Synth-pop chanteuse favors more eclectic synth sounds on her long-simmering second LP

A lot happened very quickly for synth-pop chanteuse Little Boots: Her 2009 debut Hands generated hit UK singles, a gold album, worldwide tours and topped the BBC Sound of 2009 poll. What followed in the ensuing four-year gap between albums wasn’t quite silence: Victoria Hesketh filled it by DJing, making mixtapes and working with more club-oriented cohorts, such as Hercules and Love Affair’s Andy Butler and Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford. But like her compatriot in ’80s-derived dance-pop La Roux, Boots has distanced herself from her initial hype simply by dragging her heels.

Nocturnes, the long-simmering sophomore effort, isn’t a total break from her buzzy beginnings. For “Broken Record,” Hesketh writes with veteran songsmith Rick Nowels, spinning the same obsessive love angle as her attention-grabbing first single, “Stuck on Repeat.” But here and elsewhere, she downplays the ’80s vibe in favor of more eclectic synth sounds largely overseen by former Mo’ Wax/DFA honcho Tim Goldsworthy. Album opener “Motorway” steers in the urbane direction of indie-dance pioneers Saint Etienne, gradually building up a mood that’s more wistful than amorous. “Confusion” pairs her with ex-Junior Senior member and “Born This Way” co-creator Jeppe Laursen, who helps Boots write a troubled, simple love song that shines over Goldsworthy’s finespun production.

Nocturnes hits its stride halfway, where she digs deeper both lyrically and groove-wise. “Beat Beat” repeats the octave-jumping bass bumps of ’70s disco funk, while both Butler collaborations, the house-y “Every Night I Say a Prayer” and the slow-grinding ballad “All for You,” reveal a spiritual side to Boots previously hidden behind her glossy pop veneer. She doesn’t have a big or distinctive voice, but she does pick the right henchmen, and here she even bares a soul, an aching one that compliments all that’s tidy and efficient elsewhere.

Remaining the epitome of rock-disco dialectic

What Phoenix does better than just about any current band is combine the euphoria of a raucous rock ‘n’ roll show with the surgical exactitude of studio-crafted dance music. Mixing the obstreperousness of old-fashioned guitar/bass/drums/keys grooves with hyper-precise digital calibration, this supremely, this supremely French foursome remains the epitome of rock-disco dialectic.

Their new one picks up where 2009′s mainstream breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix left off, maintaining that album’s crowd-pleasing formula while accentuating the group’s gentle waywardness. The lyrics, for example, are often nonsensical: “Victory lap, formal with feathery eyes/ Dating vendetta win small spray pesticide” goes a typical near-rhyme in the title track, an abstracted take on EDM’s slow-burning trance. It further abstracts the build-up into ambient doodles over muted four-four thumping, accentuates the breakdown via oscillating Phillip Glass-like synths, and climaxes with a psychedelic folk-rock coda. This is and the similarly spaced-out verses of “Bourgeois” are clearly what the band had on its mind when it announced that Bankrupt! would be more experimental.

Otherwise, though, it’s just as generous with its hooks and anxiously-happy propulsion as any Phoenix number: “Entertainment” storms the gates with chiming “Turning Japanese” synths that reappear throughout the album; “The Real Thing” holds back its catchiest bits until near the end, when the cut practically levitates; “S.O.S. in Bel Air” similarly affirms the band’s ever-increasing dynamic command. The peaks, of which there are many, are bombastic, while the restrained parts offer woozy respite; one is self-descriptively called “Chloroform.” Mostly, though, there’s pleasure on top of pleasure, sweat mixed with digital mathematics, both equally generous.

It ain't no back-to-basics reunion

Eight years ago, most pop-punk bands would have swallowed their pride and bubblegum to trade places with Fall Out Boy. But ever since 2008′s Folie à Deux, an expansive, swaggering disc rightly acclaimed by critics but received by many fans with a distaste ordinarily reserved for post-Green Album Weezer, even FOB hasn’t shown much interest in being FOB: Singer/tune-writer Patrick Stump reinvented himself as an R&B crooner with 2011′s even sharper Soul Punk, which, of course, really brought out the haters; guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley went metal with the Damned Things, whose 2010 album Ironiclast completely bombed; lyricist/bassist Pete Wentz lost a guitarist and a singer before his electronic Black Cards could even release an album.

So Fall Out Boy are back with a chip on their shoulders and mixed messages in their music: They’re pissed at the folks who wouldn’t accept deviations from their original sound, yet suddenly they’re out to rescue it, as if they’re now the sole emo survivors. “How’d it get to be only me?/ Like I’m the last damn kid still kicking that still believes,” Stump sings in the final, title track featuring an Elton John as strikingly solemn as Courtney Love is very much herself in the preceding “Rat a Tat.”

As those cameos suggest, Save Rock and Roll ain’t no back-to-basics album. It starts out with an orchestral flourish on the galloping and flat-out fantastic “Phoenix,” and on the way to its piano-lead and even more symphonic finale, there’s white-knuckled relentlessness: Buzzsaw guitars blare while the zinger-packed songs — now credited to the entire band — pile on the hooks. A proven master at bridging the pop/rock gap, producer Butch Walker pumps even the most delicate filigree to stadium-sized proportions. Fall Out Boy has always been dramatic, but here they sometimes lapse into desperation, as if what they’re truly intent on saving is their fanbase.

