Sudan Archives – Athena
Fabulously original debut by the LA-based artist Brittney Denise Parks who channels her African roots using the traditions of Sudanese violin playing put into loops, mixed with electronica and R&B. She explores the instrument and equipment to great aplomb and sizzling panache, from the pizzicato of Did You Know to distortion and feedback on Pelicans In The Summer, African rhythms and hip hop (with guest D-Eight) on Glorious, and R&B on Confessions. Gloriously innovative and sexy. Out on Stones Throw Records.
Sudan Archives – Glorious
Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Colorado
Young returns for his first Crazy Horse work for seven years on their 50th anniversary and it's his 39th album in all This is best at its most tender moments – the quietly minimal Milky Way, the joyful, surely Daryl Hannah-inspired Eternity, Green Is Blue, and the ballad Olden Days. He also nods, slightly stodgily to LGBTQ rights on Rainbow of Colors and climate change on She Showed Me Love. Ragged Glory this isn't, and the album has something of a stop-start quality, but it has echoes of old glories that also keep alight his ongoing ability to be relevant. Out on Reprise.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Milky Way
Kanye West – Jesus Is King
Many great artists have drawn inspiration from the church. Many grew up with it as an influence - Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Tina Turner – and it helped developed their voice. Others have gone to, or returned to it in their with mixed success – Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Prince – but while there are some great choir voices by the Sunday Service Choir on this album, the trouble with Kanye, whether that is down to mental health issues, a genuine spiritual change, or a cynical new turn in commercial direction, with added James Corden publicity, his role simply does not seem real in this, or indeed is it in any way groundbreaking. This is in the end overwrought plastic gospel, with, as usual only one god in the frame or the subject of attention – Ye himself. Jeez, come on.
Kanye West – Selah
Anna Meredith – Fibs
More genre-mixing now from the 41-year-old Scottish classical composer alongside film music (Eighth Grade) who releases an album of crazed energy and invention to follow up her 2016 debut Varmints. There are high-pitched disco synths on the opener Sawbones morphing into rave and hardcore, going poppy on the next track Inhale Exhale, rave on Calion, soft, sweet singing on Killjoy, then Bump jerks in all kinds of directions, before Moonmooms goes spacey with a violin backing, Limpet is more of a guitar indie track, while Ribbons is a little bit Laurie Anderson. Expect anything and everything. There are no rules on planet Meredith and this what makes it special. Out Moshi Moshi/Black Prince Fury.
Anna Meredith – Paramour
Cigarettes After Sex – Cry
Greg Gonzalez and co's follow-up to the 2017 eponymously titled debut continues in much the same fashion for the US indie band – strong, slow melodies with confessional love and lust stories delivered with whispered, smoky intimacy. This can sometimes be overdone, and the slightly sleazy lyrics lack a certain maturity, but there's no doubting the musical aspect to the songwriting, although their may have, erm, already shot their bolt with the best of it on the debut record. Out on Partisan Records.
Cigarettes After Sex – You're The Only Good Thing In My Life
Rex Orange County – Pony
After 2017's Apricot Princes, Surrey's young rising star Alex O’Connor returns with jaunty, honest bedroom pop with a big record deal, riding a line between quirky and little too much commercial autotune. "I did it again" he opines on the almost too open, opening track – 10/10. From the upbeat Face to Face, which is half-talky super-self-harmonised soul a la Craig David to Pluto Projector with a dash of gospel (watch out Kanye!), to It Gets Better and Never Had the Balls, he seems to be living the dream, and can't to comment upon it. Out on Sony.
Rex Orange County – 10/10
King Princess – Cheap Queen
Debut album from the 20-year-old Brooklyn singer-songwriter Mikaela Straus, whose musical style is understated pop here with tenderness and sensitivity as well as dry humour (“I feel better with my heart out"), but still likes to project through the prism of gender-swapping (see title) transvestite-style and put-on-moustache performance, after her previous singles Pussy is God, and 1950. Here it is more subtle, such with the idea of the secret girlfriend on the hushed Homegirl :“We’re friends at the party / I’ll give you my body at home”. Out on Columbia.
King Princess – Cheap Queen
Black Marble – Bigger Than Life
Eighties-inspired electronic pop about struggling with city life from New Yorker Chris Stewart, who for this third album moved to Los Angeles with an album based on his bus commute to his studio, via the small local shops of Echo Park to the rising glass of the business district, to the desperation of Skid Row. Appealing in a comfortably retro way, reminiscent of early New Order. Out on Sacred Bones.
Black Marble – Bigger Than Life
Amy O – Shell
Gentle, sensitive, homemade guitar and bass pop by Amy Oelsner, based in Bloomington, Indiana, these songs are all about outer and inner boundaries of self grappling with mortality, physical transiency and vulnerability, the concept of home. Out on Winspear.
Amy O – Crushed
Lakou Mizik – HaitiaNola
Wonderful follow-up to their previous album by the Haitian ensemble who interpret the music of New Orleans in their own style. Guests include singers Leyla McCalla and Cyril Neville, and horn-section Soul Rebels, Trombone Shorty, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. The latter's parents fled Haiti during the brutal 1960s regime. This album brims with flavoursome mix, with Creole lyrics the rhythms of Antillean compas and Jamaican reggaeton, with tracks such as Pistach Grye (Salted Peanuts) and a rendition of Iko Iko. Tasty. Out on Cumbancha.
Lakou Mizik + 79rs Gang feat. Régine Chassagne & Pres. Hall Jazz Band - Iko Kreyòl
Sinead O'Brien - A Thing You Call Joy
An unusual single now to round off, by the Irish poet and speaking-singer whose influences include Mark E. Smith of The Fall and writers Frank O’Hara, W.B. Yeats, Joan Didion, Albert Camus. Oddball but strangely beguiling. Out on Chess Club.
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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