Consumer Guide: May, 2024

Three (count 'em, three) albums from a universalist, one from a Welsh beatmaker blessed with a silver tongue, the latest from our greatest female pop singer, and jazz's greatest tenor player at 28.

Africatown, AL: Ancestor Sounds (Free Dirt/PM Press) "An album of landmark recordings featuring residents of the Africatown community including descendants from the last slave ship brought to America, the Clotilda" ("First Thing He Did When Freed Was Build a Drum," "Sent to Vietnam, but Never Been to Africa") ***

Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter (Parkwood/Columbia) Not a country album--without too much fuss we've gotten that straight. Just a confidently eclectic pop album with countryish flavorings and countryish provocations that claims and indeed establishes that our greatest female pop singer, who we know is also a pretty darn good songwriter, has a fair claim on that fiefdom. Her songwriting does peter out slightly for the last five or so of 25 (CD!) tracks, but for the most part the impressive variety of these songs only strengthens her not so audacious claim. She sings as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a descendant, an inheritor, and a sexpot. She enlists ever-obliging 90-year-old Willie Nelson, outclassed 28-year-old Post Malone, a sexy Miley Cyrus, a delighted Dolly Parton, and Paul McCartney's "Blackbird" in her quest and gives ample room to 81-year-old special guest Linda Martel, who became the first Black woman to (briefly) crack the Grand Old Opry half a century ago. Epochal? Maybe, maybe not. But a hell of a good record. A

The Handcuffs: Burn the Rails (Pravda) Drummer Brad Elvis Steakley and vocalist Chloe F. Orwell parlay their presumptuous monikers into an indie-rock band that accommodates a durable, sisterly song called "She Ain't No Fluffer" and generates a de facto follow-up called "Let's Name Our Children." That was in 2022. So in 2024 I personally would welcome a follow-up that not only reveals one such name and in the world they deserve generates another one--that rhymes. B PLUS

MIKE/Wiki/The Alchemist: Faith Is a Rock (ALC) His trademark mutter more grumble than mumble, upper-case-as-opposed-to-upper-class rapper MIKE proves a suitable foil for or even corrective to atmospheric beatmaker-cum-concertmaster the Alchemist. But what's striking about both MIKE and Wiki is that they neither brag much or pretend they've got the world at their command--even the one they could easily enough pretend was theirs. They smoke their spliffs or down their 40s and report that both have a way of dulling their minds. They like and respect the women they may lust after and may not. Both the more metaphysical rapper and the more down-to-earth one see themselves as works in progress and are more than halfway to fulfilling their respective ambitions. Which doesn't mean they're anything but dismayed that New York's mayor is a cop they believe with excellent reason isn't half the man either of them is. B PLUS/p>

Pylon Reenactment Society: Magnet Factory (Strolling Bones) By now there's so much less body than in their maximally minimalist youth you wish they'd yell a little, but give them time and the musical shapes do manage to power through unaided ("Fix It," "Educate Me") *

Ren: Sick Boi (The Other Songs) Quick-lipped, self-taught Welsh beatmaker-frontman Ren Gill, whose good little Trick the Fox band was put on the injured list by his long battle with Lyme disease and the "constant wrestling with my mental health" that ensued, is "blessed with a silver tongue" as he "navigates the shadow of the valley of sickness," a rapper whose articulated singsong combines startling clarity with polysyllabic vernacularity. Whether he's rhyming "ready to kill" with "mentally ill," "mine," "minor" and "Simon," or Jesse Owens and Leonard Cohen, "helter skelter" with "Alka-Seltzer" or reminding us that "horses don't even have opposable thumbs," he's not so much fun as impressive or maybe just delightful. I don't recall ever hearing anything much like him. A

Req'd: Dressing Wounds by Candlelight (Saustex) Oakland "dark country rock" perkier than its fabricated subgenre, album moniker brag, or for that matter gnomic song titles, generating tensions you may try to penetrate but never will, so the antijoke's on you ("Sometimes Ain't Never," "Unfuck This World") **

