Ambrose Akinmusire – on the tender spot of every calloused moment [Blue Note]
Ambrose Akinmusire seems particularly mature as an artist and particularly within the “jazz” tradition because his work, daring and modern and moving easily across boundaries, is still grounded in some of the core jazz values. Those are the primacy of blues playing, the vitality of distinctive and individual sound, and healthy and creative engagement within the popular music of the time, and engagement with his culture, socially politically. He is individual enough to evade facile comparisons to his predecessors. Still, in how he stands as part of this tradition, he is reminiscent of folks like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, as well as Cecil Taylor or Julius Hemphill. He had inherited much, and work like on the tender spot of every calloused moment if giving a great deal back as well. — Will LaymanREAD MORE | LISTEN
Tony Allen and Hugh Masekela – Rejoice [World Circuit]
Rejoice, the vibrant new album by Nigerian drummer Tony Allen and the late South African flugelhornist and trumpeter Hugh Masekela, has had a long road to its release. The sessions began in 2010 in London, but because of conflicting schedules, the two musicians never got around to resuming work on the project. The unfinished recordings remained in an archive until 2019, a year after Masekela’s death. Then Allen and producer Nick Gold revisited the tapes and added the finishing touches Allen and Masekela had discussed—keyboard, percussion, and vocal overdubs. The final product is something Masekela no doubt would have approved, a spacious, uncluttered sound centered on drums, flugelhorn, and bass, with a saxophone on three tracks, understated keyboards, and chanted vocals by Masekela and Allen. The long-delayed release indeed is an occasion for rejoicing, while also for regret that the two master musicians only collaborated once, and never will again. — George De StefanoREAD MORE | LISTEN
Amnesia Scanner – Tearless [PAN]
So immersed in the center of experimental electronic music and audiovisual art, it was exciting to think about where Amnesia Scanner would refocus their conceptual lens onto after the turn of the decade. Intriguingly, their latest 2020 full-length Tearless hones their typically obscure modes into their most precise concept yet. That is, the 10-track album aesthetically maps the failing Anthropocene. It offers limited, ambiguous answers through words, as expected, but it powerfully speaks about our divisive world through artistic and aural choices. Its globally connected featured artists bring together the voices of climatic hotspots, from Europe, South America, to the United States. And, its experimental mesh of deconstructed club, reggaeton, and metalcore mimics the popular chaos that bombards the dominant consciousness. Tearless is, as Amnesia Scanner told, “a breakup album with the planet”.More precisely, the album is a breakup with the planet under the dominant rule. Along with the globally connected voices of Lalita, LYZZA, and Code Orange, Amnesia Scanner builds anthems of anger that transform into inspiration for resistance. Just remember, as Oracle assures on the closer “AS U Will Be Fine”, “If we can help you lose your mind / You will be fine, You will be fine.” Then, perhaps, we must lose our dominant mind to reimagine the failing Anthropocene. — Hans KimREAD MORE | LISTEN
Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters [Epic]
What makes Fetch the Bolt Cutters such an extraordinary, surprising, and downright essential record is how it isn’t about Apple so much as it’s about other women: their friendships, their hangups, and the relationships they end up trapped in, mixed with Apple’s pathos and gravity. It is a thundering, angry, and pointed album that feels liberated by the fact that the target of her wit and barbs isn’t mainly herself or her lingering insecurities, no. This time around, she sets aim at the men who have never had to face any consequences for their actions — and then proceeds to go for the jugular.Fetch the Bolt Cutters isn’t Apple’s defense, her polemic, nor her confession. Bolt Cutters is her pummeling focus on the ills of the world: both the big ones we see on TV and the ones we see in our close friends. Bolt Cutters would be praised for its rawness and its bloodletting were it not for the fact that it is also charming, so considered, and so unapologetic for being the rattling, risqué record that it is. It’s bold, it’s demanding, and it might very well go down as the finest full-length Fiona Apple has ever made. — Evan SawdeyREAD MORE | LISTEN
Jehnny Beth – To Love Is to Live [Caroline]
