An Acute Case: 22 October 2023

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Sarah Mary Chadwick: Messages To God
This 39-year-old Kiwi is so uncompromising in her interrogation of narrative that her art can border on utilitarian, including on 2020’s stark and brilliant Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby. So her hook-up with Avalanches guy Tony Epsie is refreshing, if not transformative. While her attitude towards keyboards remains bruising, his atmospheric tweaks lighten and lift songs that obsessively pick things apart. If you still feel drained at the end, that’s how she wants it; “for me fun comes with fuss” is her fundamental philosophy. But get on board with the caterwauling and emotional bloodlust and you’ll find she’s on a hero’s quest for optimism that’s touched by an uneven grace and plenty of laughs, most of them inseparable from the morbidly serious. Ask her what can go wrong and she’ll bang on for hours. But she’ll also have a joke that’ll bring you to your knees, a song to sing when you’re drinking on a Tuesday, and a knack for seeing the beauty scattered around. A MINUS

Doja Cat: Scarlet
I appreciate responses that attend to this 27-year-old flibbertigibbet’s preoccupation with the narrow seam of fame while yes-butting that the proportion of life lived online (especially by slebs) makes that inevitable and that it can’t be all bad if it leads to rhyme strings like “kid-er-neys”, “jealousy”, “remedy”, “Hennesy”, “energy”, “penalties” or slap-downs like “Boys be mad that I don’t fuck incels.” After proving her elite rap skills in a quarter of the runtime, she embarks on a middle section I found too woozy for all of one listen and now find beguiling, brash, lubricious, funny, indolent, honey-dipped, blunt, and effortlessly musical. While that’s mostly down to her metamorphic talents, the music is simpatico, with special mention to the played-backwards “97” and jazz-lite “Often”. Of course she rips other rappers (who doesn’t?) but apart from an uncanny impression of Digable Planets’ Butterfly on “Balut”, only loosely. And whatever her attention-crazed infamy, she’s still a weirdo, name dropping Helga Pataki, pronouncing “shooketh” and “therapy-ist” to fit her rhyme scheme, and declaring her devotion thus: “I wanna gush about you / I wanna be the stubborn crust of barnacles upon you / If you were to become a middle American farmer I'd read up on every vegetable and harvest them around you.” A MINUS

Kah-Lo: Pain/Pleasure
Sans Riton the music tends club generic, but her flow still recalls the laconic brilliance of Azealia Banks, and though I initially felt betrayed when Maddy told me she’s seen it emblazoned on more than one tote bag, “girls just wanna have funds” is still an inspirational hook. ** (“fund$” “GD Woman”)

MIKE / Wiki / The Alchemist: Faith Is a Rock
If Wiki’s Scrappy and MIKE’s Scooby, the mood settings The Alchemist fiddles around with would do well to attain the same level of animation. *** (“Be Realistic” “One More”)

Tracy Nelson: Time Don’t Miss Nobody
While it’s not inaccurate to call this a Tracy Nelson songbook, it could put off listeners unfamiliar with her work half a century ago in/as Mother Earth. So it’s worth stating that newcomers can still easily enjoy this, partly for how it sounds and partly as a kind of living blues history project, which museum goers who’ve cringed through bring-it-to life exhibitions will know isn’t easy. With no sense of fustiness, old saws are recapitulated by old hands. Plus there’s a new one—the title track. In case you mistake its sentiment for hopefulness, it goes like this: "You built yourself a dream house / Your future seems secure / Then some old random Tuesday / The fire is at your door." That fits neatly alongside a Greg McDaniels’ 1966 protest song that goes: "Unreal values / Crass distortion / Unwed mothers need abortion.” Which Nelson slyly updates with: “Old white men done really run amuck.” Naturally, at 78-years-old her contralto’s a tad constricted. But she still possesses rare poise and power. And more importantly, rhythm; an abundance of it. Amply accommodated, impeccably relaxed, exquisitely arranged. A MINUS

Alogte Oho & His Sounds Of Joy: O Yinne!
Beyond the standard white-European-in-Accra-marketplace discovery story, the distinguishing feature is how much this sounds like is could’ve come from the golden age of highlife, which is what we’ll call it even if the press pack insists it’s Frafra gospel. Regional charm, sebenes you hadn’t noticed you were in the middle of, and at least one berserk sax solo. ** (“This Is Bolga!” “Doose Mam”)

Olivia Rodrigo: GUTS
The scuttlebutt last time was she’s derivative, which I doubted then and don’t buy at all now. This is an Olivia Rodrigo album—as definitively its own thing as a Taylor Swift or Hole or, I dunno, Sleater-Kinney album. If there’s a concept, it’s how does she improve on SOUR? Which is fine, because SOUR barely had a concept, either. Instead, here are 12 more unmatched songs on the peccadilloes of adolescence, exploded to world historic proportions. Boys, sigh. But also, boys, I’ve been working on my uppercut. The hormones are seismic, but nothing’s bigger than her personality, which is never more magnetic than when she invokes her gift as an all-round entertainer by adopting a multitude of bratty and hilarious voices for choruses, asides, and background chatter. That peaks on what we’ll call the punctuation songs, which are probably her best songs ever. On which note, “teenage dream” (as in, “I’m sorry I couldn’t always be your…”) is maybe her best ballad ever. It bookends an album that opens with “all-american bitch” (as in, with perfect all-american hips and perfect all-american lips). Which I guess makes her a conceptualiser after all. A

Speedy Ortiz: Rabbit Rabbit
Too cunning for a kook, too crafty for an eccentric, Sadie Dupuis is simply an original whose ear-naggingly tuneful, restlessly energetic songs take the pinking shears to indie rock same old, same old and make it brand new. Played in a style that evokes organised chaos, this is all dog leg riffs and bungee cord hooks played on guitars that have had the strings rubbed in butter and tied in knots. The lyrics, never less than fascinating, take such huge leaps from one gnomic line to the next that finding a narrative or consistent sentiment is as hopeless as it is thrilling. So thank the hooks for being polite enough to provide the clarity the verses won’t, and Dupuis for a singing style so plaintive and jilted it's clear she’s not deliberately being emotionally evasive—just unusual. Past the halfway point you might start thinking you've had enough, only then come three sweet and sorrowful tunes bookended by two straightforward headbangers, setting you up nicely for round two of the dog leg riffs and bungee cord hooks. A