Blur, "The Magic Whip"

Blur

“THE MAGIC WHIP”

Parlophone

Blur had no intention of making a new album when the 1990s Brit-pop stalwarts headed out on a reunion tour of Asia in 2013. But when the cancellation of the Tokyo Rocks festival left them with five free days in Hong Kong, the Damon Albarn-fronted band headed to the studio — including chief collaborator Graham Coxon, who played on only one song on the band’s last full-length offering, 2003’s “Think Tank.”

Starting with those sessions, “The Magic Whip” — the title refers to soft-serve ice cream, not an S&M implement — was recorded piecemeal. Coxon edited tapes while Albarn toured for his sleepy 2014 solo album “Everyday Robots,” and the singer subsequently returned to Hong Kong to get himself back in the mood to write lyrics for architecturally influenced songs such as “New World Towers.” Considering all that, it’s a wonder how cohesive and vibrant “The Magic Whip” sounds, from the jaunty cacophony of whistling opener “Lonesome Street” to such dreamy and disconsolate tracks as “I Thought I Was a Spaceman.” The expansive musical interests Albarn has displayed on such projects as cartoon band Gorillaz serves him well here, while spirited interplay with his old bandmates gives “The Magic Whip” a swift kick to combat his tendency toward the overly earnest.

— Dan DeLuca,

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Zac Brown Band

“Jekyll + Hyde”

Southern Ground Artists/John Varvatos/Big Machine Records/Republic Records

Ever since 2008, when the Zac Brown Band made its first overtures toward the country mainstream, it has stealthily tried to remake the genre from within. Extremely facile, with tendencies somewhere between bar band and jam band, it was able to pass for conventional country on early hits like “Chicken Fried” and “Toes.” But live concerts revealed something else entirely: a formidable, flexible country-rock outfit in search of bigger stages.

But as those stages became larger, the Zac Brown Band became less interesting.

The amiable “Jekyll + Hyde,” its fourth major-label full-length album, suggests a path forward. Rather than follow the hip-hop hybrids of the day, the album offers a huge amalgam of soft rock, country-rock, hard rock, heavyish metal, big band music, bluegrass and, yes, a touch of electronic music.

“Jekyll + Hyde” is the sort of album that giddily puts a song featuring Sara Bareilles back to back with one featuring Chris Cornell, the kind of omnivorousness that went in and out of fashion in hip-hop more than a decade ago, but still feels novel in country.

On songs like “Loving You Easy” and “Young and Wild,” Brown’s most familiar mode might comfortably be called nu-Chesney, a revisiting of the beach-friendly sounds that qualified as radical a decade ago. On the island tour of “Castaway,” Brown just shrugs and goes the full nu-Buffett.

Those modes serve him well. His unimaginative voice can gum up a song, and he rarely moves past lyrical platitudes. As in the past, he’s best when excavating deep feelings. “Bittersweet” is about learning a loved one is about to die, and facing the impending tragedy with an open heart, and surviving it.

Even when Brown is taking it easy, though, the band is working hard, eager to show it’s trapped inside a flimsy box. Take the Celtic-ish blues of “Remedy” or “Tomorrow Never Comes,” a lightly gothic electronic-music-inflected bluegrass song, and one of the album’s most exciting.

But for every song that issues a challenge, there are two that play nice. And there are nods to what are perceived as mainstream country values, like “Dress Blues,” about a young soldier who dies at war, which concludes with a messy violin rendition of “Taps.” The band tries to bend it into a shape that suits its own agenda, but even so, it’s a poor fit.

— Jon Caramanica,

New York Times