Consumer Guide: July, 2025

Quiet music that's anything but insubstantial, Chuck D in conversational-philosophical mode, Chuck & Flav in politically conscious mode, and idiosyncratic protest songs about poverty and sexuality.

Backxwash: Only Dust Remains (Grimalkin) Just as a rapper, the Zambian-Canadian trans woman a/k/a Ashanti Mutinta is one of a kind. But not because her medium-tempo delivery is notably fluent or percussive. Fact is, it's a little of both, though I expect its pitch and timbre would present masculine to most new listeners. What it wouldn't present is well-gauged or powerful—there's something approaching an audible agony here that's reinforced by background textures with a density to them. Aside from an almost tossed-in "from the river to the sea," the danger that surfaces is existential rather than political, and while both her music and her affect imply pervasive, imminent social peril, what exactly she proposes to do about a world on the brink is left unsaid. B PLUS

Willi Carlisle: Winged Victory (Signature Sounds) Kansas-born, Arkansas-based Carlisle is the most idiosyncratic folkie protest singer to noodge my recall memory in years. "We Have Fed You All for 1000 Years" he begins before citing the bad TV, frozen food, and conservative neighbors besetting "a house we can't afford" and moving on to the unheard-of stuff best summed up by a lissome mid-LP waltz disconcertingly titled "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears," which at the very least prepares us for "Big Butt Billy," which in turn I betcha is the first folk song if perhaps not talking blues ever to use the word "nonbinary." So right, sexuality is on the table here—almost as much as poverty is. A MINUS

Hayes Carll: We're Only Human (Thirty Tigers) Always good-hearted, occasionally big-brained ("Progress of Man [Bitcoin & Cattle]," "Good People [Thank Me]"); ***

Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon (Def Jam) Even with Chuck taking almost every lead, this isn't oratorical or hortatory enough to qualify as a true Public Enemy "comeback," as they say, and not just because the production is several shades more reflective and relaxed than PE's power beats were designed for. As why shouldn't it be, especially given that the man born Carlton Ridenhour turns 65 on August 1, and though of course he's still Black with a capital B, his philosophical tone is conversational rather than polished, associative rather than rational, paternal rather than authoritarian, humanistic rather than race-proud. "If we can't be allies then let's just be enemies." "Born out of tragedy scorned by survival." "Save the rap world like a lyrical vaccine/With thousands of lit candles, rhetorical ramble." "My body is a temple, so no you can't feel it/I build nations, civilize mankind." "I've been your age/You ain't been mine yet/And don't forget New Gens I love y'all, have a ball." A MINUS

Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. & the Wild Magnolias: Chip Off the Old Block (Strong Place) When in need of hooks, as they definitely are, legacy New Orleans second-liners head up up the river for some soul ("Hard to Handle," "Chip Off the Old Block," "You Let a Good Thing Go Bad"); **

Peter Holsapple: The Face of 68 (Label 51) In case you haven't retained the exact chronology, and there's no shame in that, Holsapple first joined up with fellow dB songsmith Chris Stamey in '79, not '68, and most believe was better for it ("That Kind of Guy," "One for the Book") *

Kadef: Kadef (RR Gems) K is for karma, A is for agape, D is for discernment, E is for enactment, and F is for freedom on this wordily annotated double-LP of Arab-inflected trance music that, for the record, sounds decisively richer and more present on the vinyl they've put up for sale than on the Spotify stream. When I say wordy I'm not kidding except insofar as I'm referring to written language as opposed to blabber—a total of eight LP-jacket-sized pages bearing three smallish-print columns of type, thousands of words all-told. The four pages I got through and the other four I skimmed bear not a single reference to the music they supposedly reference in the course of an unrelenting if less than politically practical attack on economic injustice. Which in an attempt co compensate by pinning down the music proper inspired me to jot down such descriptives as "vivid," "lovely," "detailed," "changeable," "intense," and by no means let me forget "ululating." A MINUS

