Teenage Fanclub
Shadows
(Merge)
You can count on every Teenage Fanclub album to deliver perfect power-pop nuggets, and Shadows is no exception. The Scottish quartet hasn’t radically altered its jangling folk-rock sound, but this batch of songs is noticeably brighter and less introspective than recent efforts. The album is anchored by shimmering lead single “Baby Lee,” which expertly mixes sighing strings and a soaring chorus. “Into the City” is powered by propulsive rhythms and irresistible swooning harmonies. “Sometimes I Don’t Need to Believe in Anything” offers confident guitar riffs, hand claps, and a catchy melody that blooms out of nowhere. The piano-led “Dark Clouds” is more sedate, a shiver-inducing chamber pop tune about coming through bleak times. The rest of the album is engagingly solid though hardly spectacular, as if the lesser songs were there to make the gems shine that much brighter. —Jeff Jackson
Eli Paperboy Reed
Come and Get It
(EMI)
Eli “Paperboy” Reed is a Boston-born and Delta-raised blue-eyed soul singer who released two independent CDs before signing with EMI last year. Come and Get It is produced by Mike Elizondo of Gwen Stefani fame, but owes more to Stax Records than the modern hip-hop scene. Reed’s sound is tried and true—pleading vocals just barely on this side of a scream, churning horns and a tight rhythm section. The title track and “Just Like Me” could be outtakes from Wilson Pickett’s Muscle Shoals sessions circa 1967, with “I Found You Out” borrowing a horn line from “In the Midnight Hour.” Not all the material shines. “Pick Your Battles” suffers by quoting every R&B song lyric cliche, and “Explosion” recycles James Brown without the give and take that made Brown so thrilling. —Jeffrey Siegel
Ghost Quartet
Ghost Quartet
(independent)
Ghost Quartet hails from the upper Valley and specializes in a horn-driven brand of vocal jazz. Singer Hilary Graves possesses a winning combo of youthful energy and confident attack. She navigates precipitous melodies with grace, providing a centerpiece for the band’s departures into instrumental exploration. The instrumental passages play to a lounge-funk ’70s sensibility that’s equal parts smoky bar and late-night Cadillac drive, fueled by an adventurous, dead-on drummer. Things get groovier yet with the heavy, guitar-fueled “Freeloader.” This five-song EP seems to offer a glimpse of a confident and entertaining live band in search of just the right way to reveal its most comfortable self on record. It’s sometimes rough around the edges in the fidelity and reverb departments, but that doesn’t diminish its status as a promising listen, well worth the spin. —James Heflin
