Toni Braxton & Babyface – Love, Marriage & Divorce (Motown)
Both had brief career highpoints in the late ‘90s at the twilight of the R&B renaissance. Since then, he’s spent the last several years penning other people’s hits, and she’s turned to reality TV to stave off bankruptcy. To call this unexpected collab a surprising success is an understatement. A concept album centered on a crumbling marriage that refuses to die can be awfully icky – especially coming from two careerists who are viewed as has beens. Lacking the pop relevancy they neither desire nor have any use for, the pair trade barbs they most assuredly lunged at their respective exes during legal proceedings. Her to him: “I wish she’d give you a disease / So that you will see / Not enough to make you die / But only make you cry like you did to me.” Aside from the bile are welcomed moments of candor. Each is concerned for the other’s wellbeing and regret past transgressions. The songs about make-up sex double as illusions of rekindled romance, and the finale is so devastating they refer to the annulment as “The D Word” – unwilling to accept the permanence of their arrangement. GRADE: A-
Key Tracks: “The D Word” / “I’d Rather Be Broke” / “I Hope That You’re OK”
Katy B – Little Red (Sony/Columbia)
Blame it on my American-instilled definition of dance music, but this sultry-voiced Brit doesn’t fit the bill. There are beats and grooves and pulses aplenty on her sophomore album, but they’re minimal in scale and monochrome in texture – the byproduct of lazy Euro-house production techniques. There’s not much to be said for the rest of the music, either – a colorless slush of hazy synths and empty dubstep burps. All the credit for saving an otherwise tepid outing goes to Kathleen Brien’s booming contralto. So melodic, so radiant, so magnetizing is her timbre it converts routine four-on-the-floor exercises into captivating blasts of pop regardless of the subject matters: love, drugs, drugs as love and vice versa. Don’t confuse such seedy topics with youthful reckless abandon. She can be coy but just as playful – look no further than the more-than-meets the eye title of “I Like You.” The second half of that sentence: … “a little bit.” Someone get her a passport and bring her stateside. Introduce her to Greg Kurstin while you’re at it. GRADE: A-
Key Tracks: “5 AM” / “Crying For No Reason” / “I Like You”
Sound 'Round 