The Mars Volta, Beck, Natasha Bedingfield and Blake Lewis.

the music press

tue 1/29/2008

A collage of The Mars Volta, Beck, Natasha Bedingfield and Blake Lewis.

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Prog-rockers The Mars Volta release The Bedlam in Goliath, a concept album inspired by their experiences with an Ouija-like "talking board." "You may scoff and shake your head at their muse," writes the Associated Press, "but the result is a sonic masterpiece." The album has "moments that remind you just how powerful the band can be … but it's exhausting trying to find them," sighs Spin magazine.
Genre-mashing hipster Beck releases a deluxe edition of Odelay, a two-CD set featuring the original release from 1996 and unreleased material. "[T]he rarities and B sides are so good, they'd add up to Beck's third- or fourth- best album on their own," marvels Rolling Stone. A less enthusiastic The Washington City Paper asks: "[W]as Beck just a hipster doofus who got really lucky with the right producers? Odelay seemingly settled that question for good; too bad its reissue brings it up again."
British pop singer Natasha Bedingfield returns with her sophomore album, Pocket Full of Sunshine. The Los Angeles Times slams it two-and-a-half stars but gives Bedingfield credit for creating "adult dance pop that's not overly promiscuous, in the sexual or self-promotional sense." Yahoo! Music is bored: "With no risks being taken, the best it can hope for is nice, and very nice though it is, that's never enough."
Former American Idol contestant Blake Lewis makes his debut with the '80s pop-inspired Audio Day Dream. The New York Times says there's a "little something for everyone … though it probably won’t hold anyone’s focus all the way through." The album gets a "C" from Entertainment Weekly, which pulls no punches: "If Lewis could just find a way to integrate all his early-MTV influences (A Flock of Fat Boys?), well...that album wouldn't be great either — though it'd be less forgettable than this exercise in pop adequacy."