Rock and pop typically divides along the means of production: Rock is largely made whole cloth by self-sufficient bands, whereas pop is usually crafted by hired songwriters and players. Leon Russell is a renegade in that regard. The 71-year-old Lawton, Oklahoma-born pianist launched his career as a session musician the week of his 21st birthday, then won acclaim in the rock world by writing, co-producing and playing on Joe Cocker’s successful second and third albums of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

After starting up his own label, Shelter Records, in 1969, Russell morphed into a solo act, releasing albums that were beloved by rock radio while also crossing him back over into pop, both as a singer (“Tight Rope,” “Lady Blue”) and a songwriter (“This Masquerade,” famously covered by George Benson). “Superstar,” one of his earlier compositions with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, was both a pop smash for the Carpenters in 1971, and a 1984 R&B hit for Luther Vandross. Russell’s other well-known tune, “A Song for You,” never performed particularly well on any chart, but has been interpreted by everyone from Donny Hathaway to Willie Nelson. Russell’s fame faded when the ’80s arrived, but in 2010, Elton John enlisted him for a collaborative album, The Union.

At the behest of Daptone soul superstar Charles Bradley, eMusic’s Barry Walters spoke with Russell, who put his astonishing career in characteristically humble perspective.

How did your career as a session musician in Los Angeles take off the way it did?

I played with bands starting when I was 14, and went out there [on my own] when I was 17, but I couldn’t play in nightclubs in California because I wasn’t 21; they didn’t have much sense of humor about that. My first adventure in recording was playing on demo sessions for Jackie DeShannon and Sharon Sheeley [her songwriting partner] at Metric Music, which was a division of Liberty. She met Jack Nitzsche and introduced me to him. I started out playing on all of his record dates, one the first week and two the second week and four the third week and exponentially up from there. I never did play any clubs again until later.

At a certain point, you and several other L.A. session musicians became known as “the Wrecking Crew.” Was that something you called yourself, or did that name come much later?

That came out when [session drummer] Hal Blaine and whoever his ghostwriter was wrote his book made that up. I never heard it in my life until his book. [Session bassist] Carol Kaye said the same thing. It’s actually the title of a Dean Martin movie that perhaps they played on; I didn’t. I always thought it was not particularly a good name for a rhythm section.

Were you typically told what to play, or did you come up with your parts yourself, or a combination of the two?

I suppose it was a combination. Most of the writers who hired me, they hired me because they didn’t want to write the piano part, Don Costa [the late guitarist/arranger/producer/songwriter father of singer Nikka Costa] in particular. He would write a melody line and chord changes, and he’d say, “Play blues here, play classical here” and he didn’t have to write the piano part; he actually told me that’s why he hired me. It’s complicated to actually write those parts. Even more complicated than that is to find somebody who can actually read ‘em. The guy who read that stuff, his name is Lincoln Mayorga; he can read and play anything. But myself, I’m not much of a reader.

Was it important to think fast in those situations?

I had a birth injury that caused me to be slightly paralyzed on the right side of my body. I took piano lessons for 10 years, and I didn’t seem to be getting any better. I was better off figuring out stuff that I could play, so that’s what I did primarily — figure out something that could give the illusion that I was a piano player. I’m primarily left-handed, so with my right hand I had to be careful. I was always thinking a bar ahead about what I could play and analyzing whether or not I was going to be able to play it. I’ve had to do that most of my life.

Where there times when you knew a song could be better than it was, but you just had to go ahead with what you were told to play?

A lot of times we would get our music, or chord sheets or whatever, and we’d rehearse the track 15 or 20 times before the singer even started singing the song. And just out of boredom, I would sometimes write melodies and words to those tracks as were rehearsing ‘em, and when the real song came on, I sometimes didn’t like it as well as the one I’d written in my mind. But I don’t want to give the impression that I know what I’m doing all the time.

Did you ever bring these alternate versions to the table, or did you need to keep them to yourself?

Unless I was working for a very good friend, I would never say anything about the records at all. Herb Alpert called me up one day, he was a good friend of mine, and said, “I want you to help me. I’m cutting this country singer from Phoenix and I want you to help me with the rhythm section.” I went down there and said, “I think it would be better if you’d do this with the drums and the bass.” And he didn’t use that idea, and I told him a couple more ideas, and he didn’t use those. Herb is a genius. He’s made millions of dollars making beautiful records, and I can understand: He likes to do it the way he likes to do it. I’ve learned a lot from him, but after I made two or three suggestions, I didn’t make anymore because I could see he was gonna do whatever he was wanted to do. That guy from Phoenix, his name is Waylon Jennings. [Jennings originally hails from Texas, but had moved from Phoenix to L.A. to work with Alpert. — Ed.]

How did your experiences as a session musician help create opportunities as a songwriter?

I was partners with a guy [Thomas Leslie]. With him I wrote for Gary Lewis [comedian Jerry Lewis's son, who had a teen-pop group Gary Lewis & the Playboys; Russell co-wrote their Top 10 1965 hits "Everybody Loves a Clown" and "She's Just My Style"]. That was not really my kinda music. But my partner who I formed Shelter Records with [Denny Cordell], he had some hits over in England, and came over to make a distribution deal with A&M. He hired me to play on some Joe Cocker records. I figured as long as I was doing that, I would try to write some songs for Joe. When I was in a session, I always had a very sort of quiet demeanor. I didn’t want to get in the way. So we did the session and after the session I played these songs for Denny and he was kinda floored. I wasn’t aware that I turned into a rock ‘n’ roll maniac, but that’s what he said.

