Shook
Can U Still Dance?
Independent

Funk lives and it calls Baltimore County home! Heavily influenced from Prince and other 80s funk acts, Shook has crafted an EP not just sitting in the shadow of their influences, but standing tall amongst them. It packs more energy and passion into five tracks, less than 20 minutes total, than most bands can muster in an entire career, even when they dial back the intensity on their slow jam, “Lullaby”. On the album opener and title track, “Can U Still Dance?”, between the pounding rhythms and slick keyboard hooks, the question phrased comes off more like a demand. A demand to remember music is not just a stage for sullen posturing or grandiose statements, but an escape to or reflection of the excitement of life.

The restrained finesse constructed on the EP keeps a tight pace to the songs, with each one cutting out before a riff gets tired or an extended solo draws too much attention from the rest of the band.

Like any proper EP, it ends long before it feels finished and leaves more to be desired, cutting off just as it’s building up speed again in “Nothing.” As a free download posted to their Facebook account, there is absolutely no reason to not give this EP a listen. By force of its strong personality, it’s hard to deny the infectiousness of the grooves crafted on “Can U Still Dance?” But why would you want to try?

-Brian LaCour

Katy Perry
Teenage Dream
Capitol Records

Katy Perry. What more to say? Her sophomore album, “Teenage Dream,” has literally become one of my favorite albums by any artist, and it seems everyone else agrees because it has already reached the top spot on the Billboard 200.

I will admit that with her first single, “California Gurls,” I was concerned if her entire album would be upbeat cute pop songs and not like her self-titled debut album, which had ballads like “Thinking of You.” (But do not think I don’t like “California Gurls.” I truly do.) I had to eat my words when I heard the track “Circle the Drain.” The song is about her ex-boyfriend Travie McCoy, the man behind the hit song “Billionaire,” and his long battle with drugs. In the chorus Perry is clearly talking to McCoy when she says: “I wanna be your lover. Not your fucking mother.”

There are other great songs on the album like “Not Like the Movies,” a song about how real love isn’t always like the movies, and “Peacock,” a song about a certain part of the male anatomy. Then comes my favorite song off the album, and now my favorite song of all time, “Teenage Dream.” If you have not heard this song, you haven’t lived. It’s quite simple: this song will make you want to dance, cry, sing and fall in love all at the same time.

Katy Perry … Will you marry me?

-Nurney Mason