Loneliest Midnights
For connoisseurs of melodic dreamy/witty/wistful tunes by female singer-songwriters/pop stars (sometimes by turns, sometimes at once) with impeccable, if not infallible, instincts for album-length Quality Control, Oct. 20 was a veritable holiday. Friday delivered terrific new records by Taylor Swift and Carly Rae Jepsen, two of the very best in the game. Doing most of the things she's done best, or even borderline-perfected, over nine (!) prior albums but here generously packed into a single, coherent LP (esp. the extended "3 AM" edition), TS has made something like a Greatest Hits You've Never Heard Before, nearly every track rating in the upper percentiles of her now-sprawling song catalogue and some of them ("Anti-Hero," "Vigilante Shit," "Labyrinth," "Lavender Haze") registering as instant classics. To my tastes, it's her best album since her decisive pop shift; and while I might always harbour a softer spot for "Our Song," "Tim McGraw," and "Teardrops on My Guitar," Midnights might well be the strongest front-to-back record of her career to date.
Not so CRJ's The Loneliest Time, a slightly spottier collection than her preceding albums (including the excellent and essential ostensible B-side releases). Yet what the album –– notwithstanding a few skippable tracks that might yet grow on me –– very impressively demonstrates is the surprising width and breadth of CRJ's 80's-inspired pop palette. The best songs here ("Far Away," "Beach House," "Surrender My Heart," "Bends") are not Emotion or Dedicated redux, but rather yield new colours (still mainly a mix of neons and pastels despite what the autumnal album cover suggests), new sounds, new flavours, moods, and ideas.