How did you come to write “A Song for You”?

I was in a relationship at one time, and the need for that song came up. I wrote it so I could sing it at the time.

Did you have the sense that you’d written a standard?

When I wrote “This Masquerade” and “A Song for You” and maybe a couple more, I was trying to write standards. “This Masquerade” had been cut over 40 times before George Benson [who had the biggest hit with it] ever cut it. And “A Song for You” has been cut over 125 times. I’m not sure if it was ever a hit exactly, but a lot of people cut it, and that’s what my goal was; I was trying to write songs that a lot of people would cut.

Was there an “a-ha” moment when you realized you’d cracked the code to writing a classic song?

No, there wasn’t. “A Song for You” I wrote in 10 minutes, and the same thing for “This Masquerade.” I don’t know anything about “a-ha.” These songs, some of them seem to have a life of their own, but I don’t have the ability to spot that.

When you did get your solo career going, was it what you expected?

I didn’t have any expectations at all about that, because I didn’t think I was good enough. My first show was at Anaheim Stadium with the Who. I was the opening band and they were selling out the stadiums pretty regularly. I don’t remember much about it except that I went up on stage, sang the songs, and came off the stage. I was pretty rattled the whole time.

Did you ever think, “I don’t have the kind of voice to have a solo career”?

There you go. That’s exactly what I thought. I still don’t understand it. [Laughs.] I sounded a bit like Moms Mabley, no reflection on Moms. [Mabley was a pioneering African-American comedian. — Ed.]

You had a very successful run in the ’70s. How did you deal with it winding down in the following decades?

The venues got smaller and the crowds got smaller. Like I told you, I didn’t have any expectation from the top. I thought I was extremely lucky to get where I got, so I avoided the press and did all the stuff that was wrong and kind of walked away from it.

So what was it like joining up with Elton John and playing to big crowds again?

Elton did a great deal for me. He spent a lot of money on me, on PR. A lot of people don’t know about stuff until somebody who they admire and trust comes up and says, “This is great” He did that for me, and I’m very grateful for it. When I was doing the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour [with Joe Cocker], I knew the audience didn’t know who some of these other singers on stage were, so I had all these girls with empty cameras pretend to take photographs so the audience would get the impression they were somebody worth photographing. People listen with their eyes, the main audience, so they have to be guided in some ways. [One then-unknown singer on the tour was Rita Coolidge, the inspiration for "Delta Lady," Russell's song for Joe Cocker. — Ed.]

What kind of advice would you give to musicians who want to make records like yours?

Once again, you’re under the impression that I know what I’m doing, and that’s not really the case. I do what I do and I’ve had studios in my houses for the last 40 years ’cause I like to make records. But as far as telling you the secret to them, I’m not sure that I know that. If I did, I’d have more houses. [Laughs.]

What are you doing these days?

I was writing some lyrics to some tracks that a friend of mine from California sent me. He’s trying to make an album for me, and I was trying to write some lyrics for the songs I’d be singing. I’m having a little bit of difficulty with my bipolar disorder today and the last few days and I haven’t been able to really do anything, but some days are better than others, you know?

Capturing the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones

Charles Bradley is not the kind of guy to sing of love in fantastical terms; he’s much too real for that. Bearing a voice streaked with the ravages of inner torment, this nomadic 64-year-old soul shouter — now based in a Brooklyn very different to the one in which he grew up — instead captures the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones: He screams, shouts, pleads and moans of desire and disappointment so extreme that words alone cannot suffice. Not merely singing, he testifies of love and social injustice: This former James Brown impersonator does not hold back.

Bradley’s second album teams him with the Menahan Street Band, a dynamic crew drawn from the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, the Budos Band and other Daptone acts. Unlike his 2011 debut No Time for Dreaming, this one’s solely comprised of originals composed by Bradley, Menahan leader Charles Brenneck, and other band members who help him both recapture and transcend the southern soul grooves of Dreaming. Victim of Love is no less reverent, though: When it leaves behind the romantic themes of its first half for a suite of socially conscious tracks starting with “Confusion,” producer/guitarist Brenneck conjures up a storm of psychedelic sound effects and thunderous rock riffs that evokes Norman Whitfield’s late-’60s/early-’70s work with the Temptations. The tough, tumultuous results suit Bradley’s growls and grunts, particularly on “Hurricane,” where man’s ecological abuse begets tears from heaven that make life hell. On the concluding “Through the Storm,” clouds part for prayerful sentiments of gratitude and hope. He’s weathered the tempest, yet remains tenacious.

An emphatically classic rock album

More than any of the other popular synth acts of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Depeche Mode helped make rock more electronic. Much of that has to do with the simple fact that Depeche is the synth act most like a rock band: During the peak of their popularity, these Brits put on a show arguably far more rock-like than the American grunge bands with whom they shared alt-rock radio playlists. But the influence has been mutual: Over the course of their 33 years, the Modesters have employed more and more rock guitars, riffs, tonalities and performance styles to the point where on Delta Machine, their 13th album, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between their harshly distorted synths and their effects-driven guitars. Just when their indie brethren have embraced EDM, Depeche Mode have created an emphatically classic rock album.

