An Acute Case: 11 July 2025
Pinnochio in Vegas and Corn Queens getting hitched
Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette
One online commentator shrewdly called this the continuation of Ian Bavitz’s “outward philosophical quest to connect things small to things great”, which I like even if it doesn’t apply to my favourite rhyme—“Short story: one time I shook the RZA's hand / Played it cool but coulda yelled ‘I'm going to Disneyland.’” That one merely continues his quest to keeping rhyming till the rhymes run out. *** (“Movie Night” “John Something” “Snail Zero”)
Julien Baker & TORRES: Send A Prayer My Way
The loose concept is two queer cowgirls, which these born-and-backslid Christians navigate delicately and, in their own way, humorously, inserting little jokes into sincere confessionals. Some are lyrical, like when Torres adds a post-script to “Tuesday” telling the bigot mother of the girl she fell for at eighteen that she can go suck an egg. Some are musical, like the lightly stoned honky-tonk of “The Only Marble I’ve Got Left”. Some are throwaway, like a brief discourse on the difference between jelly and jam. Sarah Tudzin’s production is notable for the fact she does nothing obvious, though I suspect she’s behind a certain weightiness holding up the slighter tunes. She’s also mastered the art of recording Baker’s voice, a doleful and slender thing that sounds more beautiful each time I hear it. A MINUS
Fly Anakin: The (Forever) Dream
Loose-lipped yapper tends braggadocious, tries on sensitivity, and comes alive when he trots out his brothers-in-alt-rap. * (“My N*gga” “NOTTOOSHABBY” “Forever Dream”)
Little Simz: Lotus
After a bust-up with longtime producer and lifelong friend Inflo saw him traded for another Londoner of signally good taste, the rapper and actor born Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo was reportedly struck by such self-doubt that she abandoned four versions of this album, only you wouldn’t know if she didn’t bring it up. On her freest, most expansive album, musical nods to jazz, soul, and African polyrhythms are hybridised by a more exciting live band than when the buttoned-up Inflo was conducting. There are moments of genuine adventure here: a sound bed of essentially air on “Hollow”, a broken piano on “Lotus”, a piss about with bells at the end of “Enough”, a singsong in the tradition of everywomen Lily Allen and Kate Nash on “Young”. Whether non-bizzers can learn anything from Simz’s takes on betrayal and healing is questionable. But her voice is still a lesson in precision, “eggshells”-“meant well”-“dead cells” rhymes can be appreciated in any context, and when she and Wretch 32 make believe they’re brother and sister on a fight-and-make up phone call about family duty, she manages to universalise some of what’s irking her. A MINUS
James McMurtry: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy
The three best tracks on McMurtry's 14th album underline the range and skill he’s cultivated as a songwriter for 36 years. Where “Sons of the Second Sons” traces the ancestry of America’s conservative underclass to old world settlers forced by primogeniture to carve out a hardscrabble existence in a new land, “Pinocchio in Vegas” depicts its protagonist as a grown-up hustler who has to sue Walt Disney over copyright control when Geppetto’s distant relations shift him of his inheritance, and “Annie” imagines a rightminded citizen watching the dual disasters of 9/11 and Bush Jr. from 1,500 powerless miles away in Nebraska. Everything else—bitter dispatches from an ageing Texan lawman, Larry McMurtry’s dementia hallucinations, and tales of hawking art both real and fabled—is equally novelistic, self-contained, and purposeful. All ride catchy and compelling if unremarkable tunes, though with a now-regular band augmented by various craftspeople, all are played with an ease and sprightliness that lightens their load and makes them a pleasure to listen to. A MINUS
Youssou N’Dour: Eclairer le Monde - Light the World
Like compatriot Baaba Maal on 2023’s Being, Senegal’s greatest musician and one-time Minister of Culture has teamed up with a couple of northern hemisphere hotshots for what conservative estimates say is his 41st album. Whether the purpose of conscripting multi-instrumentalist Michael League and jazzer Weedie Braimah was to modernise, revitalise, or simply retool, it works. These 12 tracks are lighter on guitars but dense with percussion, and while their songfulness varies, all are intriguing, not least because they do pop-minded things with traditional instruments—kora, ngoni, balanfons, etc. If you don’t know what those sound like, no worries. The same applies to N’Dour’s singing, where you don’t need to speak the language to feel the force. Thematically, there’s Sufi praise-giving, maternal thanksgiving, a tribute to Orchestra Baobab, and what I thought one reviewer had dismissively called a football anthem but really is a football anthem. Does he still have that voice at 65? You bet. Still combining nobility and humility, grit and tenderness, unadulterated power and service to the song. Still doing it all without the least semblance of affectation. B PLUS
Panda Bear: Sinister Grift
Psychotropic Brian Wilson isn’t inherently bad. Neither is ersatz Brian Wilson—especially when it’s this painstakingly observed. But you’ve got to wonder why someone would make a career out of Brian Wilson minus songs or joy. ** (“Praise” “50mg” “Ferry Lady”)
Hailey Whitters: Corn Queen
I’ve had my fingers crossed that this sweet and spicy Iowan would come good ever since 2022’s Raised did just that to the fun quotient of 2020’s The Dream, only then 2023’s stopgap EP I’m in Love stalled her trajectory. So I’m partially relieved but mostly overjoyed that this is where fun becomes her sole concern. With one sure shot after another and barely a hitch in momentum, she puts forward a convincing case that’s she’s a free spirit with a “Helluva Heart” who’d rather “never make it in my own lane than ride in on coattails.” Having been around for over a decade, best believe she knows her shit from Shinola, starting with the fact that “boys still rule that throne”. It hasn’t escaped my attention that a year before that stopgap EP with the telling title, Whitters married her producer and boyfriend of 10 years. And while that doesn’t make her songs about doltish exes, dive bar rebounds, and one-night stands turned shotgun weddings any less entertaining—nor her playful jokes about the Billy-Bobs and Charlenes producing future former corn queens any less credible—it does reframe this as a collection of colourful genre pieces. It also makes me a soft touch for the one called “Wagon”—as in his love’s where she’s hitching hers. That one’s definitely from the heart. A