An Acute Case: 7 July 2023

Nashville atones for Morgan Wallen

Entoto Band: Entoto Band
Dutch axeman Joep Pelt was making a radio documentary on Ethiopian music when he bumped into grand poobah of the same Francis Falceto, probably got his mind blown, and conceived this collab, which pairs his regular keyb and sticks guys with Eritrean Amanyal ‘Million’ Tewelde and Ethiopian Helen Mengetsu. As both the latter are members of their country’s diasporas in Netherlands, and none of the players specialise in the 60s Ethiojazz they sorta revive, there are doubts about authenticity. But as Pelt says, the soul of the note is more important than the right note; and as I say, those are the wages of sorta revivalism. The shared vocals express a rigid-fluid/masculine-feminine dynamic, with Tewelde the urbane master of ceremonies and ex-circus singer Mengetsu bringing the exotica. After squeezing everything out of the Ethiojazz tube of toothpaste, they bring out flashier products: liberal guitar distorsh, synth-aerophone to goose the sax, multi-tracked Roland basslines to complicate the pulse. The varieties in tone and texture do enough to enhance pleasures that might otherwise leave you feeling like a cheap date. Instead, it’s forty minutes of simple elevation. B PLUS

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Weathervanes
Where That Nashville Sound was a political lightning rod of front-to-back showstoppers and Reunions a return to 10-song simplicity and humility, this is overextended by design. No unifying concept, just an hours’ worth of character studies rendered with precision and delivered with gusto. Most function as one half of a dialogue. Yet such is Isbell’s gift for portraiture that the other party often comes through as vividly as the speaker. Blessed with enough perspective to see their lives from the outside without stretching credibility, all are damaged by self-destructive urges measured in fleeting moments and entire lifetimes. Most, one way or another, contemplate the opener’s question: “What's the difference in a breakdown and a breakthrough?" Getting this writerliness over the line is a sound as dense as the world building is literary. Having politely developed into what you could call world beating, the band follows brushed rhythm with beautiful melody in a manner that’s almost spontaneous—acoustic leads, electric thickens, percussion underscores nuance, fiddle creates its own. It’s jammier and less visceral than they’re capable of, but it suits Isbell’s kindly voice, which you could only slightly less confidently call world beating. A MINUS

Jelly Roll: Whitsitt Chapel
38-year-old rapper-turned-surprise country star Jason Bradley DeFord estimates he’s been to the drug-related funerals of thirty friends, and one pass at this album should be enough to convince you he’s lucky not to be in their number. Though it’s not easy to plot his codeine, cocaine, Xanax, and alcohol addictions and multiple incarcerations (including one for a violent offence committed aged 14 that, due to Tennessee laws, means he still can’t vote, volunteer, or travel without severe restrictions), what matters is he knows whereof he speaks, and that he does so with bracing honesty. The conceptual neatness of opening with a dive bar Sunday sermon and finishing hungover in a church pew would be a bullseye even if it didn’t mean anything. Here, it not only attests to songwriting chops honed by Nashville’s brightest (McBryde, Lambert) and dumbest (HARDY), but an ability to unpack paradoxes with startling clarity. Not least, that of an imperfect man beset by a perfectionism he exerts all over these lean, muscular, and never less than riveting songs. From the fire and brimstone guitar attack of “Halfway to Hell” and “The Lost” to the judicious trap beats of “Church” and “Unlive” to the aching sincerity of “Save Me” and “She”, this is demotic in a way few pop records ever manage. A testament to the redemptive power of christ and butt rock that doesn’t waste a note, a word, or a second chance. A

Janelle Monáe: The Age of Pleasure
This genre-delinquent 37-year-old has never wanted for gumption, but for most of her career she’s struggled to resolve the tension in straightforward songs bound by intractable frameworks. After making progress on Dirty Computer, she’s had “several epiphanies over some breakfast at Tiffany’s”, undergone an aqueous transformation from horny cyborg to horny enby (pronouns: they/them, she/her, and “free-ass motherfucker”), called it quits on the whole gambit, and just made a vibes album. Only by some happy accident it’s also a songs album. The structures might not conform to type, but by the end of each track you’ve been hit with the full verse-chorus experience, while the sum has a flow all of its own—one that never stops. Think RENNAISANCE on holiday, with the first break of any kind coming just after the obligatory Grace Jones cameo at track six. She’s more cordial than Beyonce, though, and wittier too, with the laughs including “I'm looking at a thousand versions of myself and they're all fly as fuck”, the drunken piano on “Only Have Eyes 42”, a play on “haute”/”hot” I find inordinately funny, and a definition of bi that consists of housing toy boys and girls on different coasts. A MINUS

Phiik & Lungs: Another Planet 4
Two rappers with long vocabularies extend one flow apiece over barely-there loops of cartoons, arcade machines, vacuum cleaners, and karaoke as heard from outside, and sustain interest for longer than you'd think. * (“When I Needed Someone” “Don Quixote” “She Could”)

PONY: Velveteen
Peppy Canadian trio with 90’s obsession, tasty double guitar attack, and lead singer who voices (improbably) Jazz Hooves in My Little Pony don’t develop their ideas beyond one killer line per song, but more often than not have the good sense to make it the hook. *** (“Sucker Punch” “Who’s Calling” “Did It Again”)

The Tubs: Dead Meat
All four Tubs belong to a group of ten versatile musicians who rotate between the line-ups of six bands; a boho life that’d sound utopian if it wasn’t symptomatic of the unprofitability of an underfunded arts scene that, for these Cardiff natives, has forced them to live in deserted police stations and asylums across London. Those experiences haven’t helped singer "O" Williams with mental health which, on record, gets mixed up with his romantic urges. After falling back in love with the person he’s loved forever, he pisses it up the wall, condemns himself as a worm, boot licker, and sychophant, calls himself a pain in the arse for, er, having a manic episode, and discovers his love is unrequited in the plainest terms: “You are clearly quite bored.” All of which probably makes for grim reading. So note well: it sounds like a total joy. Perhaps not unrelated to the exigencies of living hard up, their musical boundaries are wildly porous, with everything from Richard Thompson’s muted yowl, Bryan Ferry’s comic warble, the urgency of punk, and the intricacies of folk converging for nine songs that’d probably run away from them if they weren’t cockahoop for hooks. And then there’s their image. From the terrible name to the worse album art and godawful dress sense, everything says this is a joke. And they’re certainly funny. Only not like that. It’s an oddness that feels quintessentially British in its datedness. There’s every chance this is just their latest rotation and they’ll vanish as quickly as they appeared. If so, at least they captured lightning in a bottle once. A MINUS

U.S. Girls: Bless This Mess
With an opener referencing Greek mythology and a title sentiment uttered by god, Meg Remy’s thinking big, and while she’s not as funk-literate as she is literature-literate, the clarity of her ideas make the songs move regardless. “No way this is a date / My screen is not your face” is her pithy take on online dating; “Goodbye history / Why don't we let it be a mystery” her pithy take on… epistemology? ** (“Screen Face” “Futures Bet” “So Typically Now”)