' Sweet isn't a debut. It's roughly the sixth album Carpenter's released over the course of ten years (who knows whether the two Acts of Singular count as one or two albums), a decade that found the actress/singer growing up in public. Plenty of prominent roles arrived on screen and stage yet Carpenter seemed consigned to a fate of being a showbiz lifer, always working without widespread recognition. The slinky, slippery "Espresso" reversed that course. Evoking hazy memories of '80s—the melody recalls new wave, the rhythm new jack swing—it was retro scrubbed of nostalgia, a trick also achieved on "Please Please Please" even if its waves of analog synths pushed the yesteryear angle a little too hard. 

The production helped shape "Espresso" into something resembling a pop record, the beats giving the impression of a melody while purposefully obscuring Carpenter's murmured gibberish. "Please Please Please" flipped the script, placing Carpenter's breathiness at the forefront, creating the blueprint for the persona unveiled on Short N' Sweet: a flirt who isn't above getting dirty. If anything, Carpenter is all too eager to swear, building the hook on "Good Graces" around the catchphrase "I won't give a fuck about you" and threading profanities into the emo chillwave scattered through the album. On these quieter moments, she wields "Dumb and Poetic" as a curse and praise, a dismissal that boomerangs when she sings "Try to come off like you're soft and well-spoken/Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen" like a diva, not a beatnik. 

Short N' Sweet is at its best when it's, well, short and sweet. "Taste" and "Juno" pulsate to retrofitted new wave beats, while the bouncing folk-pop of "Coincidence" shows that Carpenter can sound comfortable in stripped-down settings. Still, the album is plagued by a problem that "Please Please Please" suggested: Carpenter's instincts are pretty damn cloying. She delivers every other phrase like a cutesy come-on—such as the slight squeak that punctuates "but the ceiling fan is so nice"—a tendency that's initially camouflaged by the gleaming production but becomes increasingly grating with each successive spin. 

Wayne Shorter—Celebration, Volume 1 (2024; 2014)

"Listen to this, Carolina! They're really going OUT!"

Carolina Shorter, the widow of Wayne Shorter, offers this recollection of the saxophonist's reaction to hearing the performance at the 2014 Stockholm Jazz Festival documented on Celebration, Volume 1, the first posthumous release from the legendary jazz musician. Not long before his death in March 2023, Shorter began combing through a stack of unreleased tapes sent to him by Blue Note, curating a series of albums that the label begins with Celebration, Vol. 1. Shorter's characterization of this performance as "out" may suggest cacophony or atonality but his quartet with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade sought to explore the outer limits of their chemistry by bending melody and rhythms. The performance begins in improvisatory space with "Zero Gravity to the 15th Dimension," one of four separate segments that punctuate the album. The presence of "Orbits," a key Shroter composition from Miles Smiles, underscores how Shorter remained an advocate of the aesthetic championed by the second classic Miles Davis Quintet: recognizable refrains are mere launching pads for exploration. Shorter's songbook is catholic, ranging from the pop standard "Smilin' Through" to "Edge of the World (End Title)," first aired on the soundtrack to the Reagan era B-flick WarGames. All the improvised  "Zero Gravity" segments do feel as if they're floating untethered through air; they're hushed but not subdued, active without being aggressive. This sensibility extends through the lengthy closers "Lotus" and "She Moves Through the Fair," which are melodic, vigorous, and surprising, driving home how Celebration, Volume 1 feels joyous in its adventure. 

Illuminati Hotties—POWER (2024)

Sarah Tudzin's studio gifts give POWER, the third proper album from her Illuminati Hotties, shape and momentum, ensuring that her upgraded power-pop doesn't get mired in either sing-song friendliness or attention-grabbing fuzz. Gravitating an indie-rock that's grounded in New Wave without succumbing to the allure of nostalgia, Tudzin is equally adept wrangling with the gnarled guitars of '90s alt-rock or the oversaturated shimmer of shoegaze. These behind-the-board skills accentuate her unerring pop instincts, a combination that makes POWER bracing upon its first play and resonant on subsequent spins. 

Thomas Rhett—About a Woman (2024)

Just over a decade into his career as a country hitmaker—an anniversary celebrated last year with the compilation 20 Number Ones—Thomas Rhett no longer harbors any grand artistic ambitions. He's content to settle into a relaxed groove, crooning slick pop and frictionless ballads, happy to not explore the outer reaches of the territory originally charted by Sam Hunt. Rhett will try on a modern fashion for size—"Don't Wanna Dance" clumsily interpolates Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)"—but he sounds more comfortable singing such breezy soulful throwbacks as "Can't Love You Anymore." It's not flashy and maybe even distinctive but it's pleasing, ideal background radio music. 

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings (2024)—Woodland

The Americana stalwarts celebrate their rebuilt studio by exploring all of its aural possibilities. My review for Pitchfork.