Consumer Guide for Feb.-Mar. 2007

By Robert Christgau
Special to MSN Music

Writing bimonthly, pondering design issues, ditching the annual Turkey Shoot and, most of all, irritated if not appalled by all-too-many records with reps, I've adjusted the Consumer Guide for MSN Music. So on page two you will find two albums marked Dud of the Month, with the more notable dud listed first. Politically correct coot that I am, I regret that both feature young women. Believe me, the young men will get theirs, and there are coots aplenty waiting in the wings.

Beyoncé
"B'Day"
(Sony Urban Music/Columbia)

If opulence can signify liberation in this grotesquely materialistic time, as in hip-hop it can, then Beyoncé earns her props with a bunch of songs she says were inspired all in a rush by her "Dreamgirls" character. Many suspect they were actually inspired by Jay-Z, who has the noblesse oblige to save the only expression of erotic longing on the record. I don't. But I admire her for opening the possibility, which leaves Hova with his hands full whether he's a thousand miles away or getting one-upped on "Upgrade U." Not counting "Irreplaceable," where hook subsumes meaning anyway, the key track is "Suga Mama," which ends with Beyoncé ordering her boy toy to remove the duds she just bought him -- real slow. On most of them she's wronged yet still in control because she's got so much money.

Lily Allen
"Alright, Still"
(Capitol)

In a no-frills voice that carries a tune as easily as a schoolkid carries a backpack, the 21-year-old daughter of performing arts professionals plays a girl sticking up for herself, creating an illusion of the ordinary that seems as simple and inevitable as punk without punk shock and/or rage. Just to help out, her well-attuned producers pretend that ska was a basic pop component in an era not yet lost. Only two songs ring false: the one about her ex's penis because everybody lies about that, and the one about keeping it real because all the 21-year-olds sing that tune -- and because she isn't real, really.

Clinic
"Visitations"
(Domino)

Though you'd never know it from the weary complaints of Alternian ADD victims, Clinic's albums don't all sound the same. They do sound similar -- Clinic are minimalists. But like most minimalists, they try out new effects, and especially for those put off by Ade Blackburn's lockjaw, the variations in texture and rhythm here add jam to a garage-punk revival that's more solid than the Strokes'. I still prefer 2004's disreputable "Winchester Cathedral." But this is a proper guitar fix nevertheless.

Clipse
"Hell Hath No Fury"
(Zomba/Star Trek/Re-Up Gang)

The rapping is crystalline, gritty -- that is, hard two ways. The only reason "Momma, I'm so sorry, I'm so obnoxious" isn't the theme is that they're not sorry. Playing hit rappers forced by evil bizzers to return to a life of crime, so that music is just pocket money for them, they're unflinchingly unsensationalistic. But it's the beats that turn this into noir worthy of Jim Thompson, far from the stolen fun of the "We Got It for Cheap" mixtapes. Anyone who associates the Neptunes with suave keyboard hooks won't believe they're behind all this spare alienation. So what if "Mr. Me Too" contains a portion of the composition "Burrup, " written by Cegricia Hamilton and Gary Henderson? Meaning that buzzing dub thing? Or is it ringing? OK, vibrating. Et cetera.

Ornette Coleman
"Sound Grammar"
(Sound Grammar)

Looking back, we understand that Coleman was always an inspired melodist. We may even conclude that it was his melodies that made his free, harmolodic and avant-funk concepts irresistible. But at 76, he turns the page with this two-bass, two-Coleman quartet. Tony Falanga bows most ballad themes and is hornlike or maybe just cellolike throughout. Ornette's alto (though not his trumpet or violin) could also be described as cellolike, and his new compositions suit the mellow mood even when the arrangement gives Denardo Coleman room to bash and rumble. Exemplary is one of just two remakes: 1959's "Turnaround," which was a lowdown gutbucket blues on "Tomorrow Is the Question" but is a whimsical chamber-music blues here. Both times Ornette quotes Cole Porter's "Do I Love You"; here he also quotes Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer." Conceptually as major as "Change of the Century" (1959) or "Of Human Feelings" (1979) and almost as consummately executed.

Lupe Fiasco
"Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor"
(Atlantic)

Why do so many rappers of the everyday come from Chicago? Fiasco follows Common, Capital D, Rhymefest and of course his homey Kanye West, who is definitely part of the explanation. Though I wish the beats were less corny-orchestral, Fiasco marks his own turf in a three-song sequence that would have led the second side back in the day. The not-quite-nightmarish "Daydreamin'," the thug-life-after-death fable "The Cool" and the free-accelerating "Hurt Me Soul," which begins with Too Short calling women bitches and ends in the geopolitical sinkhole we all inhabit, prove it isn't just realists who describe real life. And the two takes on his signature "Kick Push" hope that everyday life isn't always a sinkhole.

More: Reviews | Honorable Mention | Dud of the Month

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