As suggested by the lurching first single “Heaven,” the dance tempos and rhythms that define dozens of Depeche hits have been largely replaced by ballads and roots-y variations on their “Personal Jesus” boogie. The hooks paramount to the band’s enduring international success are also in shorter supply. Martin Gore remains a crafty and incisive songwriter, but the arrangements no longer maximize his catchiness. Instead, they showcase the moodiness of Dave Gahan’s matured vocals. One might think Gahan’s substance abuse might’ve done irrevocable damage to his vocal chords, but recovery has clearly paid off, as he’s arguably more expressive than ever on slow jams like “Welcome to My World,” “Goodbye” and, fittingly, “Slow.”

The ultimate key to Depeche’s universality, one that rarely gets explored, is the way their greatest songs comment on the human condition. Delivered as a sermon to a sinner who refuses salvation, “Alone” is the standout: It’s the kind of tear-soaked, dark disco anthem that Robyn and other Depeche students have mastered in recent years, but with the disco elements here entirely removed, waiting to be reinstated by willing remixers. “I couldn’t save your soul/ I couldn’t even take you home,” Gahan — a man well acquainted with despair — belts over muted beats and nocturnal noises. After all these years, few sing of strange love more knowingly than Depeche Mode.

Righteous, reverent old-school soul meets New Wave and acid-jazz

Imagine if Curtis Mayfield were still alive and making music as he did in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Now factor in the devout feeling of Paul Weller’s Mayfield-loving records of the ’80s with the Style Council. That’s the sound and spirit of Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, an unlikely but inspired combination of a Brooklyn-born, Helsinki-based singer and a Finnish band. It’s righteous, reverent old-school soul filtered through the retro/revisionist sensibilities and playing skills of New Wave and acid-jazz.

You’ve heard it before, yet not quite: Opening salvo “Light Years Ahead” is virtually a rewrite of Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” featuring blaxploitation strings suggesting the tension of a pressure cooker ready to blow, as well as an enraged wah-wah solo more James White & the Blacks than Dennis Coffey. The fuzz-crazed riff burning in and out of “Time to Get the Business Straight” pushes into Nuggets‘ garage rock territory, even if a smooth subsequent vibraphone pulls the track right back to soul. Some songs are twice as long as they’d have been back in the day, as if the band kept jamming long after the engineer faded the cut, and that’s OK: These Investigators aren’t super-tight, but they’re enthusiastic and Willis grounds their nostalgia with genuine heart, particularly on the wistful “Best Days of Our Lives.”

The kind of album that only someone with unexpected monumental popularity could make

As suggested by its title, Dido’s fourth album is almost entirely about escape — from bad relationships, the pressure of fame, back-stabbing business associates, even quotidian responsibilities. Like Madonna at her world-weariest, it’s the kind of album that only someone who experienced unexpected monumental popularity could make. Having gone from guest spots in her brother Rollo Armstrong’s dance act Faithless to recording a 1999 debut that sold more than 16 million copies after her song “Thank You” got sampled in Eminem’s smash “Stan,” the London singer on Girl sounds more knackered than ever. “I don’t want to be different/ I just want to fit in,” she sighs in “Sitting on the Roof of the World,” a renunciation of not only her sudden success but also any last remnant of coolness. Whereas Christina Aguilera got “Dirrty” and Kelly Clarkson waged war with My December, their label-mate rebels by playing it so safe here that she nearly disappears.

Girl Who Got Away offers Dido’s mellowest material at the outset: Folky opener “No Freedom” almost suggests self-parody and “Let Us Move On” blatantly evokes her star-making hip-hop turn with a typically intricate — yet, in this plainspoken soft-pop context, jarring — cameo from Kendrick Lamar. As the album progresses, though, the frosty synths heat up as the rhythms syncopate, starting with the enticing “End of Night,” and then getting even a little funky on “Love to Blame.” She and her ongoing fraternal collaborator naturally come across most engaged while reinstating their considerable, yet in the context of her solo career, largely abandoned dance music skills. Girl‘s more adventurous second half ultimately suggests Dido yearns to break free from of the obligations dutifully met by its first.

Both classic Strokes and the furthest thing from it yet

The world — the indie rock one, at least — divides into two camps; those who believe the Strokes should stick to infinitesimal variations on Is This It, and those who’d rather have them do anything other than that. Comedown Machine has the goods to satisfy — and piss off — both camps, and that’s exactly as it should be. Although initially hailed as minimalism-savvy saviors anointed to rescue a dying rock scene from the continued injustices of corporate nu-metal, the Strokes have from the start been far too cosmopolitan to be an unqualified back-to-basics band: No act fronted by Switzerland boarding-school swells could pretend they’ve never ventured beyond a suburban garage.

As suggested by the album’s pre-release tracks “All the Time” and “One Way Trigger,” the quintet’s fifth album is both classic Strokes and the furthest thing from it yet. “50/50″ offers a heavier variant on the distorted vocals and nervous guitars that drove the kids crazy on “Last Night,” while “Partners in Crime” borrows that song’s caffeinated Motown beat even if it sneaks in a crazed, nearly Van Halen-esque guitar solo at the end. There are hooks, snappy arrangements, and louche swaggering aplenty here: The Strokes haven’t stopped being the Strokes.