Jehnny Beth’s (Savages) solo debut feels like a really good book. Each track gives you a deeper dive into a complex and multifaceted, destructive character. The conflict between the cranial and physical lays out a gripping melodrama as the two vie for control. Beth’s narrative and sentiment echo that of Mr. Duffy in James Joyce’s The Dubliners , who “[…] lived a short distance from his body”. The separation of thoughts and urges, need and want, mind and body is a thick and troublesome vein at the center of To Love Is to Live.If To Love Is to Live had to be described by a single word, it would be ‘oxymoron’. Beth’s very human conflict is tackled in a truly Shakespearean fashion. Shakespeare famously had a passion for the oxymoronic. When Romeo cries out “Oh Loving Hate!”, or when Lennox acknowledges MacBeth’s actions in “pious rage”, or the “joyful trouble” that MacDuff inhibits when hosting King Duncan, each points toward a confused but amplified truth. These paradoxes show the duality of our emotions and actions. Beth’s oxymoronic musings are on innocent sex, natural luxury, and fragile strength. — B. SassonsREAD MORE | LISTEN
Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher [Dead Oceans]
It feels inaccurate to call Phoebe Bridgers’ latest record, the consistently great Punisher, her sophomore album. Doing so brushes over two significant releases — 2018’s boygenius, an EP alongside Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus that plays to all three of their respective strengths, and 2019’s Better Oblivion Community Center, an unexpected collaboration with Conor Oberst that found her expanding on the sounds of her solo debut, 2017’s Stranger in the Alps. Still, at 25, Bridgers is, by all metrics, an artist at the beginning of her career, though Punisher sounds more like the work of a time-tested veteran perfecting a style she’s been honing for years.Great songwriters build fully realized worlds in their songs, but on Punisher Bridgers is often able to do it in just a few lines. Other writers might look to the past or towards the future to make sense of the disturbing present, but Bridgers is determined to embrace the moment on its own terms. It may sound bleak and illogical, but at least it’s honest. — Kevin KearneyREAD MORE | LISTEN
Car Seat Headrest – Making a Door Less Open [Matador]
Making a Door Less Open invests in the psychic thickness of life’s tiny, everyday moments. Think Proust’s madeleine chased with light drugs and distortion pedals. Using stark compositional contrasts to explore the twin faces of joy and sadness, the project marks a notable shift away from the lo-fi net grunge Toledo pursued on Car Seat Headrest’s numbered albums in the early 2010s and toward a new set of genre-bending experiments with future funk and electropop.Lyrically, the record’s ten songs—discrete episodes exploring everything from style biters to Hollywood superficialities—all add up to a sense of where inner life and the outer world meet. Through daydreams, interior monologues, and unanswered addresses, the band explore the frequent (and often unacknowledged) commingling of despair and silliness; so too do they focus on the ways that the surreal and the fantastic are increasingly structuring the contemporary mundane. — Jonathan LealREAD MORE | LISTEN
Caribou – Suddenly [Merge]
Life, by its very nature, is unpredictable. We all try to draw up the best map we can to guide us through the day, but there will always be routes and paths that can’t possibly be anticipated. For Daniel Snaith, the man behind Caribou, the five years that separated the critically acclaimed Our Love and new album Suddenly were characterised by unforeseeable changes as his closest, most intimate relationships evolved and reformed. It’s this idea that lies at the heart of both his most wildly experimental and yet touchingly heartfelt album to date.There is a strange dichotomy at the heart of Suddenly. While it’s probably his most willfully experimental album to date, his soft, distinctive vocals flow through every track, binding the whole thing together. Shifting from clattering samples to lush electronics to moments of soul-stirring beauty tracks never stay in the same sonic space for long. Just like life, the joy comes from the sheer unpredictability of it all. — Paul CarrREAD MORE | LISTEN
Céu – APKÁ! [Six Degrees]
Céu’s APKÁ! continues her journey into electrified space while taking even more time to find moments of softness. Blissful interpretations of late-night dance music styles and high-heat MPB make for a multidimensional release of soulful energy, replete with the effortless sophistication that Céu exudes in every album. Céu has long been an internationally-renowned creative force, as potent in her most easy and straightforward moments as in her most forward-facing and electric. APKÁ! has elements of it all: loud, quiet, sober, and utterly vivacious. But this is hardly a simple recap of her career to date. Every second of APKÁ! is fresh and new, and Céu, 15 years into her global fame, continues to grow and try new things with a trustworthy team and wisdom that shows in how well-informed her creative choices ultimately are. Céu’s vision works on a cosmic scale, and I continue to anticipate what could come next eagerly. — Adriane PontecorvoREAD MORE | LISTEN
