Album of the week

IMELDA MAY

“Mayhem”

***1/2

Imelda May has the dangerous curves of a ’50s pin-up girl, and backs them up with a seductive feels-good-to-be-bad voice.

May, a Dubliner, sings rockabilly — the early-rock form in which country, boogie-woogie and swing collide like speeding hot rods — with femme-fatale charm. She writes her own words and music, and has obviously studied masters from Gene Vincent and Duane Eddy to the Stray Cats, inducing the same hip-shaking as those rockabilly aces.

The 15-track disc opens with “Pulling the Rug,” a rumble of slapped double-bass notes set to a Bo Diddley beat and reverb guitar buzz. Over the slinky melody, May coos like a character from a noir novel: “Good life came callin’, I fell under its spell and kept fallin’.” With one line she establishes her strong, sexy character.

The initial gravitational pull of the music is retro, a feeling that stretches to jazzy torch-song stylings and surf guitar riffs. Yet the lyrics, by a woman playing the cards she’s drawn in life, are very 2011. In “Psycho,” for instance, May describes her boyfriend in a Cramps-like rockabilly derangement. In the frenzied cacophony, she sings without affection: “You’re an animal, a human cannibal/snarlin’ and snappin’ like a dog on a bone.”

This is a don’t-miss disc that’s slick yet raw, sophisticated and raunchy all at once — the perfect soundtrack for hot-summer cool.

Download of the week

TIM ROBBINS and the
ROGUES GALLERY BAND

“Time To Kill”

***

TIM Robbins has said, “You can’t come home after a night out and act, but you can write a song.” On his eponymous debut album, the Oscar-winning actor shows off his late-night avocation with musical skills that conjure several singer-songwriter styles. Those qualities jell in the song “Time to Kill.” It’s a dark, propulsive Jack White-meets-Arcade Fire blues piece — told as a first-person narrative by a soldier trying to readjust to civilian life after experiencing war. It’s an unsettling and timeless antiwar song that rocks.