Ashley MyBryde: Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville
Peaks with two pairs of uncommonly brilliant scene-songs: three trailer-park neighbours rounding each other up to watch a cheater get his comeuppance is followed by a prayer for a fallen woman by the man she’s coming onto; while two lonely hearts making love (or something more carnal) from ten miles away is followed by a salvation hymn by a weary strip joint singer. Unfortunately for McBryde’s ambition, the individual brilliance of that quartet spikes the “concept” part of her concept album—neither “Lindeville” as a place, nor the interconnectedness of the people in it, have any bearing on how sharply observed or colourfully rendered they are. They’re just terrific songs—line enough of ‘em up and the diorama’ll take care of itself. But as they’re where the great songs end, that makes this to, say, “Hell on Heels” what “Winesburg, Ohio” is to the collected stories of Flannery O’Connor. B PLUS
Heart of the Ghost: Summons
Screeching at purpose and guffawing at chaos, this hectic collab is in step with apparently thriving punk scenes in their resident D.C. and Baltimore. The baleful sax on “Specters” belongs to Jarrett Gilgore, the clicky rhythms on “Communion” to Ian McColm and Luke Stewart. That one’s my favourite. It's also half the album, so it really ought to be good. * (“Communion” “Summons”)
LASS: Bumayé
As neither he or anyone else will ever be Youssou N'Dour, he’s settled for being a smooth purevyor of rumbafied Senegalese crossover pop, borne along by a voice that's a little gritty, a little hoarse, and just as expansive as the oceanic grooves. ** (“Mbélé”, “Gnafélen”, “De Du Tago”)
M.I.A.: MATA
Though I’m disinclined to police the stupid-or-worse contributions musicians make to public discourse, I understand the thinking listener's dilemma—this feels so much like a re-introduction that it's not confusing context for content to ask a) why or b) to whom. A libertarian whacko? A born-again Christian? Or a Hyperpop trailblazer making a ring grab? Problem is, they’re not questions worth pondering while the songs are so epistemologically lacking. Normally, that’d be taken care of by the music, only now Maya Arulpragasam’s sound collages are automatic gestures. And however monstrous the beats provided by Rick Rubin, Skrillex, and Pharrell are, they’re no substitute. Occasionally, she rediscovers her vision: the 100% sustainable Acehnese body rhythms are a distant cousin to “Mango Pickle Down River”; the vimāna-driving “Time Traveller” is a decent metaphor for her boundary pushing, border hopping pursuit of freedom (just don’t think too hard about what that means to her now); and on “MATA LIFE” she gets back to geopolitical plainspeak—“Five six seven I wanna go to heaven / No famine in Yemen / No farmer in ruin.” B MINUS
Open Mike Eagle: Component System with the Auto Reverse
When Mike Eagle declares himself “in a weird place mentally”, he might as well add the Pope’s religious affiliation and a bear’s predilection for sylvan defecation—weird places are what this self-deprecating and deeply analytical forty-one-year-old does. Last time, it was divorce; this time, his anxieties are more existential: climate change, waistline change, no one noticing that billboard has his face on it, the uneasy pairing of the Wu-Tang and Hulu, and his covid crisis in seven words—“self-employed socialist looking for tax breaks”. But the biggest advances are musical. He’s singing more confidently, writing catchier hooks, and—assisted by what in the alt-rap world is a star-studded cast—covering more ground between boom-bap and trippy insularity: Diamond D and Quelle Chris have the baddest beats; Illingsworth the rangiest; Child Actor the most hallucinatory; Madlib the sampliest; kuest1 the dustiest. That takes the pressure off a title concept I don’t expect was a big deal in the first place, but which has been widely misreported as nostalgic. To my ears, the references to cassettes, FM radios, and letters are simply Mike’s way of making a world where “every time I make a choice, I’m a bunch of disjointed data points” more tangible. As he’s never less than uncomfortably honest about the difficulty of keeping hold of his humanity, much less his sanity, it’s a good job he’s as convincing about the rewards: “The cure isn’t in a test tube / It’s the sound of my son belly-laughing in the next room.” A MINUS
Bonnie Raitt: Just Like That…