Yet they also mess with the formula more than they ever have. Although some have already pegged this as a Julian Casablancas solo album in spirit, the singer mostly avoids the vocal ticks for which he’s famous. The curve-throwing falsetto of “Take on Me”-evoking teaser “One Way Trigger” shows up on the New Wave funk of “Tap Out” and reappears in parts of the skittering “Welcome to Japan,” as well as on “Slow Animals,” “Happy Ending” and the queasy balladry of “Call It Fate, Call It Karma.” Aside from the click-clack of low-key Linn drums and a warbling sequencer on “Chances” (yet another falsetto showcase), the synths that defined the singer’s 2009 solo effort Phrazes for the Young are nowhere in sight; in their place are more varied guitar blasts and buzzes than many bands attempt in their careers. Unlike its disjointed 2011 predecessor Angles, Comedown Machine feels more like the product of a unified band, albeit one bent on expansion. The world has always been their oyster: Here they crack it much further open.

A supremely confident songwriting comeback that's simultaneously over and underdressed

“He’s so talented he can do anything!” That’s the gist of what’s typically said about Justin Timberlake, and for the most part it’s absolutely true. He’s an exceptionally nimble and unfettered singer/dancer, an extraordinary mimic with a drummer’s sense of timing. These gifts have helped him tremendously in comedy as well as drama, and despite the increasing maturity of his music and acting pursuits, he hasn’t let go of his ample boyish charm: This ex-Mouseketeer, ex-’N Sync-er still radiates mischievous yet all-American fun. And unlike so many stars who attain thoroughly mainstream saturation, he takes genuine risks that have actually increased his popularity: His last album, 2007′s FutureSex/LoveSounds, packs way more sonic, rhythmic and compositional quirks than most records that sell more than 10 million copies.

These are the stats that have empowered Timberlake to make a supremely — and, at times, foolishly — confident 20/20 Experience. As you can see, it’s 70 minutes but only 10 songs long. Most are straightforward from a songwriting standpoint: “Tunnel Vision,” “That Girl” and several others see-saw back and forth between two chords for extended and sometimes relatively static periods with minimal contrasts between verses and choruses. But most are also complex in arrangement and texture, adding and subtracting rhythm and tempo as they smoothly groove along. Although some like “Don’t Hold the Wall” accelerate into dance tracks, the overriding vibe is more bedroom/strip club than dancefloor, as if Timberlake envisioned a Prince album almost entirely comprised of deep cut ballads. Aside from the singles “Suit & Tie” and “Mirrors,” which both draw from the opposing worlds of blatant chart pop and PBR&B, there’s little indication that anyone tried terribly hard to write hooks. Instead, this feels like a deservedly rich guy’s willfully anti-commercial fantasy of bohemian retro-futurist soul mother lode.

As such, Frank Ocean’s Channel ORANGE looms large over 20/20. But where Ocean employed complex chords and fearlessly soul-searched, this uncomplicatedly happy guy simply riffs on sex, status and his favorite records. He’s still in cahoots with Timbaland, the super-producer who practically invented these lurching, squelchy electro slow jams decades ago with Aaliyah and Ginuwine. Symphonic string swells and big band horn blasts may punctuate the otherwise slinky likes of “Pusher Love Girl,” but Timbaland doesn’t take Timberlake too far from Southern hip-hop: 20/20 is mixed to favor jeep-bumping bass that tends to blur the tony details that have been showcased far more successfully in the entertainer’s televised performances of this material. As such, 20/20 already feels more like a stepping-stone for multi-million-dollar tours, endorsement deals and general world domination than an entirely satisfying autonomous listening experience. Suit and tie aside, it’s simultaneously over and underdressed.

Bowie doing Bowie — all of them

There are so many David Bowies. And although there’s little consensus on his absolute best, the choices include Arty Bowie, Dramatic Ballad Bowie, Rockin’ Bowie, Glam-Pop Bowie and The Bowie That Writes About Bowie. All of the above appear on The Next Day, his first collection of new material in 10 years. The timing couldn’t better: Primed by absence, public speculation on his physical and mental health and then the unexpected release of “Where Are We Now?” — his most personal and justly-acclaimed single in decades — on his 66th birthday, rabid fans and respectful admirers alike have built up a deafening buzz for his 24th album. Would it be another comparatively underwhelming disc akin to his ’90s and early ’00s output, or would it join the best of his ’70s and early ’80s trailblazers?

The answer lies somewhere in between. As confirmed by “The Stars (Are Out Tonight),” the album’s second and far more extroverted single, Bowie hasn’t entirely abandoned his post-heyday habit of leaving his vocal melodies frustratingly underdeveloped. Sometimes when the groove is tight and he pours on the vocal razzle-dazzle, that matters little: The opening title track comes on like gangbusters and — befitting the album’s self-reflexive and iconoclastic artwork — recalls Heroes‘ kick-starter “Beauty and the Beast.”

Although many of the starman’s key albums present unified genres while evoking similarly specific time periods, The Next Day flits all over the place, often suggesting Bowie’s own back pages — a little futuristic Station to Station art-funk here (“Dancing Out in Space”), a little Tin Machine quasi-metal there ["(You Will) Set the World on Fire"]. The melodically substantial “Valentine’s Day” goes further back to the glammy days of Ziggy Stardust, right down to Bowie veteran Earl Slick’s stinging Mick Ronson-esque guitar cries. Kindred cut “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die” climaxes the album with the desperation of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,” adding a coda that suggests Ziggy‘s “Five Years.” The Next Day ultimately proves itself too musically self-referential to be groundbreaking, but it does capitalize better than the singer has in decades on his own assets: This is Bowie doing Bowie.

