New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

Despite the cover art's nods to Pedro Bell's revolutionary Funkadelic graphics (not to mention the muddled sociopolitical message of the deliberately controversial guerrilla-style video for first single "Window Seat"), Erykah Badu's fifth album is the flipside of 2008's politically-minded New Amerykah Part One: Fourth World War. In her trademark helium-register voice, with its echoes of Billie Holiday and Minnie Riperton, Badu sings of love both hard-won and lost, and while the sound maintains the electronic sheen of its predecessor, there's a decidedly retro vibe afoot.  Not in the Daptone Records "new wine in old bottles" sense, but retro in the way that, say, Portishead is retro: thoroughly modern music built on an appreciation of vintage sounds. More an appreciation than the sounds themselves: sampling is minimal and intelligently done, featuring unexpected source material like Paul McCartney and Wings' fairly obscure pop-soul ballad "Arrow Through Me," which provides little more than an atmospheric drone underneath the slinky "Gone Baby, Don't Be Long." The Portishead comparison is particularly apt on the three-part, ten-minute epic "Out My Mind, Just In Time," which drifts from cabaret jazz through minimalist electronica to abstract space rock as Badu's lyrical mood shifts from downbeat to unsettlingly bleak.