Consumer Guide Album

Lost in China [Riverboat, 2017]
I always resist "world music"'s exotica tendency, but on this unannotated compilation of folk revivalists from a nation of 1.4 billion, which I've seldom regretted playing some dozen times as I tried to figure out exactly how good it is, I'm happy enough to be in it for the sound effects as I compute that it's somewhere between pretty good and pretty darn good. My favorite track by far is South City Second Brother's comic "Good Girl," but don't expect more of the same--heartfelt midtempo chants and laments predominate. And beguilingly exotic they are. B+