Aching vocals, electronic backings and sleek noir sensibility

One could be forgiven for at first believing there’s little about Stubborn Heart that sets this pair apart from their London EDM contemporaries. There are aching vocals from Luca Santucci, electronic backings from Ben Fitzgerald, and a sleek noir sensibility shared with James Blake, Jessie Ware and the xx. Eschewing sunlight, the duo favors shadows no longer radical.

Their distinction is a frisson that aligns them with a highly specific offshoot of ’80s Brit-soul — the smooth-but-tortured AOR of the Blue Nile, Black and Danny Wilson. Like those acts, Santucci suggests he’s in the throes of an existential romantic crisis. He croons and he cries and he sighs with preternatural ease while Fitzgerald surrounds him in synthetic backings utterly devoid of sweat. Opening cut “Penetrate” bubbles like a percolating coffee pot. “Better Than This” gets funky with phony tubular bells. “It’s Not That Easy” covers a rare ’60s Southern Soul obscurity, and it’s a testimony to the absoluteness of Santucci and Fitzgerald’s aesthetic that it sounds no different from their own compositions. Stubborn Heart are so finicky with their soul that they head 360 degrees away from it, which of course returns smack dab on top of it as well.

More opera than rock, it's stronger in the film than on this lengthy, story-heavy album

Madonna’s stylistic conservatism continued from 1994′s Bedtime Stories to 1995′s surprisingly masterful ballad collection Something to Remember to this staid soundtrack for the 1996 musical biopic of Eva Perón in which she starred. As a piece of music, Evita — aside from its biggest hit, “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” — isn’t particularly accessible: Unlike composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s earlier Jesus Christ Superstar, this rock opera is much more opera than rock. But its depiction of the famed Argentinian First Lady as a charismatic iconoclast dovetails with Madonna’s own mythology, a parallel that works much stronger in the film than on this lengthy, story-heavy album. She’s no Patti LuPone, but Madonna belts with impressive technical precision. Unfortunately, the singing lessons that enable her to pull off the sustained vowels that music theater demands subsequently messes with her pop singer diction. From here on, Madonna often sings “properly” — sometimes with a stilted, pseudo-English accent — even when a less precise, more natural delivery might better suit her material and message.

Although her movie career is typically (and often justifiably) derided, this auteurist quality of her records, videos and concerts makes Madonna akin to the world’s greatest film directors. She’s the only constant in a career that has stretched over 30 years, yet for the first 20, her discography was nearly infallible no many how many collaborators came and went; she boasts more chart-topping club hits than even the most prolific producers. With domestic mass appeal rooted in her upbeat material while continuing to command the mainstream abroad for her soul-searching work, Madonna is venerated around the world for both her crowd-pleasing ways as well as her deeply personal, sometimes deeply serious aesthetic. She may have initially courted comparisons to Marilyn Monroe, but she’s since matured into the Woody Allen of pop — the rare trickster who became a true artist. Here then are her sleepers, her interiors, her Manhattans, and her stardust memories.

A return to her disco roots

Given that nearly all of her catalog has been squarely aimed at clubs or at least remixed for them, it was a bit wacky that Madonna’s late 2005 album was widely hyped as a return to her disco roots. Confessions on a Dance Floor avoids the folk guitars of her last few albums, but otherwise it’s not drastically different. Soul-searching themes still get set to computer beats — only this time they pound harder with less syncopation and, apparently, greater commercial intent. She may have renounced her celebrity-centric ways with American Life, but the fact that she started this album with a prominent ABBA sample (“Hung Up”‘s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”) instantly recognizable to millions of Europeans, club-pop connoisseurs, and gay men surely suggests she was nevertheless eager to catch the attention of her fan base.

Confessions embraces the Eurodisco tradition from Donna Summer to Pet Shop Boys to David Guetta via her new primary collaborator Stuart Price, combining eternally hip synthpop paradigms with hands-in-the-air trance anthem gaucheness. Although only “Hung Up” clicked on US Top 40, Confessions did so well overseas it was as if American Life never happened. Here, its success was more moderate, as it came a couple of years before Gaga brought the stadium-dance formula employed by most of it back to radio. The highlight, though, is “I Love New York,” which suggests early Liz Phair jamming with LCD Soundsystem covering the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Yes, it’s that good.

All-American and of its moment

If Confessions was Euro-centric and classic, 2008′s Hard Candy is all-American and of its moment. Like its predecessor, Candy suggests that the clock was ticking on her marriage to Guy Ritchie and, indeed, the pair filed for divorce late that year. The giveaway is that Madonna’s lyrics on the happy songs — particularly the smash Justin Timberlake duet “4 Minutes” and its less successful follow-up “Give It 2 Me” — are rote and over-generalized, whereas the anxious cuts “Miles Away” and “She’s Not Me” are honed and precise. Her collaborators Timbaland, Timberlake, the Neptunes and Danja created much of the greatest hip-hop, pop, and R&B of the past 20 years, yet what should’ve been monumental is often shockingly slight. Sometimes a brilliant bridge offsets a shoddy chorus (“Beat Goes On”), but too much here seems phoned in, as if no one dared to prod these masters — Madonna included — to reach their full potential. Unconsciously, the star acknowledges the coasting: Over the album’s far-funkiest groove, “Dance 2night,” she sings, “You just gotta give more, more, more than you ever have before.” No one’s doing that here.

