02/07/2017
02/07/2017
Calvin Harris, “Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1” (Columbia Records) A photo of a sun-kissed, empty beach is on the front of DJ/ producer Calvin Harris’ new CD and there’s a palm tree on the back. That’s appropriate for what is a strong contender for album of the summer. The 10-track “Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1” is a slick triumph for Harris, who has brought 21 of his superstar friends along to make a CD as cool as a Popsicle and as sticky as a pool-side drink. “Release, let go, and have a good time”, is a lyric that sums up the record. It kicks off with “Slide”, featuring a moody Frank Ocean and the hotter-than-hot group Migos. The gorgeously layered song signals Harris is pushing beyond previous club hits like “This Is What You Came For”. If we’re judged by the company we keep, then Harris is a musical magnet. In addition to Migos and Ocean, the album also features Future, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Big Sean, John Legend, Khalid, Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, Lil Yachty, Young Thug, Snoop Dogg and two appearances by Pharrell Williams. An album with so many guests would presumably topple over, but somehow Harris weaves all the voices, styles and grooves into a coherent, breezy hip-hop and EDM tapestry. It recalls Moby’s 1999 monster hit-collection “Play” — the last time an insular techno techie became a bona fide music god. Whether it’s at a bar or baseball park, Lady Gaga says she’s going to give every performance her all. The singer will launch a summer tour with stops at arenas and stadiums across the globe, and she’s also returning to the Dive Bar Tour with Bud Light to perform a show in Las Vegas on July 13. She called the first bar crawl, completed last fall around the release of “Joanne”, a deep experience. “For what it’s worth, when I got up there, I totally forgot where we were and I just went into performance mode”, she said in a phone interview. “For me, no matter how small a venue is, you don’t perform it differently than you perform at a big venue, that’s not fair to the fans”. Last year’s tour included a stop at The Bitter End, the New York City bar where Gaga performed before her pop star days. The new Dive Bar Tour will also include shows in Los Angeles (July 26) and New Orleans (Aug 30), to be headlined by other artists, who will be announced soon. (AP) Gaga, 31, will launch a world tour on Aug 1 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It includes stops at baseball parks like Citi Field in New York, AT&T Park in San Francisco, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston. Now that she’s wrapped filming “A Star is Born” with Bradley Cooper — an experience she called “life changing”, “wonderful” and “inspiring” — she’s focusing on the massive tour. “This one will be a little bit different”, she said. “I also like to change things up. “I have some other ideas about how I’d like to perform some of my fans’ classics”. Part of switching it up comes from the sound of “Joanne”, which includes rock, country and slower songs compared with Gaga’s past electro-flavored dance hits. “The album is extremely healing and reflective for me. I wrote about things that I’ve never written about before that are extremely deep and personal, and dare I say, things that haunted me, that were poisoning me, that were toxic to me, and I had to get them out. And it was very revealing in that way”, she said. “The cover of the album is very indicative of that — me putting a hat on that I’ve never worn before and just not sure where I’m going at all — but knowing I got to get out of where I am”. At the Coachella festival in April, where Gaga headlined, she released “The Cure”, an upbeat song about healing. She said she wrote the song after performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. She added that she’s writing new music and said she could drop another song unrelated to an album. “You know, I wouldn’t say that it’s out of the question”, she said. (AP) By Mark Kennedy