Cubicolor – Hardly a Day, Hardly a Night [Anjunadeep]
Hardly a Day, Hardly a Night sees Cubicolor continuing to explore the textured, gently evolving sonic terrain of Brainsugar in more intimate detail. Although shaped by loss, uncertainty, and self-doubt, the songs on Cubicolor’s second album never linger in the same emotional space for long. Throughout, the band uses the music to process negative feelings before channeling them into something more positive and uplifting. Musically, their meticulously crafted soundscapes morph from plaintive electronic pieces into uplifting dance tracks in the space of a single song. Hardly a Day, Hardly a Night is a richly drawn, triumphant record and testament to the fact that sometimes you have to go with your gut and start again. — Paul CarrREAD MORE | LISTEN
Die Wilde Jagd – Haut [Bureau B]
To enter the mind of German electronic musician, Sebastian Lee Philipp is to venture into a lush techno-jungle, a dark space pulsing and throbbing with life. Nowhere is this more in evidence than Haut, the third album from Philipp’s project Die Wilde Jagd. Sparse rhythms bloom into complex worlds of sound, a cacophony of creatively adapted noise and samples which assume a harmonious, rhythmic consistency merging the natural with the electronic.The impenetrable, leafy undergrowth of this aural jungle hums with cleansing winds and buzzing cicadas. Tymbal organs and wing flicks sing to the beats, clicks, and scratches of a deeply rooted, naturalistic techno. Life here accords with harmony all of its own, and the attentive listener inevitably finds themselves in sync with this world of lush soundscapes. Haut is a concept album; a soundscape best listened to in its entirety, allowing songs to merge into each other. — Hans RollmannREAD MORE | LISTEN
Sam Doores – Sam Doores [New West]
Sam Doores deftly pulls together old rock ‘n’ roll, classic New Orleans-style R&B, and strains of folk and country, along with some experimental touches. The result is a subtly enveloping album that pulls a listener further into its noirish mysteries with each listening. Sam Doores might not reach the practically stratospheric heights of Los Lobos’ 1992 masterpiece. Still, any song from Sam Doores’ album would sound wonderful juxtaposed with anything from Kiko, on what would clearly be a killer playlist of cosmic American music.While Sam Doores is certainly a moody album, there is also a level of jauntiness that courses throughout the record, particularly on “Had a Dream” and “This Ain’t a Sad Song”. As New Orleans-inspired music goes, Sam Doores isn’t what you’re likely to hear while you’re sucking down frozen hurricanes on the most touristy blocks of Bourbon Street. But hearing Sam Doores emanating from a dusty old jukebox while enjoying a shot or two in a local joint a few blocks away from the French Quarter? Now, that would be perfect. — Rich WilhelmREAD MORE | LISTEN
Drab City – Good Songs for Bad People [Bella Union]
Bella Union’s latest great hopes, Drab City, offer a glamorously disheveled form of creepy art-pop from the union of early 2000s witch-house pioneer, oOoOO, aka San Franciscan Chris Dexter Greenspan, and the Berlin-based Bosnian-Muslim producer Asia aka Islamiq Grrrls. With their enticing debut album, Good Songs for Bad People, the duo have honed a woozy late-night style that plugs into a mind-melting synthesis of dream-pop, trip-hop, dub, jazz, doo-wop, and soundtrack vibes. Their glitchy songs of violence and paranoia radiate a deranged elegance that’s both succinct and off-kilter.The duo employ an array of blissed-out ingredients: jazzy, David Axelrod-meets-Barry Adamson arrangements, quivering flutes, spy flick guitars, mellotron strings, smeary synth textures, rumbling bass, low-slung hip-hop beats, and mellifluous vocals. The ominous music on the band’s bleak debut positions them as eager heirs to the sonic lift-off Broadcast’s laser-guided radiophonics and the spectral breakbeats of Portishead’s torch song future blues. — Michael SumsionREAD MORE | LISTEN
Greg Dulli – Random Desire [BMG]
