Consumer Guide: February, 2026

One of the great interpretive singers of our epoch takes on Lou Reed, abstract and impressive amapiano, the most explicitly leftist album in far too long, and a reliable Nashvillian with 11 winners

Thomas Anderson: Letters From the Hermit Kingdom (Out There) By my count (and I may have missed a few), this is the 13th album by the Oklahoman proprietor of Angry Young Grad Student Music, not one of which lacks at least a song or two worth hearing again and some half of which are much better than that. On this one he follows his honey all the way to Paris, not exactly the world's most Anglophilic metropolis, especially if the Anglo at hand comes up with the line "I say merci beaucoup, she says don't you get pretentious." Have I missed an NYC gig of his? I hope not, because I'd be happy to not just see his show but shake has hand even if I haven't made him any kind of star. A MINUS

Armand Hammer: Mercy (Backwoodz Studios) As is only mete, this alt-rap duo comprising Billy Woods and Elucid, whose total IQ I'd estimate in the 300 range, prove it by citing such diverse arcana as "Pinochet," "recidivist," "born again," "Lingala," "swastika," and I could go on. Since they prefer smart to catchy by a wide margin, you may well feel obliged to sit there and try to figure out what they're talking about. Which in its various details will constitute a musical pleasure in its own. B PLUS

Bad Bunny: DeBi TiRAR Mas FOToS (Rimas Entertainment) Dig the attitude, wish I understood the jokes, hope there are some ("Nuevayol," "Baile Inolvidable") ***

Zach Bryan: With Heaven on Top (Belting Bronco) This irrepressibly fluent 29-year-old Navy vet has generated a songbook so vast it claims such adv-adj combos as compliments before anyone starts throwing "garrulous" or "long-winded" at him. Drawn to New York City like few Oklahomans before him, he opens this album with a spoken-word track called "Down, Down Stream" that begins in a none too commodious four-apartment Manhattan house he bought himself. Then it goes on for 25 tracks that'll keep you entertained. A MINUS

Dry Cleaning: Secret Love (4AD) In the end, what distinguishes Florence Shore's lost-and-found poetry of the everyday is simple medium-tempo guitar-bass-drums song structures, accompaniments, or if you prefer just tunes. What's secret yet somehow compelling about the love her lyrics reference and in the end document is that she never goes overboard about it while leaving little if any doubt that nothing else in her experience is so worth singing, murmuring, or sometimes all but whispering about. Not only is it what the music means. It's what life means. B PLUS

Al Green: To Love Somebody (Fat Possum) The four-song EP format proves an ideal wakeup call for one of the great interpretive singers of our epoch. And without giving anything away I'll add that there's not only a duet nailing Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" here but a Velvet Underground follow-up. Right, we all know the man can sing anything. But that's a fine switcheroo nonetheless. A MINUS

Michael Hampton: Into the Public Domain (Sound Mind Records) On this no-vocals solo venture, the longtime P-Funk guitarist and hence Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honoree does not therefore initiate a P-Funk revival. But neither does he hide his axe under a yum-yum tree. Instead, while by no means evoking Charlie Christian or Django Reinhardt, he comes up with his own version of a jazz-rock album. Play loud. A MINUS

Hüsker Dü: 1985: The Miracle Year (Numero Group) A double-CD that documents the flowering of what would briefly but indelibly prove into the grungiest, grandest, hardcorest rock trio ever to endanger the eardrums of an audience just then outgrowing the short-hard-fast-and-don't-forget-catchy thrill of a punk that was running out of torque as it got raggedy around the edges. What's most remarkable about these two concert-length discs—one live front to back, one cherry-picked—is that they're really not grand at all. You could even say they're a bit of a mess. But for sure they're alive—so alive that legend has got to be where they'll end up. A MINUS

Nandipha808: No Vocal Album (Stena Academy) Without claiming anything approaching full comprehension of the polyrhythmic southern South African dance/beat music dubbed amapiano, I hear this iteration as spare and arguably even abstract but by no means therefore subtle much less backgroundy. For me it's just two burned, unannotated CDs my editor sent me that we keep playing around here—good wakeup material for sure, and that applies at four in the afternoon as well as eight in the morning. It's chanted much more than sung, with echo effects part of the deal. Phelimuncasi fans will get the idea soon enough. Indestructible Beat of Soweto fans should bear in mind that few if any would call these tracks songs and also that while they presumably have their fans in Soweto those fans are a long way from their home albeit a lot further from yours. Imposing, unrelenting, and not really what I'd call fun, I've heard fewer more impressive albums in recent memory. A

Nanook: Ilutsinniit Apuussilluta (Atlantic Music, '23) Its only neighborly for me to insist that literally lyrical art-rockers from from Greenland I said Greenland deserve all the support us Trump haters can provide ("Sussa Ilaallutit," "Unikkall Arunnanngilarmi") *

Grant Peeples: Code to Live By (Ping) You want patter? Here's how this Florida veteran begins a spoken-word piece called "The Ledger," which I quote at length to prepare you for the most explicitly leftist album I've come across in far too long. "You don't need to live under Vladimir Putin to recognize the stink of tyranny wafting out of the Oval Office. You Don't need a Ph.D in kleptocracy to know what looting with an American flag pin on a suit lapel looks like. And you don't need to be a criminologist to know that our entire government is now operating like a Mafia syndicate. No, just follow the boots, the bans, the buzzwords, the book burnings, and the body bags. What we're watching isn't chaos, it's choreography—a state-sponsored smash-and-grab with a patriotism decal slapped on the window." Yes, there's more. Buy it all. A

Lucinda Williams: World's Gone Wrong (Highway 20) As even would-be perfectionists like Williams had best figure out, no one hits the bullseye every time ("How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?," "The World's Gone Wrong," "Freedom Speaks") ***

Tommy Womack: Live a Little (Schoolkids) This Kentucky-born Nashvillian has been one of the most reliable songwriters hence singer-songwriters in his cohort for two decades, but never quite as consistently as on this, his ninth album. From his praise of "Speed, Weed and Alcohol" to the bike-riding "Horny Mormon" to the "Funeral Girl" who ferries him to the proceedings in a Mercedes where the leather seats soften his grief, every one of the 11 tracks is pretty much a direct hit, although I admit my attention sharpened with the fifth, which describes and imagines a burg called "Hoboken" I never dreamed was such a dangerous town: "the most populous place in the United States," he warns. But the winner does without laugh lines: "I Guess We're At That Age," which tries to convince God that nobody should die as young as 58. A

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