Her most accomplished and finessed achievement

Madonna was by now a mother of a child fathered by her fitness trainer/lover Carlos Leon, practicing yoga regularly, studying both Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah, and a far more accomplished singer. All of these emotional, physical and spiritual changes shaped 1998′s Ray of Light. It’s where she discovers tender elements of both her voice and personality: Where she’d generously multi-track her voice while favoring wit and strength over vulnerability, here she contributes a careful and more caring delivery that’s matched by co-producer/co-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist William Orbit’s largely synthetic and finely tweaked studio backing. With songwriting and production help from her favored ballad co-creator Patrick Leonard, pop craftsman Rick Nowels, and keyboardist Marius DeVries, Orbit and Madonna craft an inward-searching singer-songwriter album disguised as an otherworldly electronica departure.

Synths abound, but there are plenty of strings and electric guitars as well: The steady-driving smash title track ranks as one of dance music’s smoothest rock appropriations. Madonna had repeatedly proved herself a consummate singles act, but here her ability as an album artist peaks. There’s not a whiff of filler: From the fame ruminations of album opener “Drowned World (Substitute For Love)” to her mourning failed relationships in “Frozen” and “The Power of Goodbye” to the closing mythological parable “Mer Girl,” every cut feels lyrically and musically committed and coherent within a diverse but sustained and well-sequenced whole. Before the year’s end, Madonna and Leon would separate, but Ray of Light would live on as her most accomplished and finessed album.

Diving deeper into electronics and self-exploration

At the early height of her popularity, Madonna polarized listeners like few pop phenomena. But 1998′s Ray of Light gave her broad respect, and its synth-driven introspection proved more popular internationally than any of her studio albums since 1986′s True Blue. That approval empowered the singer to dive even deeper into electronics and self-exploration on 2000′s Music. Through Maverick Records, she had received a demo by Mirwais, former guitarist of French New Wave band Taxi Girl, who became her largely unknown primary collaborator here. His Daft Punk-y quirks blend seamlessly with her early-’80s disco-funk for Music‘s title track, one of her most joyous singles ever. Elsewhere she embraces acoustic guitars, both straightforward (“I Deserve It”) and glitchy (the nearly country-ish hit “Don’t Tell Me,” written by her singer-songwriter brother-in-law Joe Henry). The risks she takes on wayward album cuts like “Paradise (Not For Me)” are balanced by concise, well-written ballads like “What It Feels Like For a Girl,” one of her gentlest, yet most-barbed feminist statements. These different directions didn’t collectively match Ray of Light‘s unity, but they add a worthy plateau to that album’s peak. Nothing suggested that another backlash loomed right around the corner.

Full of criticisms that couldn't have been more timely and ill-timed

Launched by the second most expensive video ever, Madonna’s appropriately tense 2002 Bond theme “Die Another Day” scored her another Top 10 victory. So it must’ve come as a shock to all involved that none of the subsequent singles on 2003′s American Life got higher than No. 37 in the US. The album’s criticisms of the title’s subject matter couldn’t have been more timely and ill-timed: The US invasion of Iraq had begun, and the Dixie Chicks suffered an instant, massive boycott for an anti-Bush remark just as Madonna planned to unleash a crazy war/fashion video for “American Life.” Although she substituted a tamer replacement right before the video’s release, this album’s artwork depicting her as a glam Che Guevara combined with the single’s clunky rap interlude about her soy latte, Pilates, her many employees, and her dissatisfaction with those privileges rubbed most US media the wrong way during a key post-9/11 moment when the slightest criticism of Uncle Sam was considered anti-patriotic. Unlike its eclectic predecessor Music, American Life is mostly one thing — not particularly fun or catchy electronic folk. This second Mirwais/Madonna pairing isn’t a total dud; no doubt inspired by her new husband Guy Ritchie, the strummy yet thumpy “Love Profusion” clicked abroad, but wasn’t released as a single here after its predecessors flopped spectacularly. Moreover, the album’s Re-Invention World Tour became the highest grossing concert attraction of 2004. Suddenly a split widened between what the US mainstream would accept from Madonna and what her longtime international fans expected.

Expanding on her dance-pop with Latin rhythms, balladry and rock aggression

Inspired by her passionate marriage to Sean Penn, Madonna’s summer 1986 release True Blue advanced her control over her music and image. She co-produced and co-wrote every track, as she was considerably more famous and successful than her collaborators here; ex-bandmate Stephen Bray, and Patrick Leonard, former keyboardist for failed Toto clone band Trillion. Her sound was still dance-pop — brittle drums clatter loudly, a mid-’80s quality that time-stamps True stronger than most of Madonna’s output. But the R&B shades of her first two albums fade while retro girl-group giddiness, Latin rhythms, dramatic balladry and tougher rock aggression came to the fore on results far more varied than her previous LPs. Having toured behind Like a Virgin, Madonna’s delivery improves considerably, and the melodies are more substantial: Even if the instrumental performances sometimes elsewhere tip the other way into lightweight kitsch, there’s no denying that “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Open Your Heart,” “Live to Tell” and “La Isla Bonita” are varied but durable classics that rightly boosted Madonna’s profile considerably; without them, more typical dance numbers “White Heat” and “Where’s the Party” would’ve served well as singles.

Madonna now commanded attention like no other pop phenomenon since the Beatles: Michael Jackson may have sold more and Prince wasn’t far behind, but serious scholars and feminists now analyzed Madonna’s songs and videos with unprecedented zeal. What did it mean for her to go against her father’s wishes and keep her unborn child in “Papa Don’t Preach”? What was she saying by putting herself in a stylized peep-show booth for “Open Your Heart”? Were these complicated feminist statements, or the very opposite? The debate was so huge that all but the youngest and most casual fans had to take sides that informed the way the world hears these records even today.

