Expert Witness: April 2019

Link: Stella Donnelly / Sharon Van Etten / Jenny Lewis / Sir Babygirl / Girls on Grass

Stella Donnelly: Beware of the Dogs (Secretly Canadian) In plain English and unassuming soprano, a musical encyclopedia of assholes, all male not just because she's female but because assholes generally are. Yes there are full-on predators--the rich prick with his dick out and the boy-will-be-boy who knows why she wears her shirt so low oh yes he does. But most are more ordinary--the intimidator, the reckless driver, the coke-snorter, the one-percenter, the big shot wishing she'd drop the attitude, the lunch date gabbing about himself, the feckless no-show, the guy who was never home enough, the guy she did her best to love, the guy whose baby she doesn't want, the guy she misses even now. Some ladies do actually love outlaws, and too often they get what they put in for. But most women are just looking for an interesting man who'll respect her and stick around. These do exist in some quantity, I believe. But as it is written, they can be hard to find. A MINUS

Sharon Van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow (Jagjaguwar) Van Etten's big voice, controlled tempos, and dramatic aura have never tempted me to enter her world. But from the attention-getting opener--delivered with a modicum of emotion and forethought, "Sitting at the bar, I told you everything/You said, 'Holy shit, you almost died'" should get any listener with a heart to the end of the quatrain--I found myself hooked on her first album since 2014, which fans agree is her best without coming together on why. I chalk up my own interest to its diminished drama. If the tales here still tend toward screwed-up relationships and past misadventures rather than expanding on the cover photo of her two-year-old perched on a hilariously messy living room rug, so be it. She'll get there eventually. A MINUS

Jenny Lewis: On the Line (Warner Bros.) The rare 21st-century singer-songwriter whose level of craft renders her good enough for 76-year-old master drummer Jim Keltner loses the spring in her step that made her so 21st-century by proving it. ("On the Line," "Rabbit Hole," "Dogwood") ***

Sir Babygirl: Crush on You (Father/Daughter) Lesbian hardcore-punk grad's synthed-up teenpop lovesongs--so fake they're funny and so shiny they squeak. ("Cheerleader," "Flirting With Her") **

Girls on Grass: Dirty Power (self-released) "Left my man for a woman who looks like Aimee Mann/We made out in the can" plus "Because Capitalism" plus Del-Lords connection minus sings flat minus sings flat some more. ("Down at the Bottom," "John Doe") *

Link: Salif Keita / Hama Sankare / Gato Preto / Bombino

Salif Keita: Un Autre Blanc (Believe/Naive) Keita, who turns 70 in August, hasn't released an album since 2010 and may never make another. But his voice remains a startling thing, and this grabbed me the moment he launched a wordless shout through a female chorus half a minute in. Then he kept it up for an hour--warm here, intense there, surprisingly mellow for his age whether gruff or sweet. Beyond the ongoing miracle that is Youssou N'Dour, I haven't heard a West African vocal showcase to compare since Keita's own 1999 album Papa, and this is better. "Were Were" is designed to grab you as it did me, and two other standouts feature guests--Angelique Kidjo adding sugar to "Itarafo," where Parisian rapper MHD also takes a verse, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo doing what comes with practice practice practice on the blatantly AutoTuned "Ngamale." But that ain't all--not a track falters. So what got him going? Although a title that translates "another white" indicates that he's speaking out for his fellow albinos, still oppressed as freaks or worse in many African cultures, the lyrics his label sent me are standard sincere African humanism. I'm not even sure how many songs are in Bambara and how many in French. But I am sure that relistening in pursuit of this riddle has been no burden. A MINUS

Hama Sankare: Ballébé (Clermont Music) Sankare is a calabash specialist in his fifties who's added crucial percussion to many Malian records without ever taking the lead. Given his deep, precise baritone and conceptual reach, this was probably a loss, although you could also say he waited until he was ready, because his debut collection never falters. The steel guitars of folk-scene veteran Cindy Cashdollar add alien colors that fit right in, but the sure shot is the lead "Middo Wara," remixed to highlight loops and such by electronic wizard David Harrow and then reremixed in a slightly longer, even more striking all-instrumental mix toward the album's end. Despite the package's brief English-language summaries, I do find myself wondering what this manifestly thoughtful, resonantly tender singer is telling Bambara speakers--he sings with such distinction that I'd like a chance to feel the full force of his message. But this is the kind of African record so musically deft that such niceties end up not mattering much. A MINUS

Hama Sankare: Niafunké (Clermont Music) Exclusively Malian in both production and personnel, Sankare's second album bears his subtle stamp without matching the bite or power of his debut. In both sound and trot all the songs seem strictly moralistic and hortatory. True, "Remobe" ("Development starts with agriculture") is more upbeat with a livelier solo than the solemn "Tiega Mali" ("Today Mali suffers--killings, banditry--we are tearing each other apart"). But though I can imagine playing "Tiega Mali" if something like the Bamako Radisson Blu attack happened again, as I hope against hope it never does, the likes of "Remobe," fine and even fun though they are, has less apparent use value at this distance. B PLUS

Gato Preto: Tempo (Unique) Mozambican frontwoman meets Ghanaian DJ in Düsseldorf, where they they concoct danceable, Latin-sounding pan-African protest music whose politics will hit Anglophones hardest with the album's very first words: "La luta continua" ("Feitiço," "Dia D") ***

Bombino: Deran (Partisan) I'm sorry for his sake that Nonesuch dropped the most crossed-over desert guitarist, but glad for ours that he's put aside reggae feel-good and brought what he knows best back home ("Deran Deran Alkheir," "Tehigren") ***