“Desolation / Come and get it,” sings Greg Dulli in the opening lyrics of Random Desire, a devil’s come-on only he can sell. The couplet sets the tone for what’s to come, a signpost both beckoning you in and warning the faint of heart it’s their last chance to turn back. For Random Desire, the debut solo record (of sorts) from the veteran Afghan Whig/Twilight Singer/Gutter Twin, is a soundtrack for pensive late nights alone, raking over regrets, forfeited love, and forsaken chances. Depressing as that may sound, the song cycle isn’t one to wallow. On the contrary, it has a reflective victory about it, the kind that comes with years separating you from the painful experiences and the knowledge that while they linger with you, you’ve survived them. There’s a sense of fighting through the haunt of bitter memories of smiling despite the ache.Random Desire is striking in its unified exploration of what comes after — years after — a heartbreak. Not a mere collection of 10 songs, it is an album in the classic sense, each track as essential as a chapter in a book or a scene from a movie. It shows that while the hurt and loss are still there and remain felt, they’re like a scar from what could have been a mortal wound. And while Dulli might have sung that he’s got things to do before he fades away, Random Desire proves he’s neither fading away or burning out any time soon. — Cole WatermanREAD MORE | LISTEN
Dustbowl Revival – Is It You, Is It Me [Medium Expectations]
Dustbowl Revival’s newest release, Is It You, Is It Me, undertakes the personal and political. The Americana ensemble are candid in their responses to divisive political conversations, all the while setting their missives to masterful instrumentation. Yet the album is not entirely composed of grandiloquence. Dustbowl Revival also holds space for quieter and tenderer musical narratives. With the signature duel harmony of Z. Lupetin and Liz Beebe, in addition to the lush sound led by Connor Vance, Matt Rubin, Ulf Bjorlin, Josh Heffernan, Is It You, Is It Me is a revelatory album.Dustbowl Revival don’t settle for wimpy commentary: the album is packed with fearless censures. In “Enemy”, Dustbowl Revival take on the disunity caused by politics. Beebee sings a powerful and vulnerable tale of a daughter lamenting her parents who “made him king / But they forgot the crown / Please pass the salt.” Beebee is crestfallen by their beliefs; the disconnect is the proverbial salt poured into her wounds. The track reflects the generation who lost their parents and family to the likes of Fox News’ divisive rhetoric. Dustbowl Revival captures the emotional toll created by the discord. — Elisabeth WoronzoffREAD MORE | LISTEN
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways [Columbia]
Bob Dylan didn’t say anything for a while. Sure, he gave a Nobel speech. And he put out three albums (including a triple-album set) of pop standards as if his whole career had made a simple arc from Woody Guthrie to Frank Sinatra. But since 2012’s Tempest, we’ve had little new from one of the foremost songwriters of the last 60 years. He must have been saving it up. After surprise track releases this spring, Dylan unveiled Rough and Rowdy Ways, a record with a decade’s worth of words assembled like a strange jigsaw puzzle. It’s a bleak record, with the music often hushed and distanced, but its hidden wit and surprising formal care make it another remarkable entry in Dylan’s voluminous discography.By the end of “Murder Most Foul”, Dylan has delivered a meditation on nearly every topic imaginable (we could double the size of this review by uncovering the religious material). The wordplay will keep critics arguing, as to whether playing for “the king on the harp” refers to Little Walter, B.B. King (hinted at by the Lucille reference), or Saul and David. The heart will keep fans returning. Bob Dylan didn’t say anything for a while. When he did, he said it all. It’s just going to take us some time to hear it. — Justin Cober-LakeREAD MORE | LISTEN
Four Tet – Sixteen Oceans [Text]
While Sixteen Oceans at first appears accessible to the point of being a little bit bland and formulaic as if Four Tet is leaning into his modus operandi, repeated and sustained attention reveals that there is a subtlety here, belying the initial immediacy of some of the music. The first two tracks, “School” and “Baby” come out of the traps with some straight-ahead dancefloor tropes before we transition to something more meditative with the rather nominatively determined “Harpsichord”, which glides into “Teenage Birdsong”. This appears to be where we get the first sign of something slightly tired and belated, as the fluted melody feels somewhat trite and facile, perhaps exposing the possibility that Kieran Hebden’s previously richly upholstered bag of tricks might, after all, be getting a little bit threadbare.However, the following “Romantics” offers what seems to be a blend of the two preceding tracks, offering pizzicato and simple melody over a simple and subdued beat. It synthesizes the ambience of “Harpsichord” and the pop sensibility of “Teenage Birdsong”, as if he is showing us his workings and the possibilities of musical intertextuality within a mini-suite of three songs. What first appeared obvious and facile and, frankly, kind of disappointing, suddenly seems to be more interesting and mysterious, as if we have been seduced by the trap of aural immediacy when what lies beneath is as textured and sophisticated, while also just as accessible, as you might expect based on Hebden’s previous output. — Rod WatermanREAD MORE | LISTEN