Like a Madonna EP fleshed out with unrelated dance dreck

Ostensibly a soundtrack for the summer 1987 flop caper comedy in which she starred, Who’s That Girl is more like a Madonna EP fleshed out with unrelated dance dreck. (Scritti Politti’s delirious “Best Thing Ever” provides the sole non-Madge highlight.) None of her four contributions are remembered among her upper echelon of songs, although this isn’t entirely just: The Latin-inflected title track topped the pop chart, while the self-referential “Causing a Commotion” reached No. 2 and was a deserved club anthem in remixed form. Together with the murky, moody ballad “The Look of Love” they suggest the turmoil of her now-abusive marriage, and so there’s a weight here that’s often overlooked amid the filler. The melancholy bridge of “Who’s That Girl” in which this ordinarily steely superstar concludes, “No one can help me now” may be the first unguarded moment in Madonna’s discography. More would be revealed in Like a Prayer.

Unable to tone herself down, Madonna suffers growing pains

Following Sex, the backlash against Madonna’s transgressive image climaxed. At first, she struggled to tone herself down, but couldn’t quite do it: A tender soundtrack ballad, “I’ll Remember,” was promoted with a profanity-intensive David Letterman appearance in which she gave her panties to the host and suggested he smell them. Bedtime Stories, her October 1994 album of comparatively subtle R&B, showed similar growing pains. “Secret,” the first single, scored big, but listen closely and you can hear that it’s more than a little blue, as if Madonna deeply resented the widely shared belief that she should hold herself back in order to save her career, but didn’t know what else to do.

Co-written and produced by TLC overseer Dallas Austin, Mary J. Blige producer Dave “Jam” Hall, Soul II Soul’s Nellee Hooper, and R&B crooner Babyface, most of these stately ballads and muted mid-tempo grooves share that sense of hurt — not just over sour relationships, but also her career itself. Her largest chart-topper since “Vogue,” the Babyface collaboration “Take A Bow” ruminates on both simultaneously. Pain and a renewed fear of failure made her an alternately sharper and blunter lyricist: “I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me” from “Human Nature” couldn’t have attacked her critics more plainly, even if her cartoony delivery undercuts her assault. But there’s nothing compromised about the Björk-penned title cut, an undulating ambient techno showstopper that points the way to her artistic peak.

Current yet classic

Released in the summer of 1983, Madonna’s debut album was a snapshot of the dance music that had gone back underground in the early ’80s through most of America, but was still omnipresent on the streets and radios of New York City. It’s disco that is far leaner than its ’70s incarnation, but not yet thoroughly electronic, and still rooted in R&B forms. Current yet classic, Madonna has aged the best of the singer’s early albums because it’s her most focused and insistent. Six of its eight tracks rightly became pop hits, club anthems, or both.

Reggie Lucas — a guitarist for Miles Davis who helped create sleek smashes for sophisticated soul divas Stephanie Mills and Phyllis Hyman — produced much of the album and co-writes key cuts “Borderline” and “Physical Attraction.” DJ Mark Kamins also contributed production while Madonna’s DJ boyfriend John “Jellybean” Benitez remixed tracks; Fred Zarr, whose synth sound defined countless NY ’80s jams, contributes keys; Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens of disco group Pure Energy pens the transcendent “Holiday,” and the rising lucky star writes the rest herself. No ballads interrupt the steady flow of Linn drum beats, synth basslines, staccato guitar licks, and churchy background vocals, and Madonna’s growling, yearning presence is already fully formed. She’s not polished, though, and that’s exactly as it should be; she’s alternately tough and yielding in a way that totally suits this material. You can feel her hunger in every utterly engaged moment.

Provocative and polished, with indelible hits that still define her

Madonna’s career was already on an upward trajectory. But with the late-1984 release of her second album, a record completed then delayed by the slow-building success of her first, things went bananas. Produced by Nile Rodgers on the heels of helming David Bowie’s mega-smash Let’s Dance, Like a Virgin offers a poppier variant on the Bowie/Rodgers rock-funk alliance, and is far more provocative and polished than her 1983 debut. Its indelible hits, the title track and “Material Girl,” still largely define the singer as a shrewd cultural commentator that many still willfully distort into a gold-digger, completely ignoring that her coy/theatrical/robotic/girlie delivery suggests irony and role-playing. Rodgers contributes his trademark guitar scratching throughout and fellow former Chic members Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson join in on bass and drums for the most R&B-leaning cuts. The rest tilts to New Wave lite with mixed results: The quality drop-off from inspired baubles like “Dress You Up” to filler on the level of “Stay” will rarely be this steep again. Paradoxically, her film career got off to a strong start right after this album with Desperately Seeking Susan before turning decidedly motley.

Recorded digitally, with bottom end doubled on bass guitar and synths, Like a Virgin‘s blockbuster status re-emphasized after Michael Jackson’s Thriller that ’80s dance music would be even bigger than ’70s disco, especially when delivered by a videogenic superstar capable of crossing gender and color lines. Madonna’s vocals may be overdubbed here far more than on her debut, but she’s also more mischievous, and the resulting ambiguity allowed scholars, feminists, moral custodians, and countless Madonna wannabes both professional and fan-sized to pick up from the singer radically different signals. Like Bowie, Madonna discovered that pop music became more fun the more it could be mutable. Here she starts twisting.