Consumer Guide: January, 2024

Brisk takedowns of Tucker Carlson and Jeff Bezos alongside shoplifting advice; hip-hop with undaunted flow and hip-hop with adult anxieties; and indomitable riffing courtesy of Detroit punks.

Bar Italia: The Twits (Matador) Murmuring, emoting, stumbling, and tiptoeing toward an adulthood with room for love if not necessarily stability in it ("My Little Tony," "Twist") ***

Blondshell: Blondshell (Partisan) NYC born-and-raised Sabrina Mae Teitelbaum is a queer-identified singer-songwriter disinclined to get too binary about it. As of this album she lives with a boyfriend in East L.A. and specializes in plain love songs chocked with unusual interpersonal details. In "Salad" she ponders poisoning an abuser. "The sex is almost always bad" in one called "Sepsis" but she can't help loving him anyway. In "Sober Together" she hangs in there for a partner who's falling off the wagon. In "Kiss City" her "kink is when you tell me you think I'm pretty." Gets around, does Sabrina Mae. And thinks about it too. A MINUS

Bob Vylan: Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life (Ghost Theatre) British-Jamaican grime-punk duo keep the tone militant and the groove hardcore whether rapping or rocking ("Wicked and Bad," "He Sold Guns") **

Danny Brown: Quaranta (Warp) For sheer artistic grace and reach--flow, clarity, character, presence, verbal wit, verbal command--long-paroled 42-year-old ex-dealer Brown has few true rivals anywhere in hip-hop. But if you doubt he's feeling not just his age but his existential limitations, ask yourself why he called his seventh album since 2010 "forty" (in Italian, not Spanish, where it would be "cuarenta"). Buried in this swift verbiage are the kind of adult anxieties hip-hoppers never cop to, such as marriages floundering and two-bedroom apartments going for three grand a month. The most revealing and also the cleverest is "Celibate": "I used to sell a bit/But I don't fuck around no more/ I'm celibate/Had me trapped in that cell a bit/Locked up with some pimps told me 'Sell a bitch.'" Which I'm of course relieved he seems disinclined to do. A MINUS

Hamell on Trial: Bring the Kids (Saustex) Hamell's physical of choice for his also downloadable 17th album is a vinyl LP with all music credited to his Roland VS-880 that readily accommodates four 8x11 pages of readable lyrics, which with this guy always come in handy not because he ever muffles a word but because there are so many of them. In addition to brisk takedowns of Tucker Carlson and Jeff Bezos he alerts Christians to the theology of karma as opposed to heaven, dreams of tickling the ivories like Monk and Jerry Lee, proffers shoplifting advice to moms with mouths to feed, longs to hear an ex's "I love you," hopes some "naughty naughty girl" drunk-dials him, abbreviates "Nazi killer girl gangs" to "NKGG," is told how many riot grrrls are also rape victims, and that ain't all. The closer is named for departed sound man Johnny Rydell. Its key lyric goes "1-800-273-8255," which Hamell wants you to remember is the suicide hotline and my editor informs me has been boiled down to 988 in case you're in a hurry, as you should be. A

PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying (Partisan) Based on Orlam, the 54-year-old Harvey's book-length poem in the English of the southern county of Dorsetshire, where "wordle" means world and "wildermist" means steam on a window, this album is pure musical switcheroo. With sweetness aforethought, Harvey's piping soprano departs radically from the blues-soaked shout that was her trademark from 1993's Rid of Me to 2000's Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea and beyond. I can imagine working out its meanings sometime. But even in my pitiful ignorance I can attest that while the music here is pretty quiet, its principles stand firm enough to make me hope I'll someday grok what the words boil down to. B PLUS

Sofia Kourtesis: Madres (Ninja Tune) Berlin-based Peruvian DJ-producer fashions unusually comfortable house music--for your living room, even, although figure hers is probably fancier ("Madres," "Estación Esperanza") *

