Dean's List: 2023

The 83 best albums of the past year (or so)

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1. Olivia Rodrigo: Guts (Geffen): An aesthetic triumph that deepens its psychological complexity with diverting jokes by establishing that love comes even harder to 20-year-old pop phenoms than to less extraordinary humans, or do I just mean extraordinary females? Either way, only someone as gifted, famous, and likable as Rodrigo has much chance of launching lovequests as worthy of your attention as these. Seldom if ever have the romantic tribulations of a young superstarlet been laid out in such credible detail, their defining complication the extreme unlikelihood that she'll meet anyone as smart, decent, successful, and hilarious as she is on the party circuit her well-earned fame opens up to her and sticks her with. With special respect for the perfect double entendre "Get Him Back!" and the well-schooled rhyme "Dazzling starlet/Bardot incarnate," I hereby swear that these 12 catchy, hyperintelligent, self-penned songs should be committed to memory by any up-and-coming entertainer ready to admit that it may be the better part of discretion to love someone who is in some crucial respect an equal from another sphere--an up-and-coming climate scientist, say. Showbiz hopefuls however gifted are too likely to succumb to jealousy just because she's so damn good at what she does. A
2. Buck 65: Super Dope (Handsmade): With 2022's King of Drums, CBC radio personality Richard Terfry returned to hip-hop after a seven-year layoff that cut his two decades as rapper Buck 65 off too short, and fans like me were glad to have him back. So of course we're even gladder he was just getting restarted--of course we can't get enough of rhymes like "Sissy Spacek/shitty paycheck/shifty tape deck/gritty latex," "M.C. Escher/empty nester," "love boat/dovecote" or the crowning "I'm not an alpha male/More like an alfalfa male" (a fib--Buck's as alpha as the alphabet he knows so well). But while no way did the beats of the percussion-savvy tracks of King of Drums stop with what the title made the most of, the musicality on this de facto follow-up, in particular the freewheeling exploitation of squelchy low-register synths that go so far as to suggest bassoons, makes it even more playable. Can it be true that he'll wind up "not a Hall of Famer but an interesting career," kinda like Kenny Lofton? Nah--he's got more range than Kenny Lofton, who in case you didn't know was no slowpoke. A
3. CMAT: If My Wife New I'd Be Dead (Cmatbaby '22): Gifted with a high IQ, a wide-open sense of humor, and an exuberant plus-size soprano with no discernible corners in it, Dublinite Ciara Mary Alice Thompson recorded this debut album on her own and did quite well with it in Ireland, where a chorus that went "I'm gonna tell everybody I know that I'm moving to Nashville" was taken literally even after the woman who calls herself "the Mae West of wanting attention" scored her first hit with a song dubbed "Peter Bogdanovich." "Who needs god when I have Robbie Williams?" Ciara Mary Alice wants to know. Also, "Why do I love Philip Larkin?/He would have hated me." And by the way, "Where do they serve the Eucharist on Friday nights?" Thompson's soft consonants and welcoming timbre have so few parallels I find myself reminded of the long-gone howdjados of Melanie's "Brand New Key" and Todd Rundgren's "I Saw the Light" a lot more than of anybody's Music Row twang. So if you can grok why Nashville might not be a perfect fit for this dame, maybe you can also see why she might be a pretty good fit for you--assuming you're always in the market for nothing else like it and plenty catchy to boot. A
4. Iris DeMent: Workin' on a World (Flariella): Too often on her first album since 2012 DeMent bonds with progressive rhetoric as uncritically as she memorized Bible verses when she was eight. In "Goin' Down to Sing in Texas," language like "the establishment," "people of color," "obscene amounts of wealth," and swear to God "those brave women in the Squad" can seem banal, even corny. But as she keeps going her ex-fundamentalist commitment to human equality is so out front its sincerity becomes a wonderment, until it's a lock cinch that the lead track's "Workin' on a world I may never see" bespeaks a courage, idealism, and self-sacrifice you're damn right she's preaching about. The one that begins "John Lewis stood on the Pettus Bridge" goes on to honor Rachel Corrie, crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza; DeMent's husband Greg Brown crafts a just barely satirical rabble-rouser for a racist evangelist called "Let Me Be Your Jesus" that she whispers into music; Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson, and Anton Chekhov all get their own songs. A horn section you weren't expecting helps punch her message home, and although her voice has deepened a tad as she passes 60, its clarity and directness remain. A-
5. Taj Mahal: Savoy (Stony Plain): His voice has dried up a pinch or two since he was born in 1942, so long ago that his pianist-arranger dad and gospel-singing mom could well have heard most of these Black pop standards at the landmark Harlem ballroom of the title before they emigrated with young Henry to Springfield Mass. True, these performances can't quite match the voracity that animated Taj's Blues and Ooh So Good 'n Blues lo these many years ago. But the songs he settled on are so classic yet so varied--Gershwin, Ellington, Mercer-Arlen, Louis Jordan, McKinney's Cotton Pickers--they vie with the traditional blues he's been recording off and on since he abandoned agronomy so he could spend his life exploring Africa's musical diaspora. Over the years he's focused on his familial Caribbean while going so far as to hook up with Malian kora master Toumani Diabate on 1999's Kulanjan. But with invaluable help from the great lost producer John Simon, who also adds the kind of piano Taj's dad might have, this album is pretty much one of a kind. If you're afraid it's not for you, at least check out Maria Muldaur's cameo on "Baby It's Cold Outside." You owe it to yourself, and to history. A
