Sidetracked

ARTIST: Usher feat. Young Jeezy
SONG: Love in this Club

Ladies and gentleman, there’s a new couple on the iTunes Top Songs throne. Flo Rida and T. Pain have been usurped by Usher and Young Jeezy. But did anything really change? Usher’s latest is another panty-dropper club song with a fluttering synth line and pervy lyrics: “I’m ’a give it to you nonstop,” Ush croons, “and I don’t care who’s watching.”
Grade: B-

ARTIST: Tokyo Police Club
SONG: In A Cave

The jig is up. Tokyo Police Club are not from Japan; they’re from Toronto, and really, they couldn’t sound more Canadian. They take Strokes-esque guitar melodies, add a high-energy drum beat and some background-vocal shouting to recreate the formula discovered by Arcade Fire and just about every other indie act to catapult its way to popularity by way of Montreal.
Grade: B

ARTIST: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
SONG: Cold Son

Stephen Malkmus is the former lead singer of influential ’90s rock outfit Pavement, and the Jicks are his new musical friends. “Cold Son” is one of the Portland, Ore.-based group’s more playful numbers, with a whimsical synth line and hint of country eccentricity reminiscent of alt-rockers Cake. The lyrics aren’t so bad either. Malkmus laments, “Who is it that said, ‘The world is my oyster’? / I feel like a nympho stuck in a cloister.”
Grade: A-

ARTIST: N.E.R.D.
SONG: Everybody Nose

Hip-hop crossover eccentrics N.E.R.D. — i.e., Pharrell and two beat-making compadres — just leaked this one, which they neither confirm nor deny will be on Seeing Sounds, due out in June. The track features frantic shouts, furious drums, crashing cymbals and tongue-in-cheek lyrics that put a new meaning to the expression “powdering your nose”: “One-hundred-dollar bills, look! / Achoo, achoo.”
Grade: B+