Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale are a miracle of fusions.  Through their music emanates beats and sounds that wouldn’t sound out of place be-bopping from headphones in Mumbai.  But, yet, they are more than merely a songwriting duo influenced by the subcontinent.  Their grandiose orchestrations with sweeping cellos and drum programming give them an undeniably modern feel as well.  They fuse together the mythic quality of their lyrics and the swooning twangs of a lonely sitar with very 2007 underlying beats and vocals.  The resulting songs are magical.

The album’s first song, Burn, literally burns down the house.  Emerging from a simple instrumental opening, Noah Lembersky’s voice sings the beautiful chorus: Dance with me.  And by God, you want to dance with that sultry, sexy voice.

It should seem quite obvious why in every plucked chord of the sitar the resulting sound gives an aura of being historical in some way – as if a master is at work.  The sitar, played by Shankar, is a family instrument.  She learned it from her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar.  Plus, she’s got singing in the family, as she is the half-sister of Norah Jones.  And Jones herself provides vocals on the album’s Easy.  Thankfully, her addition to the song is inspired.  She seems to fit in nicely with the playing of a sitar and gentle piano.

Don’t worry, Dad is included as well.  Ravi Shankar provides sitar work on Oceanic Part I and II.  Listening to this musical ingénue play with his daughter is a great treat.  They duel back and forth and create really nice music.

Shankar’s familial skills are also put to good use on Slither, a purely instrumental song that couples Shankar’s sitar and keyboards with Kale’s tabla playing, acoustic guitar, electronic drums, synths and bass.  Plus, there are a whole slew of other instruments like the nay, mohan veena and morsing.  The blending is perfect and sweeps you away.

The album’s title song is probably the strongest, just for its dream-like feel.  Sunidhi Chauhan’s vocals seem inspired by Enya:  they never take over the song, but just stay nicely in the background.

Track four, Sea Dreamer, features Sting on main vocals.  The lyrics he sings are nice and fitting, but, for some reason, his voice didn’t jive with the rest of the album.  It seemed too out of place.  I know Sting has conquered ethnic beats and orchestrations in his solo work.  And for the most part they worked for him, but here, Sea Dreamer sounds like an anomaly.  Perhaps the song would have been better served if it was the other way around:  Shankar and Kale guesting on Sting’s album.