MUSIC

Painted Ruins

Painted Ruins is the best Grizzly Bear album to date because the US band has turned away from previous tendencies to oversell folk-rock "ambience" or to crowd songs to alienating effect. The album begins like Tracks and Traces and ends like B-sides from Amnesiac. As a whole, Painted Ruins is more concentrated than its predecessors, but at times it is also noisier, messier and more populated with hooks than any previous release by the band. Painted Ruins makes a strong impression right away with Wasted Acres, which plays in form and function like Robert Wyatt's version of Stay Tuned from Comicopera. While the song is admittedly front-loaded, the image it paints of riding a Honda and asking "were you riding with me/were you even listening", paired with "trust in your machine", invites some kind of emotional recall that intensifies as the lyrical and musical phrases repeat.

Soul wide open

There's a lot of soul in US singer-songwriter Michael McDonald's latest album, Wide Open, and this time most is his own. After three records of Motown covers and modern standards, as well as a Christmas album, McDonald has crafted a superior collection of his own songwriting collaborations, his first such effort since the fine Blue Obsession from 2000. It's McDonald's voice and its soulful, instantly recognizable qualities that he has built his career on－including his stints with Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers and many years of solo work. There's plenty more of his sweet tones on the dozen songs on Wide Open, in diverse settings. Lyrically, there's romance all around. Though these relationships require work, there are plenty of tears. Still, McDonald's vocals have that therapeutic trait which provides ample hopes and dreams.