Georgia – Seeking Thrills [Domino]
Inclusivity, love, unity, and, most importantly, having a bloody good time. They’re the things that lure us back to the dancefloor time and time again. At its all-embracing, life-defining peak, the clubbing experience should be a euphoric, coming together of like-minded souls under dazzling strobe lights. On her second album, British artist Georgia has managed to bottle that feeling as she joyously celebrates the dancefloor and all who inhabit it.Musically on Seeking Thrills, Georgia distills her various influences, pulling in synthpop, disco, Chicago House, and 1980s Detroit techno with sprinklings of UK garage, dancehall, and even post-punk. It’s a heady, energetic fusion of sounds with Georgia taking things back to basics as she constructs sounds from analogue synths and simple drum machine beats. The whole thing is designed to take you back to the comforting, sticky floors of the dancefloor, where the only thing that matters is you and the music. — Paul CarrREAD MORE | LISTEN
HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III [Columbia]
“Give me a miracle, I just want out from this / I’ve done my share of helping with your defense,” HAIM sing on “Los Angeles”, the opener to their third studio album, Women in Music Pt. III. At this point, we’re used to the band’s tendency to shift between multiple different genres—sometimes in the same song—ranging anywhere from soft rock to pop-rock, to experimental synthpop. But this time around, something’s different. The group’s easy, breezy summer afternoon melodies are still there, but they’ve lost a lot of the gimmicks. In their place, we are treated to a brand new dose of vulnerable lyrics and refined production, which makes Women in Music Pt. III immediately feel like something that is intimately and uniquely theirs.With Women in Music Pt. III, HAIM have learned the power of turning inward and inviting others on the journey to self-discovery. As pop singer Marina Diamandis once said, “Don’t trust a perfect person and don’t trust a song that’s flawless.” Our flaws are what make us more experienced, relatable individuals, so by learning to embrace the power in their weakest points, HAIM have created their best work to date. — Kevin KearneyREAD MORE | LISTEN
Marla Hansen – Dust [Karaoke Kalk]
Dust is that stuff that makes you sneeze. It gets in your eyes, covers your shelves, and is a general nuisance. It’s what happens to all of us when we die. Dust is also that magical element in the air that dances and glistens in the sun. Marla Hansen opens her new release (her first in 12 years) with the title song about “Dust”. The lyrics are cryptic. Hansen sings them in a high, breathy voice that seems to reenact blowing the dust around in some strange way. She elongates vowels and lisps through consonants. That may be because Hansen has settled in Berlin and now sings English with a German inflection, but that oversimplifies the aesthetic effect Hansen consciously creates. This track and the album as a whole shimmers and sparkles like dust in the bright light. — Steve HorowitzREAD MORE | LISTEN
Horse Lords – The Common Task [Northern Spy]
The music of Horse Lords – like all the best music – can be tough to categorize, but it’s also a study in contradictions. Their music contains elements of math rock, krautrock, free jazz, minimalism, and other styles that may be a hard pill for the average music fan to swallow. While those genres may bring to mind bespectacled musicologists hunched over inscrutable sheet music, or perhaps Berklee students creating their brand of brainy jam music during a break in classes, the band have found a way to make these intricate, puzzle-like compositions soar with an electrified intensity that’s uniquely engaging.On The Common Task, Horse Lords packs a great deal of variety and a seemingly endless amount of possibilities into 41 minutes. It’s the sound of a group that is infinitely curious. This isn’t your uncle’s moody, downbeat krautrock – it’s a breathless celebration of the power of band dynamics. — Chris IngallsREAD MORE | LISTEN
Inventions – Continuous Portrait [Temporary Residence Ltd.]
