Soul
**** (out of four)
"Soldier of Love"
Sade
Epic
Like a long-ago lover not quite forgotten, Sade has returned to steal our hearts with more beautiful, uncategorizable music.
It's been 10 years since her last album, a fatal hiatus for almost any other artist, but just another hibernation for a woman whose disdain for fame only deepens our fascination. Sade's voice sounds unchanged, a unique emotional instrument that conjures visions of rain-streaked windows and windblown streets. Her topics ---- love, loss, sorrow, strength ---- remain the same. But her music has still moved forward.
The aggressive title track makes a bold statement, its stabbing drums continuing the bass-heavy direction of her 2000 release, "Lover's Rock." Some of the new album's 10 songs are classic, smooth Sade. But there's also a country twanger, a reggae-tinged ode to fathers who are not husbands, even Sade's first uptempo number since 1992's "Kiss of Life."
The first 12 throbbing seconds of "Skin" are why rewind buttons were invented. Someone please get Kanye to lace this with a remix and a rhyme.
This is only the sixth album in 25 years for Helen Folasade Adu, born in her father's Nigeria and raised in her mother's England. She is still working with her original three bandmates: bassist Paul Denman, guitarist and saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, and keyboardist Andrew Hale. She is still mysterious, ageless ---- and defiant.
"I only make records when I feel I have something to say," Sade says on her Web site. "I'm not interested in releasing music just for the sake of selling something. Sade is not a brand."
That's exactly why you need to buy this album.
---- Jesse Washington
Associated Press
Techno/pop
***
"One Life Stand"
Hot Chip
Parlophone
The British technopop outfit Hot Chip's lastest album, "One Life Stand," is a softer, gentler follow up to 2008's "Made in the Dark." It's rich with emotional resonance, evoking love at every possible interval, a rarity among dance-pop records. Hot Chip's hyper-evolved tracks can be soft-shoed to in a state of contemplative agony this time around. Think Joy Division, but classier.
The title track employs a curious melange of pop ingredients. A dollop of uptempo beats, techno gurgles and a splash of steel drums garnish a macabre main dish, a "Debbie Downer"-grade love song from singer Joe Gaddard's honey-tipped tongue: "We built ourselves a shelter, you will always be my baby / I only want to be your one life stand, tell me do you stand by your whole man."
Much of the album follows suit, with some songs performing better than others. "We Have Love" could be a La Bouche and Depeche Mode collaboration, giving it a retro flavor ---- but not in a good way. Quick-paced beats envelope an incessantly drab chorus: "We have love, give it up, give it up."
However, the delightfully bitter taste of "One Life Stand" triumphs throughout much of the album. On "Hand Me Down Your Love," sweet and sour piano hooks and tremolo vocals ache for the dance floor and the bedroom.
"I Feel Better" is the anthem of the walk of shame: baleful, but emboldening, like the sonic equivalent of thinking "I'll never do that again."
Hot Chip performs April 17 at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio.
---- Ryan McLendon
Associated Press
Hip-hop
*** 1/2
"Concrete Jungle"
Nneka
Epic
Nigerian-born rapper and singer Nneka's U.S. debut, "Concrete Jungle" unfolds like a 12-track wake-up call ---- an unrelenting mishmash of horns, trumpets, and sometimes, steel drums.
"God is knocking at the door could you let him in?" the 28-year-old asks on accordion-driven "Showin' Love." She summons "Jezebels, Judases, bangers, bastards, prophets, men of God, prostitutes, popes, teachers, lawyers, all you scholars, rulers, chosen few ..." to take a hard look at what matters in life.
It's a challenge Nneka issues track after track. Even when her honeyed vocals are poured over the swinging horns of "Uncomfortable Truth," Nneka's message doesn't lose its bite. "Your system is a joke, no heart in it, it's choking us to death," she sings.
She orders listeners to reflect on their addictions and worldly temptations on the raucous, rock-inspired "Focus." And she seeks strength from a higher power on "God of Mercy."
With a sure tone and steady intensity on the reggae-influenced "Kangpe," Nneka gives a revolutionary tinge even to the old spiritual axiom "God won't give you more than you can handle."
She delivers her messages unabashedly, perhaps, most strikingly on the mellow-sounding "Africa." "Lied to us, blind us, they slaved us, misplaced us, strengthened us, hardened us, then they replaced us. Now we got to learn from pain. Now it's up to us to gain some recognition. If we stop blaming we could get a better condition," she sings.
Nneka's call for self-reflection is unrelenting, and "Mind vs. Heart" is no exception to that mission. "What is the mind without the heart? What am I without my shadow?" she asks over a haunting beat.
---- Ryan McLendon
Associated Press
