Sugar Ray - Music for Cougars

After the failure of 2003’s 'In the Pursuit of Leisure' it seemed as if Sugar Ray was willing to take the hint and bow out before any further embarrassment. Now, after a seven year hiatus, Sugar Ray is crawling back with the abysmally titled 'Music for Cougars'. The album opens in the worst way possible with an adaptation of the early 60’s hit (Girls Girls Girls) Were Made to Love. The song features guest vocals by Collie Buddz who brings a reggae flavor to the song reminiscent of the group’s first smash hit Fly. Unfortunately, the song remake ends up sounding more like a bad Shaggy song than a hit from any decade. Poor Eddie Hodges must be spinning in his grave.

The first single from the album is the summer anthem Boardwalk which channels Beach Boy’s style cheesiness without any of the charm. But possibly the worst track of all is She’s Got The (WooHoo) which, as the album title blatantly declares, is a cougar anthem. With the song’s not-so-subtle innuendos and intended older fan base, one wonders why it is that 40 year old lead singer Mark McGrath is using euphemisms like "Woohoo".

McGrath’s vocals have seen better days. The vocals on this album are tastelessly drenched in auto-tune. It’s as if the band is attempting to sound hip and young, of course they are neither. This is most embarrassingly apparent on the Katy Perry knockoff Closer and the electro-dance flavored Last Days. From the embarrassingly attention grabbing album title to the bland, radio friendly songs within, this band is trying a little too hard to fit in. ‘Music for Cougars’ brings light to Sugar Ray's fall from pop superstars to the cougars of today's music scene.

Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

After twenty plus years of making music breaking new ground is not to be expected. Yo La Tengo is no exception to this rule. By this point in their career they have mastered their sound, varied though it may be, and in general we know what to expect from the Hoboken trio. 2006’s I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass was a mixed bag and showed the band at their most fun and spontaneous. However, it lacked a kind of cohesion in feeling previous albums such as And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-out and I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One captured so well. In that sense Popular Songs is a return to writing songs that genre-hop but still manage to keep that cohesive feeling.

The album opens with Here to Fall, a song that starts off sparse using only the bleep of a lonely synthesizer, recalling their soundtrack work The Sounds of the Sounds of Science before the drums kick in with full-force followed by a copious amount of heavily-layered strings. Make no mistake, even though this album harkens back to some of their earlier work the production itself, for the most part, pulls away from the bare-bones approach of previous albums and instead has a more densely layered feel. This is especially apparent on the Motown sounding If It’s True which appropriates it’s opening from the classic Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch and features an adorable trade-off vocal by Ira and Georgia.

Popular Songs ends with a trio of epic, meditative songs that capture the mood of nostalgia so succinctly that listening to these instrumental tracks evokes memories of old friends long gone. Yo La Tengo has just proved they have more heart than any other band, and Popular Songs may just be their best effort to date.