Consumer Guide: February, 2025

A smart and sexy woman's frustrating quest for true love, a polyrhythmic meeting of Peruvian electronica and Congolese guitar, mean jokes and next-level feminism, and gnomic wisecracks postpunk style.

Amadou & Mariam: La Vie Est Belle (Because) Not counting none other than Youssou N'Dour, the now 70- and 65-year old "blind couple of Mali" gathered more international plaudits than any Afropop act of their generation. Their most prestigious honor was nabbing Welcome to Mali's 2010 Contemporary World Music Grammy nomination, when they were somehow outpaced by, oy, Bela Fleck. But to say that I own five of their earlier albums isn't to claim I play them much—their rhythms are more reliable than uplifting. Yet when this two-LP compilation that includes many songs I already own showed up in the mail, multiple replays came easily enough, which isn't to assume an all-new album can't be in their future. Upful, varied, and well-practiced, with a big tone and a fondness for decorative distortion, their vie remains sufficiently belle to argue convincingly that they needn't slow to a stop quite yet. A MINUS

Amyl and the Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness (ATO) Having followed a debut Australian bizzers voted their vast island nation's 2019's Album of the Year with 2021's near-classic power-bratty Comfort to Me, Amy Taylor—the Sniffers being three men I truly hope she's not addressing in any of these songs—runs the gamut from "keep jerkin' on your squirter" to "I was in L.A. shaking my shit/While you were down in Melbourne saying 'Fuck that bitch'," and believe me, it goes on. Moment of triumph: "Me and the girls are drunk at the airport/Can you believe it, it's open bar." Welcome last words: "I know my worth, I'm not the worst you told me once I was/I cannot do this anymore, I gotta hit the buzz." B PLUS

Robert Sarazin Blake: Let the Longing Run Wild & Free (Same Room) As the well-situated lead track puts it: "Black and brown/Chocalate and molasses/Pink and cream/All in sunglasses" ("New York City/Brooklyn Bridge," "Stayed") ***

Sabrina Carpenter: Short 'N' Sweet (Island) Maybe because I've been married forever, I found it hard time to get into this widely respected, fetchingly tuneful, consistently articulate pop album with a beautiful blonde looking over her naked shoulder on the cover. But I've made my breakthrough. Not only is Short 'N' Sweet intelligent and enjoyable, it has a worthy theme—a smart and sexy woman's frustrating quest for true love, as in "Guess I'll end this life alone. . . /All the douchebags in my phone/Play em like a slot machine/If they're winning I'm just losing." Really, I grant how often her "You're so dumb and poetic. It's just what I fall for, I like the aesthetic" is doomed to lead to his—and here I'll interject my own interpretation—"You're so horny and hooky/Just what I look for when I'm hunting new nookie." But because she's laid some excellent groundwork, allow me to state my belief that not every human male is doomed by the wrong chromosomes to be the kind of dickhead she's come to know too well. So I wish her a best I truly hope is yet to come. A MINUS

Manu Chao: Viva Tu (Because) The French-Spanish Chao never goes out of style around our house, where his gentle 2007 Radiolina proved such a multicultural easy-listening standard that 2008's Baionarena escaped my notice and his first album in the subsequent 16 years got stuck in the not-quite-enough-of-the-same-thing slot. Only then I bore down and realized that Chao had switched gears sonically. Where before his gentle gestalt was so soft-edged it could make critical praisewords out of adjectives like hazy and muzzy, here the lyrics sound alert and enunciated insofar as an English speaker can tell—"Viva Tu," that must mean keep living or thereabouts, and it's followed by one whose title comes in the aforementioned English: "Heaven's Bad Day," as in "There is no devil to visit my heavens today." Tempos are somewhat speedier, too, and if that makes it more rock and roll let's hope not. We've got plenty of that and not too much Manu Chao at all. Just the thing to blot the noise out of your mind for a spell. A MINUS

Dingonek Street Band: Primal Economics (Accurate '18) Led by well-schooled trumpeter Bobby Spellman, who released it in 2018 to acclaim if not renown, this no-vocals avant-second-line album is still available from Amazon and let's hope less Trumpy vendors. I've enjoyed it every time it distinguished itself from other uncommercial ventures I don't have the heart to add to what I laughably call the sell pile. There's plenty of wise-ass in a second line where three different saxophonists say "Me? Arty? Sure I have chops but not so's they stop me from fooling around." Special thanks to Josiah Reibstein for playing bass on his tuba. A MINUS

El Khat: Saadia Jefferson (Batov) Yemeni-Israeli composer-plus Eyal El Wahab wants the world to know not just that we are all one but that that singularity can sound pretty darn Arab when it wants to ("Ptiha," "Al Ard' Amamayk") ***

Future & Metro Boomin': We Don't Trust You (Republic) Claustrophobia meets anorgasmia in a depressing album we can only hope proves trap-rap's slogged-out apogee-in-reverse ("Like That," "Magic Don Juan [Princess Diana]") *

Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko (Nyege Nyege Tapes) The delicate textures of this polyrhythmic collab between arty-cum-experimental Peruvian electronica gal Hop and peripatetic-cum-adventurous Congolese soukousish guitar guy Bakorta has what for me is almost an MJQ vibe, which is to worry that it's short on texture not to say body not to say blood and guts. But for just that reason it's also audacious and delightful. There's considerable sprezzatura here, light-hearted in the face of a future even grimmer than the one that's right now sticking its tongue out at you and me. A MINUS

Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive (Nonesuch) I only started listening to Bronx-raised Alynda Segarra's so-called Americana in 2017, a decade and six albums into their band's career, so I can't swear this autobiographical lookback is their best work. But I can say that it's the most fetchingly songful of the band's three albums in that span and that although our lifepaths were very different, it brought back my 15,000-mile hitchhiking trek of 50 years earlier, not in its details—my adventures were devoid of both sex and alcohol—but its exploratory mood. Its lyrics evoke and embody the kind of retrospectively narrative mood you seldom encounter in such projects. And for that reason alone it stands out. A MINUS

Jax: Dear Joe, (Atlantic) Just 28, she not only sounds girlish and cynical at the same time but makes as clear as her commitment to maintaining an unprecedented balance of mean jokes, lovelorn plaints, and next-level feminism that coexists with a comic, catchy, credible autobiography for art's sake. The girlish part is embodied by a soprano so pure you'll be surprised how worldly-wise it turns out to be and even more surprised that its wisdom comes with yucks that provide both an edge to and a respite from her cynicism. Which damn right is earned. It can be brittle and/or thin, I admit. But it's also utterly original. And it closes with one called "Victoria's Secret," which is that "She's an old man in Ohio/Making money off of girls like me." A

Nobro: Set Your Pussy Free (Dine Alone) The queenpin of this long-running all-female Montreal threesome-then-foursome is frontwoman and sole remaining original member Kathryn McCaughey, who understands that postpunk is the natural home of the gnomic wisecrack. If "Delete Delete Delete" begins "I don't wanna be on the internet" and "I Don't Feel Like It" begins "I went to the other side of the world just to drink some snake blood," of course "Saved up and bought myself a bass" is how you kick off "Where My Girls At." A MINUS

Jack White: No Name (Third Man) OK, no review either ("That's How I'm Feeling," "Archbishop Harold Holmes") *

And It Don't Stop, February 12, 2025

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March 12, 2025