6. Boygenius: The Record (Interscope): Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are all flat-out sopranos committed to articulate songwriting, crystalline pronunciation, moderate tempos, and rocking out when circumstances require. Although two of them were raised strictly Christian, all three are now staunch leftists who identify lesbian or bisexual without being ideological about it or claiming their love lives are hunky dory. Quite the contrary--quite a few of these 12 memorable first-person songs navigate stumbling relationships, awkward road trips, failed post-breakup patch jobs, or reflections on a rapidly receding past. There are awkward meetups in dive bars and quasi-confessional karaoke sessions; there's one where a prospective partner warns "I might like you less now that you know me so well" and another that simply admits that the singer might be "Writin' the words/To the worst love song you ever heard." But they have a sense of humor and never stop trying, so that something in the committed intelligence of their music makes you feel they're going to get where they're trying to go if they haven't arrived already but don't know it yet. A
7. Corook: Serious Person (Part 1) (Atlantic): No kid--28 years old, it says here. No amateur either--like secret sharer Adrianne Lenker, who registered simplistic until finally you realized how not just smart but sophisticated she was, Corook has put in time at Berklee, regarding which she has admittedly averred "I don't use half that shit/Fuck the circle of fifths." But if you shy away from this EP on account of it sounds childish, then you miss the point, as many have and will. Just make sure it"s not because you can't comprehend why the "Tiny Little Titties" outro "I don't feel like a man, I don't feel like a woman/I've tried to describe myself, it turns out that I couldn't" rides a melody so sweet and simple it's hard to comprehend that it buoys up so much existential weight. One way or another, that's the way it is with all eight songs on this 18-minute collection. Almost unbelievably until you take a moment to ponder how many supposed normals are bent out of shape by the non-binary perplex, there've been reviewers who've loathed this record. Get used to it, which shouldn't take long, and you'll find yourself not just charmed but transfixed by its triumphant sweetness, candor, humor, and musicality. A
8. Zach Bryan: Zach Bryan (Warner): Even before the Navy proffered an honorable discharge so this 25--year-old Okie veteran with eight years of service behind him so he could finally make music fulltime, he'd racked up 2019's solo acoustic DeAnn, 2020's solo acoustic Elisabeth, and the 2022 Warner debut American Heartbreak, which won him a CMA best "new" artist plaudit and is dwarfed by this follow-up, which never falters for 16 tracks. I mean it--not a duff track anywhere from a seaman who stakes his claiml with spoken poesy reporting that "I've taken my motorbike down the Pacific 101 and I have stood atop of the Empire State Building with my father." After which it's distinct tune after distinct tune whether he's hitchhiking through clonopin failure, craving love that survives daylight, finding God in her Holy Roller eyes, reaching out to a gal whose father has had it with Long Island, offering an eastern Montana gal a tourniquet, reaching out from his '88 Ford to a third gal whose mama pawned her wedding ring. He never comes out on the other other side of a song without having marked it with a detail no one's ever thought of before. A
9. Lewis Capaldi: Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent (Capitol): When I finally took the plunge and back-to-backed this with Harry's House, I was pleased to conclude that while Capaldi's 2019 debut was strong, this follow-up is a triumph I admire even more than I do Styles's estimable consensus fave. Moreover, it's in a mode I've never had much use for: the power ballad. Formally we're talking Celine Dion and Michael Bolton only with more character, variation, and textural range, or if you want to stretch it try Springsteen or Garth Brooks or even Ray Charles--tempos moderate, vocals pushed, jokes sparse to nonexistent. This last matters because in concert Capaldi plays his tween-song material for laughs he gets on a scale with John Prine or Loudon Wainwright only they write their share of funny lyrics where Capaldi's material is soaked in lovestruck avowal, romantic angst, and emotional apercu--which for some reason generate a credibility the likes of Bolton and Dion seldom succeed in selling skeptics and intellectuals like Prine and Wainwright shy away from. A