Sonny Rollins: Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (Resonance) There are two jazz perennials at my house: pianist Thelonious Monk is my favorite musical artist except maybe the Beatles, while Carola is almost always glad to hear inexhaustably listenable trumpet titan Miles Davis. So when I compared their Consumer Guide entries to tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins's, I was surprised to find that Rollins scored more A plus albums than either of them: four to Davis's one (Jack Johnson, not 1959's infinitely listenable but pre-CG Kind of Blue, which certainly gets more plays), Monk's two (Ken Burns Jazz and Prestige's Thelonious Monk Trio but not my beloved Misterioso). For Rollins the scorecard begins with the live 1987 G-Man, moves on to 1996's Gary Giddins-informed best-of Silver City, Ken Burns Jazz again, and also includes Rollins's 2008 Road Shows Vol. 1. Yet somehow Rollins never displaced Monk in my personal jazz pantheon, leaving me wondering how and whether to address what is after all merely a three-disc live set documenting nine days in the early post-junkie phase of the 28-year-old tenor titan. But I found myself playing it and playing it again (and again)--it just sounded so good. Structurlly it's bare-bones, with no pianist adding his own harmonic notions, and all three drummers--Pete LaRoca, Joe Harris, and most impressively bebop pioneer Kenny Clarke--texturing and accenting in their own ways. But mostly its jazz's greatest tenor player launching a suzerainty that would last more than half a century. A

Todd Snider: Aimless Records Presents: Viva Satellite (Purple Version) (Aimless) Even if you're a sucker for Snider's off-the-cuff laff-a-minute shtick like me, you never want to be so stoned you believe he brings it off every time ("Once He Finds Us--Purple Version," "Comin' Down--Purple Version," "Godsend--Purple Version," "Double Wide--Purple Version") **

Rosie Tucker: Never Not Never Not Never Not (New Professor '19) Neither irresistibly melodic nor mind-bogglingly eloquent, this 2019 debut album by a then-21-year-old USC music major is dominated by likable love songs more affectionate than impassioned and more provisional than connubial. There's a decency and wonderment here that's both commonplace and touching. If you regard enduring romantic affection as a worthy goal for humans on the brink of adulthood, you'll root for both principals to get past the disconnects while accepting that sometimes love just doesn't last and that's the way it is. A MINUS

Rosie Tucker: Sucker Supreme (Epitaph '21) It's hard to understand why Tucker's first real label followed its both infatuated and perceptive bio by dropping her. Not punk enough, maybe? Did that frog Tucker brought to work shit on the floor? Because just in terms of what normal people call songcraft, which I should specify needn't always guarantee coherent/incisive/eloquent lyrics, the 14 tracks here simply never fade to gray. Topics discussed include trash compactors, wheelbarrows on the roof, Doritos, habanera peppers, Diet Coke, ambrosia with Cool Whip, tadpoles denied the next level, bats vs. fireflies, the tooth fairy, shortness of breath, sexual tension, the late Alice Coltrane, at least one grandma, and no more Louisville Slugger beside the bed. A

Rosie Tucker: Utopia Now! (Sentimental '24) At 26, Tucker has the lineaments of a mature young adult with a conscience that remains close at hand. Even the love songs, which pop up often if you keep your ears clean, come with the proviso "I'm writing in America, a country whose idea of freedom depends on the subjugation of the many." Following one called "All My Exes Live in Vortexes" with one called "Gil Scott Albatross" (cf. Gil Scott-Heron of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised fame), always ready for "a staring contest with the evil eye," Tucker tells us that "when there's pain you still got nerve," that "eternal life is the intersection of the line of time and the plane of now," that even "doing your best you regress to the mean," and that "For my enemies I want nothing but unending bliss." Some kind of universalist for sure, they have the right to plural pronouns if anymany does. A MINUS

Wan Fambul: One Family Many Voices . . . (Catalyst for Peace '11) Compiling artists from conflict zones worldwide in support of an international peace-building organization based in tiny, embattled Sierra Leone, this 14-track compilation maintains a surprisingly but not therefore hypocritically cheerful yet thoughtful tone. American singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman's "Guttersnipe" is a special standout and internationalist Tuareg guitarist Bombino contributes what functions as a typically sweet introduction to one by the Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars. Title: "Global Threat." A MINUS [link]

And It Don't Stop, May 15, 2024

April 12, 2024

June 12, 2024