Link: 6lack / Khalid / Kyle / Brockhampton / Fat Tony

6lack: East Atlanta Love Letter (LVRN/Interscope) The only rapper ever to snugli his daughter on his CD cover starts his second album raunchy and then, with moral suasion aforethought, gets over it. "No shit, I treat my dick like a loaded gun/Point that shit away, these hoes gonna blow what comes," goes track two, and for a while he wonders whether his girl loves him enough to warrant giving that up. But over 14 tuneful R&B-raps, the answer is a yes so convincing that not only do Khalid and J. Cole shore up his slow songs but Future and Offset throw in a rhyme or two. The convincers, however, are the three women who get their say. There's Tierra Whack: "Dick is a distraction." There's LightSkinKeisha: "He ain't gonna fuck with me sometimes, he gon' fuck with me all motherfucking times, period." And best of all there's the empathetic Mereba: "You were never taught how to say loving things and caring things/You were just taught what had to be said." A MINUS

Khalid: Free Spirit (RCA) Stuck with the impossible task of maintaining the matter-of-fact candor that made his debut a teenpop milestone, the double-platinum 21-year-old is too smart to try--and also too decent to sink to the male entitlement and wages-of-fame angst Biebs and so forth fobbed off on their legions. Right, he's not only getting laid and enjoying his new house in Encino, he's also having trouble adjusting to success. Some might even call him anxious. But he retains the gift of expressing his feelings in songs that cut star-time inevitabilities down to human scale. So however beyond us his privileges and woes may be, we at least feel we share a species with the guy--truisms like "Couldn't have known it would ever be this hard," "I didn't text you because I was workin'," and "If the love feels good it'll work out" are hardly exclusive to the rich and famous. Note, however, that because Khalid now enjoys access to pricier musical materials than when he was in high school, the hooks pack more texture than tune, making this the rare album that comes fully into its own when you up the volume. A MINUS

Kyle: Light of Mine (Independently Popular/Atlantic) Best innocent act in r&b, with girlish female cameos nailing two fetching numbers. ("Ikuyo," "Games") ***

Khalid: Suncity (RCA) In seven engaging-to-amorphous tracks but only five songs, hitmaking teen tries to figure out not life, not love, just what's left for him to say about them. ("Suncity," "Saturday Nights") ***

Brockhampton: Iridescence (Question Everything/RCA) Plenty talent, sure; limitless ambition, absolutely; chart-topping major-label debut, fact; here's where it all comes together, nah. ("Weight," "J'Ouvert") **

Fat Tony: 10,000 Hours (Don Giovanni) Sincere, smart Houston alt-rapper goes pop/r&b, which isn't as smart as it might be if tricking up the sincere with the cute doesn't come naturally. ("Charles," "Rumors") *

Link: Billie Eilish / Little Simz

Billie Eilish: When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (Darkroom/Interscope) Slotting this self-created 17-year-old as pop computes musically and commercially while reminding us how amorphous that once snappy term has become. Her soprano too diminutive for vocal calisthenics, her sensibility too impressionistic to bother mapping out track-and-hook bliss points, Eilish is a home-schooled Highland Park weirdo whose darkly playful version of teen-goth angst had already captivated millions of young weirdos-in-potentia before this electro-saturated debut album put in its bid for the rest of us. Seldom catchy in any conventional sense, every one of these 14 tracks entices the ear anyway, from "Bad Guy"'s "duh"s to "Xanny"'s blown speaker cone to the shuddering sound-pit that swallows "You Should See Me in a Crown" to the plinked piano of "All the Good Girls Go to Hell" to the tunefully cooed "Wish You Were Gay," and it keeps going. Only then it closes shut when one of the least self-glorifying suicide songs ever sets up a finale comprising songs titled simply "I Love You" and "Goodbye"--each quiet, each pretty, each what it says, each sad without ever turning gruesome or crossing its fingers. A

Little Simz: Grey Area (Age 101) After two valiant, well-crafted, less than compelling albums, what struck me instantly about this London-born-and-based Nigerian rapper's third try was its musicality: soft-edged without slurring a word, her flow is ductile and refreshing, brooklike whether or not she's ever tromped in the woods. Yet it's also confident and even defiant without benefit of dancehall boom-bap. Peeved that she's got a career but not much more, the hard-touring 25-year old insists that she's a rapper, not merely a female rapper. And that's fine. But whether reporting that she's "a sensitive soul" or protesting that her jailed friend Ken has "a heart full of gold/Good intent with a smile so big," her virtues are female virtues even if they should be everyone's. How many males would begin a song claiming "L-O-V-E" is "something that I don't believe in" and end it "Was bound to end eventually/Still it hurts tremendously/Can't bear the intensity"? Not many--other males might mock them! Simz is clearly tough--has to be. But she's also clearly kind, and that's even tougher. A MINUS

Billie Eilish: Dont Smile at Me (Darkroom/Interscope) Billie's songwriting is still juvey here, Finneas's production still in the learning stage. Yet those gobsmacked by the album are now equipped to go back to first appreciate and then savor Eilish's RIAA-certified singles and their EP pals. I doubt I'll ever find the quietly murderous "Bellyache," say, much more than a sublimated tantrum, bummer, existentialist gesture, whatever. But none of these interpretations render it anything close to unlistenable, carried as it is, like the whole wittingly makeshift collection, by her still-fragile melodies and still-pure voice. B PLUS

Little Simz: Stillness in Wonderland (Age 101) Representing for her smart, up-and-coming, insecure self with a loose "concept" meant to spark conscious rap in the U.K., an elusive goal. anywhere ("Shotgun," "Picture Perfect") *

Little Simz: A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons (Age 101) Stake your claim at 21, hit paydirt four years later. ("Dead Body," "Full or Empty") *

Noisey, April 2019

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