The combined forces of Matthew Robert Cooper (Eluvium) and Mark T. Smith (Explosions in the Sky) produce pretty much what you would expect from these two artists. Their duo project Inventions capitalizes on their strengths, resulting in a gorgeous sonic adventure. The layered ambient drone of Eluvium and fractured anthemic vibe of Explosions in the Sky make for very compatible bedfellows.This successful conflation of ideas becomes apparent from the very beginning of their new album, Continuous Portrait (their long-awaited follow up to 2015’s Maze of Woods). On the opening track “Hints and Omens”, a few seconds of laughter are followed by bursts of melodic electronics and low piano note fiddling, and soon the sweeping, sustained chords of your typical Explosions in the Sky composition unfold. It’s a fitting, almost reassuring introduction to an album filled with moments of strangeness, comfort, and bold creativity. — Chris IngallsREAD MORE | LISTEN
Jason Isbell – Reunions [Southeastern]
Jason Isbell’s Reunions has the difficult task of following up the strong Nashville Sound without repeating it. Isbell is, of course, up to the challenge. He’s one of the most consistently excellent songwriters in the country and rock landscape, and he’s savvy enough to know he needs some musical curveballs this time around. But also veteran enough to not stray too far from what he does best. Interestingly, he chooses to open the album with its biggest track, the nearly seven-minute-long “What’ve I Done to Help”. It’s a song that rolls along on a quiet, chugging snare drum beat and complementary bassline, as well as lead guitar and organ flourishes.Overall, Reunions doesn’t quite achieve the heights of Southeastern or The Nashville Sound, but that’s only because Isbell has set the bar so damn high for himself. This is an excellent album in its own right, and I can’t imagine any Isbell fan being disappointed by it. The 400 Unit are in fine form this time out, with keyboardist Derry deBorja being used particularly well throughout the record. It’s already a candidate for one of 2020’s best. — Chris ConatonREAD MORE | LISTEN
Ital Tek – Outland [Planet Mu]
While Ital Tek’s Bodied was written in snatched moments during periods working on other projects, the writing of new album Outland took place in self-imposed seclusion as he grappled with the joy and heightened anxiety of becoming a new parent. As such, Outland is a much more restless and jittery album, born from sleepless nights and overwhelming emotional fluctuations. While it broadly exists in a similarly rich and vividly constructed world as Bodied, the tracks on Outland see Ital Tek navigate much more extreme and unpredictable sonic terrain.