Still moving at 72 like she did in 1972, Raitt is now the grey-haired yoga teacher putting her class of thirty-year-olds to shame, going from crow to headstand to downward dog (flat heels, no less) without breaking a sweat. She even works some samba in at the end. Singing about romance with unrivalled emotional intelligence, she knows exactly when to crackle, caress, croon, or coo, and the importance of having the hots for her band, especially one that’s capable of reciprocating—Kenny Greenberg meets her sultry looks with saucy licks and matches her reverie on the title track with billowy guitar lines, while Glenn Patscha’s Hammond B3 sketches a midnight of regret on “Blame It On Me”. Eschewing the preciousness of confessional singers, she treats biographical revelation so lightly you might miss it, but it’s there in lines like “Recovery is a fickle beast / Gotta stick to what you know / I'm always riding shotgun baby / Just waiting for you to blow.” I believe they call that maturity. A MINUS
Derek Senn: The Big Five-O
This Californian car salesman turned solo folkie in 2009 when the other half of his husband-and-wife punk duo called time on her music career. The marriage endured, which isn’t surprising given the relationship started with him following her to Argentina to declare his love—romantic globetrotting that’s led him to the same place as most middle-aged middle-class Americans: “this ergonomic chair where my computer resides.” Except on a suitably desultory John Prine tribute, he has a remarkable ability to stick to his chosen topics, most of which are drawn from what, I presume, is a closely-attended Twitter feed. Or maybe he just, you know, reads the papers. He mocks himself for mocking doomsday preppers on “Quarantine”; makes a desperate plea for his most prized freedom on “Don’t Shut Down My Surf Break”; tests the comic limits of bad accents on “Big in Britain”; tests the comic limits of dad jokes on “The Big Five-O”; and hides under the covers on “Vasectomy Waltz”. And then there’s the protest songs: “Texas Legislators” rails against SB8; “Addis Ababa” humanises the cost of the Eritrean war with a bass-playing bank teller in Cleveland; “Sequoia Tree” positions that millennia-old conifer as “a bellwether for whether man can hold it together”; and “Viruses Get Viruses” works up a murderous vengeance against anti-vaxxers. Stitching it together is painstaking word craft, deeply felt vocals, and simple tunes played with quiet fury. His wife may be done with punk, but his spirit lives on. A MINUS
Oliver Sim: Hideous Bastard
Against soundscapes that are uncrowded but no less complex for it, these almost gorgeous, always painfully affecting reflections on living with HIV are Oliver Sim's attempt to set himself free “with radical honesty”. Sometimes, tenderness is too much to take. Other times, even proof he was here won’t overpower the feeling that he wasn't. Always, he’s forced to wear a mask. *** (“Hideous”, “Romance With A Memory”, “Run The Credits”)
Todd Snider: Live: Return of the Storyteller
As carefully constructed story song follows carefully constructed story about a song, the distinction between the two all but disappears, peaking on a near-faultless final run (starting with “Being Outdoors”) in which “Alright Guy” turns into a story about the inventor of Crocs, his private plane and a heckler who won’t stop requesting “Free Bird”, and another where “Where Will I Go” (a story about an unfinished song Snider’s been working on for twenty-five years) turns into “Working On A Song” (a song about the unfinished song Snider’s been working on for twenty-five years) with the addition of a few chords and a minor octave adjustment. Other highlights include the one about Alan Greenspan that forgets to mention Alan Greenspan, and John Prine’s last poem, which consists of him shaking his ass at the audience and walking off stage swinging a watch on a chain. Few songs are better than their album versions, but all are suited to Snider’s gently conversational style and scratchy singing voice. He coughs a lot, too—one more reminder of the life he’s lived, and how much of it he’s packed into his singularly brilliant body of work. A MINUS
Sunny Sweeney: Married Alone
Her first miss in almost a decade isn’t by much, but it's still a long way from the sparky brilliance of “Trophy”. Three or four times, she threatens that this won’t be just another divorce. Only one of those is a Lori McKenna co-write, which might be the problem. ** (“Tie Me Up” “Wasting One On You” “All I Don't Need”)