Memphis LK: True Love and Its Consequences (Dot Dash) Cooing and murmuring over light-footed Ableton tracks she creates herself, Melbourne DJ's breathy groove is sufficient unto the evening thereof ("Black and Blue," "Bad for Me") **

Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday 2 (Young Money/Republic) I'm not sorry I sent Amazon 14 bucks for what turns out to be a 10-song CD with unreadable track listings that many report is better in its longer streamable and downloadable version. Musically, there is no more pleasurable female rapper, and while I wouldn't claim her first album since 2018 is on a par with Queen or The Pinkprint, it definitely adds to what we'll just call her oeuvre if it's OK with you. The pleasure she takes in her undaunted flow and soft yet flawless diction and the pride she takes in her opthamologically challenged young daughter are almost enough to tempt me not to mention her unrelinquished claim that some Covid vaccine or other left a cousin of hers impotent. So now I dare you to tell me how old she is without looking it up. Just short of 50 is the answer. Wow. A MINUS

Native Soul: Teenage Dreams (Awesome Tapes From Africa '21) The DJ Maphorisa and DJ Black Low amapiano albums I availed myself of in 2021--I'm sure there've been plenty more South African electrodance albums since, but cut me some slack, OK?--thrummed so steadily and vocalized so matter-of-factly that while part of me found them compelling another part didn't feel any special need to enlarge my stock. But two years later I tripped over this not dissimilar album and found the relatively unkempt drums and wider range of electro effects exactly suited the degree of further marginal differentiation insatiable sonic dabblers like me freshen their ear-mind cocktails with. A MINUS

Pony: Velveteen (Take This to Heart) Thirty-one-year-old Torontonian alt-rocker Sam Bielanski is not only pretty and smart but writes songs that are both and sings them like she knows it. The memorable tunes are easily negotiable, the lyrics concise and credible if too often frustrated--so much so they make you wonder whether she's too eager, too demanding, or, more likely as I calculate the demographics, a well-meaning mark who has trouble distinguishing between male confidence and male chauvinism. That's sure the way one called "Sucker Punch" makes it seem, although without ever suggesting that he literally hit her even if catching her when she fell proved beyond his capabilities. Inspirational Verse insofar as it's in control verbally: "My boyfriend is dead/I met him when I moved into a haunted house/Lingering in bed/It's all his fault I turned into a ghost." A MINUS

Shabazz Palaces: Robed in Rareness (Sub Pop) It's been three decades since Ishmael Butler a/k/a Palaceer Lazaro vacated his gender-neutral musical planet, and though the textural sonics and laid-back beats of his musical concept remain digable, Ladybug is sorely missed in the content department ("Binoculars," "Woke Up in a Dream") ***

Todd Snider: Crank It, We're Doomed (Aimless/Thirty Tigers) About half of these 15 old songs have surfaced since Snider decided they didn't cohere into an album circa 2008, a few--the stoned Dock Ellis tribute "America's Favorite Pastime," say, or the stoned anti-bullying preachment "The War on Terror"--as what his devoted fanbase would regard as beloved classics if that wasn't too corny to suit them. But to quote the structurally climactic "Slim Chance Is Still a Chance," "You don't necessarily have to pay the fiddler to dance." B PLUS

Tyvek: Overground (Ginkgo) From what I read, this is the seventh studio album albeit first in seven years from a Detroit punk unit not in my recall memory, and at this historical moment does its indomitable riffing sound fresh. Eight of 11 songs with titles like "What Were We Thinking" and "Going Through My Things" are two minutes or less; they encounter firehoses, U-Hauls, delivery handbooks from the post office. Eventually, however, the seven-minute closer "Overground" feels duty bound to advise us that there's "no point going underground" even if "the nation-state makes liars of us all." None of which is as glum as it might be because the jangling guitars and crashing cymbals remain the kind of kick in the ass we can always use. A MINUS

And It Don't Stop, January 11, 2024

December 13, 2023

February 14, 2024