By delving deeper into the world he so distinctly rendered on Bodied, Ital Tek has made his most accessible album to date without compromising his unique musical vision. It’s an album of contrast and tension as tracks veer between extremes as if constantly searching for some kind of indefinable resolution. Ambitious and profound while remaining compelling unpredictable, it’s a constantly shape-shifting, all-encompassing musical experience. Outland is, quite simply, a masterpiece. — Paul Carr
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Nicolás Jaar – Cenizas [Other People]
On Nicolás Jaar’s Cenizas, his “groundedness” is more literal than it’s ever been. The album’s title, Cenizas, is Spanish for “ashes” or “cinders”. There’s a track called “Rubble”, where, on top of a sax solo, we hear the sound of actual rubble falling. There’s another entitled “Mud”, where Jaar sings, “And no one could hear / The cry from the ground”, followed by a three-fold repetition of “There’s something in the mud”. His singing, here, bears a submerged quality, like his voice is struggling up from under the instrumentation, or underground. This phenomenon crops up often on Cenizas. It makes for a more subdued listen than most of his recent music.But don’t be mistaken: Cenizas may not go harder than Jaar’s previous records, but it does go deeper. This is a somber, murky record, for late-night car rides rather than the club. It’s less immediate, less punchy than albums like Sirens and Space Is Only Noise. There are no dancefloor bangers, in the manner of Jaar’s recent work as Against All Logic (his other alias). Only two tracks are what you’d call beat-driven: “Mud” and “Faith Made of Silk” (and those two are hardly what you’d call “clubby”). Cenizas is an album that prefers to hover on the fringe of things, woozy and ambient, dangling us over an abyss but never quite dropping us in. — Parker DesautellREAD MORE | LISTEN
Sunny Jain – Wild Wild East [Smithsonian Folkways]
Perhaps best known for leading Red Baraat, the Brooklyn-based bhangra band known for their electric live shows, dhol player and composer Sunny Jain is unstoppable on new album Wild Wild East, where he mixes jazz, a multitude of Indian folk and classical traditions, cinema sounds, and surf rock. Taking on immigrant and diaspora experiences, this is Jain’s chance to represent himself, his family, and countless other Americans made to feel out of place because of their ancestry. He seizes the opportunity and soars.Creatively and ideologically, this is a perfect storm for Jain. Even in his already formidable body of work, Wild Wild East stands out as an album that not only deserves to be heard, but needs to be listened to. An understanding of the stories he tells here with such musical brilliance is liable to change hearts and minds for the better. Sunny Jain is the cowboy we need today, blazing new trails ahead into a sonically marked sense of community. — Adriane PontecorvoREAD MORE | LISTEN
Pokey LaFarge – Rock Bottom [New West]
The expression “rock bottom” usually refers to the lowest stage a person reaches before realizing that he or she must change to survive. The assumption is that one has lost everything and has nowhere to go but up. It’s unclear what Pokey LaFarge suffered through. His latest release, Rock Bottom Rhapsody, offers clues, but the connections seem more thematic than conceptual. That said, the record offers glimpses of living life on the edge, finding redemption, and then weathering life’s problems. The narrator has changed, or maybe more accurately been scarred, by his experiences.vThe album begins with a short, formal instrumental introduction led by sentimental strings appropriately called “Rock Bottom Rhapsody”. That sets the melancholy mood before plunging into the despair of “End of My Rope”. LaFarge is “making light of his misery” to a 1950s rock beat ala Buddy Holly or the Everly Brothers. Because this song comes so early on the record, you know he’s going to survive. The lyrics also suggest that LaFarge’s musical performance will be part of his cure. — Steve HorowitzREAD MORE | LISTEN
Sondre Lerche – Patience [PLZ]
Unlike the dynamic Please and the lushly produced Pleasure, Patience features some of Sondre Lerche’s quietest and most atmospheric compositions. His voice and a gently played nylon string guitar form the core of “I Love You Because It’s True” and “Why Would I Let You Go”, the latter a career highlight. The Van Dyke Parks-arranged “Put the Camera Down” finds Lerche, his voice in heavy reverb, singing amid a constantly shifting string section. Closing number “My Love Is Hard to Explain” is at its core a new take on the jazz standard, a style Lerche explored on 2006’s Duper Sessions, but with its spacey production it takes on a more abstract quality.Taken as a whole, Please, Pleasure, and Patience represent Lerche’s finest work as a musician. Together these records show that there is no definitive answer to the question, “Who is Sondre Lerche?” The joy of Patience, and the place Lerche is at in his career right now, is that he’s still exploring that question and finding new answers, just as we are too. — Brice EzellREAD MORE | LISTEN
