Consumer Guide: December, 2025

Detailed and complicated songs of marital strife, super rhyming over a panoply of speedy beats, an A+ Thelonius Monk compilation, and an ancient Ugandan instrument provides brand new kicks.

Lily Allen: West End Girl (BMG) Some sixteen ago I wrote a full-length Barnes & Noble Review essay praising this then-23-year-old British ingenue-in-disguise. Then I pretty much forgot about her as she became a renowned minor U.K. star. Sonically, this album is, like Allen's voice, lightweight albeit tuneful, but after all this time she seemed worth checking out and proved surprisingly complex. I believe the album reflects a major lacuna in marital mores between the UK, where the concept of the "open marriage" is often all but taken for granted, and the USA, where such notions are less casual and explicit. "I know you've made me your madonna," Allen reminds her theoretical lifemate before informing listeners that "my marriage has been open since my husband went astray." In fact, she concludes, her estranged husband is a "sex addict," so maybe it's in the spirit of competition that she adds "I wanna be your whore." And it gets more detailed and complicated than that, you bet. A

Luke Bell: The King Is Back (Thirty Tigers) Kentucky-born, Wyoming-raised, Austin-groomed Bell released his self-titled, self-produced debut in 2012, put in time in New Orleans as well, and generated a following before he died of a fentanyl overdose in Tucson 10 years later, shortly after which his family revealed that he suffered from severe bipolar disorder. I haven't delved into the earlier records, where some of the songs on this 28-track finale first surfaced, but have little doubt that this saga was doubly tragic because he had more in him. Not many country up-and-comers favor earned titles like "Roofer's Blues," "Irrigator's Blues," "Cold Stew," or "Orangutang." A MINUS

Danny Brown: Stardust (Warp) From "the lesson is the essence that snatch you out of adolescence" to "apocalypse"/"pot to piss," the ever-articulate, fast-rapping, high-pitched 44-year-old super-rhymer has lost barely a consonant as he showcases his hard-won sobriety over a panoply of speedy, digicore-friendly beats that are more likely to make your knee bounce and soon enough your head dance than your booty shake. Frantic he's not—finally he has his shit under his control. But excited you may well become, which after all is why you're listening at all. A

Close Readers: Trees of Lower Hutt (Austin) New Zealand song band who spotlight down-under Damien Wilkins the litterateur not high-flying Damien Wilkins the basketball stalwart ("Two Heads," "Normal Things") **

Geese: Getting Killed (Partisan) Stuck too deep in their own bellowed, fatalistic, expressionistic moan ("Getting Killed," "Husbands," "Long Island City Here I Come") ***

Hamell on Trial: Dirty Xmas (Saustex) Just in time, thirteen seasonal greetings, carols, warnings, ditties, and just plain novelties from the hardworking Hamell, and if he's as blessed as he deserves to be Rudolph is Rudy, Frosty is chill, Carol wears mistletoe, Cupid loves Stupid, Dasher hooks up with Dancer, the one with the meth lab is a Nazi, Rudy's such such a big star Lady Gaga sits on his face, and the one to Adele is to the famous one and he values the chance. A MINUS

Moby Grape: AKA (self released) In principle available via their Facebook page, reconstituted country-rock band are less explosive and optimistic than on their legendary, near-perfect 1967 debut as well as "evolved" from the Haight-Ashbury phenoms they once were except insofar as they're still at war with their original manager ("Rounder," "What Comes Next") **

Thelonious Monk: Standards (Columbia, 1989) Released more than three decades ago and only purchased by me when I was buckling down to the longish 2009 Monk essay I dubbed "Not So Mysterioso," this Sony cherrypick comprises 10 Monk nonoriginals, only a few Tin Pan Alley fare on a par with closers "Nice Work if You Can Get It" and "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." But in the mood for subclassic Monk one evening, I pulled it out four or five days before I decided I had to write this one up and have played it every day since. The material is mostly solo or quartet stuff, with Monk's longtime sax man Charlie Rouse stepping in here and there, and, right, this very "Tea for Two" was on our wedding tape 50 years ago. But at least half the selections aren't in my pop recall memory the way "Nice Work" and "Deep Blue Sea" are, and it turns out that this doesn't matter in the slightest. It's by no means on a par with, say, Misterioso, one of my favorite albums ever. And true, it tinkles more than it bangs. But when I feel like some Monk less complex and demanding than, say, Brilliant Corners, it's sure to come to mind. A PLUS

Nakibembe Embaire Group: Nakibembe Embaire Group (Nyege Nyege Tapes, '23) I assume it's the rocker in me who finds himself preferring this more purely Ugandan document of the embaire, the ancient instrument the Nakibembe Embaire Group have made it their purpose to honor and revive. Without Naoyuki Uchida's complementary, dubwise commentary, the rhythms they coax up from their log in the ground are unrelenting and even hectic, hence—dare I say it?—evoking a far more deeply rooted version of the noisy, aggressive release arena-rock bands were once supposed to generate. A brand new way to get your ya-yas on. A

Nakibembe Embaire Group & Naoyuki Uchida: Phantom Keys (Nyege Nyege Tapes) Recorded in Tokyo at the masterminding behest of a Japanese dubmaster named Uchida, this is the slightly fancier recent recording of the last champions of the Ugandan embaire, a log balafon sunk into the earth so as to add resonance to note clusters that conceptually evoke a giant echoing xylophone. Less driving and some might say easier to take even as it inspires shouts and hoots from a live audience, it's clearly some kind of treasure no matter how pure or impure—who knows whether such sounds will ever be preserved for posterity again. A MINUS

Smerz: Big City Life (Escho) Of course post-ingenues Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt's quietly doleful, quietly atmospheric reports on Oslo's club life are delivered in English—they're Norwegian, after all. Of course they prefer we think their heels are higher than their IQs—for them, as long as they can sing about it, that's the main thing clubs are there for. Which is hardly to say they've given up on love as quickly as they have every right to. Perfectly aware that they're no longer ingenues, they remain determined to stay in the game because they still believe they've got it in them to win it, which they just may. A MINUS

Sudan Archives: The BPM (Stones Throw) Sticking to what sure looks like an every-third-year schedule, virtuoso violinist-vocalist Brittney Parks muses more fetchingly and strikingly than ever about the usual even though usual she's obviously not. She's gifted with talent, savoir-faire, and a vocal style she has every reason to believe both conveys and simulates pure pleasure—a pleasure so convincing that it seems almost utopian in its offhand sexuality and confident aura. The main reason you won't fall in love with her is that you know damn well she's out of your league. A MINUS

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