Artiste: Lady Gaga

Album: Mayhem

Rating: ***

Consistency defines Lady Gaga. She created her sound with 2011’s Born This Way and has consistently tried to live up to it. The 38-year-old has well-written songs, plenty of hooks and enough bombastic performance. But her meanderings into the jazz space with the late Tony Bennett have served as well-timed breaks. Otherwise, it has been as consistently same as romantic-era Hugh Grant films. The much-needed gear change, which even Grant has managed in the last few years, is missing on Mayhem.

The opening track, Disease, and its follow-up, Abracadabra, set up a rollicking ride but then Mayhem largely gets lost in ’80s-style synth-pop, like on the track Zombieboy, a tribute to Rick Genest, who appeared in the video for 2011’s Born This Way, and Prince-era electro-funk on Killah. No doubt, these are fine productions but it’s not something we have not heard before.

Blade of Grass is a smart ballad that could have found a place on a Lana Del Rey album and it fades well into the track everyone’s talking about — Die With a Smile (with Bruno Mars). A misstep in the synth-inspired zone is How Bad Do U Want Me. It’s more like a Taylor Swift song mistakenly pressed onto a Gaga vinyl.

Relentless is the pace on Vanish Into You, like it was on most tracks of Born This Way. But it’s a been-there-done-that feeling. Shadow of a Man brings to mind Michael Jackson’s Thriller days, sounding more like a tribute than something original.

Gaga’s versatility is clearly there in her vocals, like in the way she sings “I want to feel the beast inside” on the track The Beast but it doesn’t help to make the album title shine. Certainly not boring but it’s as exciting as preparing a dish involving banana flower.

Artiste: Tori Amos

Album: The Music of Tori and the Muses

Rating: ***

Tori Amos is a classically trained musician with several hits to her name, like Caught a Lite Sneeze. Her new album is an accompaniment to her children’s book, Tori and the Muses.

The nine-track album involves some of her frequent collaborators, including John Philip Shenale, Matt Chamberlain, Jon Evans, Mark Hawley and Ash Soan.

The book is the story of a young artiste (named Tori) who is slightly irritated with her father for insisting that she rehearse for a music recital. Instead, she goes on an adventure with her muses.

Albums for children are not easy to record. It is difficult to make it bearable and equally tough to add variety. The musician manages the first department effortlessly. Knocking is not the usual fare you expect on a children’s album and the same goes for Insect Ballet, which can easily excite toddlers. She puts her music training into good use on Mermaid Muse Speaks and the upbeat Spike’s Lament.

Here’s the problem: The way parents and children consume music differ, with the latter aiming for numbers that are easily digestible. She tries hard to lower the barrier between children’s music and grown-up fare. Ultimately, she achieves only a few infectious moments on the nine-track album. Children may not want to revisit the album too many times.

Group: Jethro Tull

Album: Curious Ruminant

Rating: ****

Ian Anderson, the founder of Jethro Tull, is on a creative roll even though he will be 78 later this year. On the other end of the spectrum is group member Jack Clark on guitar. He joined the band only last year.

The highlight of the album is the 17-minute Drink From The Same Well, which has evolved over a couple of decades, perfecting a line like “displaying willful ignorance as to shifting tides of history”. The album offers Anderson enough time to reflect, like “I count my life in seconds passed” in the title track. This feels like an intimate album from Anderson. And that’s where the problem begins.

What stops Curious Ruminant from achieving a higher rank is the focus on the flute; it doesn’t give the other members enough room to shine. It may well have been a solo effort from Ian Anderson.

Wordy, of course, be it pouring his heart out over Jerusalem in Over Jerusalem or addressing the ecology on Savannah Of Paddington Green. The Tipu House evokes memorable images, like “someone has to fix the plumbing, or at least give it a try”. He contemplates mortality in the spoken-word poem Interim Sleep.

Nobody can doubt Anderson’s mastery over the flute and there are throwbacks to the group’s folk roots. Yet, this is still an Ian Anderson album more than a Jethro Tull effort.

Artiste: Ella Fitzgerald

Album: The Moment Of Truth: Ella At The Coliseum

Rating: *****

The previously unreleased album by jazz great Ella Fitzgerald was recently discovered in the private tape collection of Verve Records founder Norman Granz. Recorded at the Oakland Coliseum on June 30, 1967, the album features nine tracks and features Fitzgerald accompanied by members of The Duke Ellington Orchestra.

The concert happened in the middle of an exciting three-year touring and recording collaboration with Duke Ellington. This album includes the first Ella recordings of the hit songs Alfie and Music To Watch Girls By. The Ellington band features Cat Anderson, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope.

Ellington doesn’t play, allowing the arrangement to shift the spotlight to Fitzgerald. She’s in a playful mood and even impersonates Louis Armstrong. The recordings were mixed and mastered from the original analogue multitrack tapes, making for high-fidelity audio, which was usually not the case for a live concert recording of that era.

Fitzgerald is brilliant on Mack the Knife and showcases her jazzy side on Benny Goodman’s Don’t Be That Way and the Tony Bennett staple The Moment of Truth.

— Mathures Paul