Les Amazones d’Afrique – Amazones Power [Real World]
Les Amazones d’Afrique’s Amazones Power is a heavily electronic installment anchored in a powerful low end of bass and percussion throughout. It fits the weighty themes that abound as Les Amazones speak out in favor of equality, especially where women are concerned. Songs of contemporarily relevant issues like female genital mutilation, domestic abuse, and global disconnect invoke the old: folklore, Yoruba deities, ancestors. Past and present thus fit together seamlessly in Les Amazones’ messages for creating a better future for women across the world, with the sounds here as reflective of the group’s progressive mindset as verses and choruses.A fitting end to the album, “Power” features not just the members of Les Amazones already present on the album, but a number of women from Africa, Europe, and South America joining in to summarize the album’s core cause: “We want to be free!” It’s the perfect culmination of the collective’s messaging, a straightforward and poignant anthem with the simplest of desires – universal equality – at its heart. Once again, Les Amazones d’Afrique are essential voices bringing bold truths and much-needed perspectives to the world. — Adriane PontecorvoREAD MORE | LISTEN
Son Little – Aloha [Anti-]
Son Little (real name: Aaron Earl Livingston), one of many current artists remaking soul music in their distinctive way, gets right to work on his new album Aloha, hitting listeners with the super catchy and decidedly sexy “Hey Rose”. “Hey Rose / Your soul is the picture,” Little sings, “But your body is the frame / But the frame is exquisite / And you taste just like your name.” While those lyrics could be the most disastrous romantic lines ever, Little conveys them perfectly, his raspy but likable voice accompanied by minimal guitar chords and handclaps. Even within the seduction, there is a sense of foreboding: as the song ends, the couple are “engaged in lovers games”, but the singer then pleads, “can I hold you till these dark dreams fade?””Hey Rose” is one of those album-opening songs that is so engaging that it might take listeners a while to get beyond it and settle into the rest of Aloha. But as the album unfolds, it becomes clear that Son Little is doing his best to balance feelings of ecstasy and despair. — Rich WilhelmREAD MORE | LISTEN
Helen Money – Atomic [Thrill Jockey]
Chicago-based cellist Alison Chesley is accustomed to providing the sonic equivalent of accent marks and highlights on other people’s statements of intent. She has appeared on some 150 LPs, offering the bowed weep and illuminating scope of her instrument to the likes of Anthrax, Russian Circles, Bob Mould, MONO, and many more. But, when operating under the moniker Helen Money, Chesley has taken a more prominent and, frankly, forward-thinking stance, using emotive compositions to blend the humble nuances of post-classical with the vitriol and venom of metal and post-hardcore.Chesley has taken a little bit of a new tact with Atomic, the Helen Money LP out recently via Thrill Jockey Records. There is a connective tissue among the record’s 11 tracks, but it’s stretched over raw bone and little else. Or so it seems. The compositions give the impression of sparseness, of vulnerability, often belying the careful constructions and conceits at work within. And, yes, while there is a wonderful kind of shuddering nakedness to it all, Chesley also writes her theses large, digging in the soil for deeper truths about connection – both of the human and musical variety. — Justin VellucciREAD MORE | LISTEN
Mourning [A] BLKstar – The Cycle [Don Giovanni]
The Cycle is the latest from Mourning [A] BLKstar, an Ohio-based collective boasting three lead singers, horns, and insistent, portending grooves, There’s no way not to recognize this band’s roots in Afrofuturism; it’s also impossible to hear them as anything other than starkly original. And for anyone who’s kept up with them since their debut, the mood has gotten noticeably darker, something The Cycle makes clear.
This album’s spring 2020 release exposes music that can’t help but seem like a reaction to the current moment. It demands an end to systemic racism and its representative monuments, alongside the inequalities brought to center stage by COVID-19, render this country once and for all as a nation forced to finally take a look at the rotten stench of economic and racial apartheid. Part of The Cycle’s in-the-moment feel also comes from the fact that this is largely a live-to-tape record, capturing the buzz and hum of their Cleveland, Ohio studio and using that undercurrent to fantastic, vibrating effect. The Cycle is necessary, secular gospel for the healing
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