Adrianne Lenker: Live at Revolution Hall (4AD) As unassuming as she is prolific, Catskills queen Lenker is too delicate and enigmatic for some. But an entranced, occasionally befuddled admirer like me will hear these two putatively off-the-cuff hours of quiet music she recorded to adoring admirers out in Oregon, her sheer charm splits what difference there may be between captivating and compelling. Instrumentation is sparse and some would say undetectable, sidepeople tried-and-true fans more than collaborators, and not all 43 tracks are songs—a few are recitations, even chats. But the changeable, somewhat ramshackle music articulates a personality not just persona only a grump would turn up her or his nose at. There's a sweetness, a modesty, a self-effacing humor to almost every moment of music she performs—and yes, she is performing here, not just expressing herself. Only a grump or a cynic would dismiss her as anything like insubstantial. A

Loveseat: Our Way (Reckless Pedestrian) Happy couple who are house-proud on their own terms and hope the rain stops before the wife's water breaks ("Kiss Me," "The Ugliest House in Town") ***

PinkPantheress: Fancy That (Parlophone) As any boxing fan understands better than I do, there's lightweight and then there's featherweight. But as of her third not very long longplayer, this mere rock fan feels entitled to declare the former Victoria Beverly Walker a musical featherweight. Do I enjoy just about every airy track said longplayer accommodates? Yes. Am I aware PinkPantheress has become a well-regarded-of-sorts songwriter-of-sorts? Yes. Can I therefore tell one irresistibly inconsequential track from the other? Not as far as I recall although the track breaks are discernible. Ur-Prosaic Verse: "You were recommended to me by some people." A MINUS

Grace Potter: Medicine (Hollywood) Produced back in 2008 by none other than T-Bone Burnett for Potter, then and for a while after the lead singer of the proudly Vermont-based Nocturnals, this song collection went unreleased, near as I can tell because the band found its slick professionalism untrue to its homespun ideals. And heard now, it does seem a little dated in its smooth and catchy way. But give it three spins, as I did out of professional courtesy and you might for the hell of it, and notice how happy you are to hear half these songs again—for me, "That Phone" and "Money" at three and four, the propitiatory "Medicine" at seven, the take-that "Make You Cry" at eight, and just to get away from home the highly unpastoral "Paris (Ooh La La)," which makes an admirably enjoyable five out of 10 by me. A MINUS

Public Enemy: Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025 (Enemy) At least one online source I consulted had the label (insofar as that term retains meaningful materiality in a digital world) for the first PE album in five years listed as "Flavor Flav," and I wish it were, not because it would signal that after 35 years the most loudly political hip-hop group has been if not taken over by then somehow passed on to its resident clown but because it implicitly acknowledges they've evolved into old companeros proud to clock dollars as a legendary politically conscious collectivity. "I let 'em talk, I let 'em gossip," renowned and proud of it O.G. Flav scoffs dismissively and while he leaves most of the big ideas to Chuck, it's clear that he enjoys his newfound respectability. Chuck, meanwhile gets a kick out of namechecking both Brian Eno and Kamala Harris in the course of opining that ageism, as he chooses to call it, is "worse then racism" and leaving little doubt that he and his sidekick turned partner are "black millionaires" with both their politics and their careers in the right place. As a proud "sexagenarian," a term Chuck leaves no doubt has zero to do with sex, he's proud to bring "O.G. hip hop to your town" and preach racial awareness as opposed to superiority in the bargain. A MINUS

Dlala Thukzin: 031 Studio Camp 2.0 (Dlala) Over a tireless three quarters of an hour, amapiano-gqom record spinner's groove sometimes shifts, occasionally relaxes, and never stops as he gives Congolese showoffs a lesson demonstrating how music is supposed to move in his neck of the continent ("10 Steps Away," "Mali") ***

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts: Talkin to the Trees (Reprise) Young loves cars so much that way back in 2009 he came up with Fork in the Road, a "domestic green fuel" preachment that like so much of his vast oeuvre was melodic as opposed to catchy. The songs seldom set you humming along in the manner of Tonight's the Night or Rust Never Sleeps, but for a while there many of his albums stuck with you and roused your blood a little. Lately that kind of vitality has dimmed notably, as why shouldn't it—he turns 80 in November. But here he climbs back on the green-car soapbox with some relatively hooky numbers as well as spreading the news that China of all places was taking the lead in the little matter of cars that "won't kill our kids." Inspirational Side Comment: "If you're a fascist then get a Tesla/If it's electric it doesn't matter." Although actually it kind of does, I'd say. A MINUS

And It Don't Stop, July 10, 2025

June 11, 2025

August 13, 2025