MacKenzie Carpenter: MacKenzie Carpenter
Two out of five songs on the debut EP from this 23-year-old “I’m Not Pretty” co-writer are great outdoors songs with great jokes at the centre—"Throw You Back" gives a hanger-on the "if you were" treatment (a fish for the title gag, but also a shoe, a rose, a clock, etc.), while on "Hunting Season" she wishes her knucklehead boyfriend best of luck in his sporting endeavours (even adds them to the calendar for him) so she has more time to binge watch The Real Housewives. “Don't Mess With Exes" adds sway to the swagger, obligatory god song "Jesus, I'm Jealous" is at least coy about its blasphemy, and "Can't Nobody" (write a song like Dolly, love June like Johnny, break a heart like you) provides further evidence of just how pretty she can sound when she’s sad. Would that half the guys in country were half this smart. A MINUS
DJ FINALE: Mille Morceau
Experimental, abstract, minimal—all fit the bill but still feel like insufficient descriptions of art music you can dance to. Mostly, that’s because the Fulu Miziki alumnus at the helm doesn’t appear to have an agenda beyond noodling with the past, present, and future sounds of DRC. From the kids TV tune of opener “Padou Basss 30” on, this is one idea bubble after another, each popping as quickly as it appears: bright soukous and synth burps and bass abnormalities and kitchenware clatter and laser shows and heart attack trance and (on “Padou Aass Mixe”) what sounds like a Mannie Fresh beat holidaying in Central Africa. Occasionally, I ask myself “what’s it about?” And so far, my only answer is “about 38 minutes.” But I’ve yet to get through those 38 minutes without feeling surprised, elated, probed. For now, that’s enough. A MINUS
DJ Shadow: Action Adventure
How 51-year-old Josh Davis makes the music in his head remains of interest to many but less so to me, so I was pleased to read the eight-word answer he gave an interviewer when discussing whether to create a kick drum from sample, simulation, or live recording: “at a certain point, sound is just sound.” So while his fellow collector-obsessives make tracing the provenance of his creations their chief pursuit, the average listener’s interest in knowing that some of this record samples a regional R&B station from the ‘80s can’t match the simpler pleasures of tonality, texture, and feel. More convincingly, Davis professes an increased interest in melody and songwriting on this record, which I’m pretty sure I can hear, and don’t doubt contributes to my enjoyment of its scene-settings, chase sequences, mood pieces, and holding patterns, though not to a greater extent than the drums and bass that, at the risk of sounding too cute, represent the first word of the album title. Towards the end, things maunder in a way that feels organic and remains compelling. For the sake of completeness (but at the cost of definitely sounding too cute), I’ll say that represents the second half of the title. A MINUS
The Feelies: Some Kinda Love: Performing The Music Of The Velvet Underground
The Velvets were the ur-rock band of the late ‘60s who transformed young minds in and out of New York with their interface of dream-song and drone, including the then-adolescent Feelies in just-over-the-Hudson New Jersey. So it’s fitting that when touring exhibition The Velvet Underground Experience stopped in Manhattan 50 years later, Glenn Mercer and co stayed in Jersey City to pay tribute. None of their 18 covers recreates Lou Reed’s uneasy personality, but all are played hard and fast and don’t quit until they’ve forced the almost comically inelastic rhythms to open up. Over 70 minutes it’s a mite unrelenting. But it never fails to discover some new pocket of energy or beauty in songs you thought you knew inside out, gifting you the chance to hear the source material anew. Hard to think of a better success criteria for a cover set than that. A MINUS
Heems / Lapgan: LAFANDAR
Either side of a too-stoned middle section and its so-so guest features, this is a reminder of Heems' mixtape savvy. Its twelve tracks average just 2:47, with all of them steeped in south Asian soul, but all also coming up just shy of conventional song-form: “Accent” is a Saul Williams intro plus single Heems verse and hook apiece; “Sri Lanka” a two-round eight-bar trade-off with Your Old Droog; “Yo Momma” a short opening verse from Fatboy Sharif followed by a double-length one from Heems. Nonetheless, they’re unmistakably “rapping musics”, even though Heems continues to defy the boxes rap gets intellectualised into. His gift is for referencing freely from his vast sphere of interest—sketching seemingly disconnected parts of an identity too complex for anything neater and leaving you to complete the conceptual leaps. Hence why the “Yo Momma” verse that closes out the album can hop from “Indo-Futuristic retro”, “Bin Laden didn't blow up the projects / I project my feelings through my projects”, and “your arms aren't many enough to box with Shiva / got your family sitting Shiva” to “eat a piece of pizza with Peter Parker in Queens / fuck the queen / white woman with my nani jewellery” and “google the Mughals / Sichuan noodles / Thai Chi voodoo.” A MINUS
Liquid Mike: Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot
Maybe a grown-up Militarie Gun isn't what I wanted after all. It’s more than capable power-pop/pop-punk/power-punk/puwer-ponk, but not necessarily an improvement. * (“Mouse Trap” “USPS”)
Ms. Boogie: The Breakdown
’Sex as danger’ (especially for trans women) given musical form through whisper rapping and icy synths that seem unlikely to sustain interest for long but suffice for a 30-minute debut. * (“Aight Boom” “Build Me Up”)
Morgan Wallen: One Thing At A Time
Of considerable significance to country/trap aesthetics and the hit parade but of little consequence to anything else. ** (“One Thing At A Time” “Neon Star (Country Boy Lullaby)”)