10. Robert Forster: The Candle and the Flame (Tapete): Driven by nothing less than the specter of death, Forster transcends his melodic limitations with a homemade album indelibly enlivened by the contributions of his family and especially his wife Karin, whose ongoing battle with ovarian cancer enriches even the tracks she's too ill to take part in. The mouth-dropping thriller is an encomium to chemo called "It's Only Poison": "It's written on the bottle, the bottle on the shelf/It's written deep in scripture that you can save yourself/It's only poison meant to drive you mad/It's only poison and it's all they have," Forster croons in his familiar sprechgesang, and while he's at it Karin adds background harmonies that aim for sweet salvation all by themselves. A
11. Gina Birch: I Play My Bass Loud (Third Man): As with The Raincoats, a beloved album released lo these 43 years ago, my initial response here was something like "Dig your spirit lady but isn't this a little crude?" But much faster than with The Raincoats--two-and-a-half plays in, say--I was completely hooked on the solo debut of this 67-year-old dyed blonde who now counts painting her principal art. This is partly because it isn't really crude--chief bandmate Michael Rendall of the Orb knows his way around a keyboard and sometime Killing Joke bassist Youth has also produced Crowded House, Bananarama, Beth Orton, the Verve, and Erasure. But it's also because Birch has generated a new bunch of songs, which like the production and even her Raincoats features may sound casual but in fact are honed. Between the declarative "I Play My Bass Loud" opener and the loopy "Let's Go Crazy" closer she whispers "I'm a bubbling cauldron of rage," caps "Big Mouth" with an apologetic "Now we're all upset," makes clear that "Pussy Riot" is more than just a band, calmly asks a know-nothing noseybones "Why the hell shouldn't I be a feminist?" and is never more indignant than when she explains why "I Will Never Wear Stilettos" while plugging Doc Martens, brothel creepers, Polish waitressing shoes, and anything that's red and laces up. A
12. Tyler Childers: Rustin' in the Rain (RCA/Hickman Holler): A mere seven songs lasting a mere 28 minutes, this is the album the no longer merely "promising" 32-year-old lassos and rides back to the barn. It's also the greatest album ever to include a song about percheron mules ("Percheron Mules," it's called) or to the best of my knowledge a secular song that quotes all of Luke 2 8-10, which might time out rather well as a Christmastime hit. "Help Me Make It Through the Night" cover--right, been done before, but not a whole lot better. Not done before is a song to someone--a male buddy, sounds like, maybe "I consider us friends" indicates otherwise and maybe it doesn't--who's stopped answering his emails. In case you're wondering what his singing's like, as by now you should be, well--high, intense, committed to a natural drawl he may exaggerate an iota or two that just makes the music more compelling. Final song begins: "I never want to leave this world/Without sayin' I love you." As someone who knows that feeling, I'm convinced he lives it. A
13. The Feelies: Some Kinda Love: Performing the Music of the Velvet Underground (Bar/None): In a career that was over in less than four years between 1967 and 1970, the Velvet Underground released four albums containing 37 discrete original songs, 17 of which plus the late-breaking, atypical, always welcome houserocker "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" are revived here on a single CD that lasts some 71 minutes and is also available from the streaming platform of your choice and as a heavy-duty vinyl double-LP that has its sonic attractions. All convene two well-regarded metro-area bands, NYC's Velvets with their legend and NJ's Feelies with their cult, the excuse being a live musical adjunct to a 2018 Manhattan art/memorabilia/gewgaws show devoted to said legend. Initially slotted for the exhibition's cramped performance space, it was relocated to Jersey City's 800-capacity White Eagle Hall, goosing the music decisively. True, Glenn Mercer's accomplished enough vocals serve among other things to remind you what a subtle and idiosyncratic singer Lou Reed became, an evolution that flowered every which way post-Velvets but was there in embryo from the start. But Reed's circa-1970 songbook now has Mercer's mark on it nonetheless. And the guitars--well, they're a big reason you'll want to buy these remakes. Lou Reed having proved a great guitarist, I know it verges on sacrilegious to say so, but comparison with 1969 Velvet Underground Live, the 1969 Quine tapes, and the 1969 Matrix tapes, worthy excavations all, lead me to suspect that the next time I feel like hearing this material I'll be going to my F shelves. A
14. Dolly Parton: Rockstar (Butterfly/Big Machine): In theory this is the 77-year-old Nashville auteur's admission application to a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that in 2022 voted her in aware that it had more to gain from her than she did from it. Only then, hilariously, she claimed to feel obliged as a country artist to turn them down until she could make the grade by recording some "rock" herself, and this two-hours-plus double album is it--basically, although the concept has some give in it, a duet album where dozens of "rock" totems help her resuscitate their hits. Only problem is, its critical reception has been disgracefully snarky, especially in the U.K. but Stateside too. True, many of these tracks could be called schlocky, not least because the miraculously tolerant Parton is no disrespecter of schlock, not even in the form of Journey, REO Speedwagon, Judas Priest, Peter Frampton, and 4 Non Blondes. I'm not telling you I much enjoy any of these particular selections, although I do love how audaciously Parton stakes her claim on them. But many of the tracks that are more to my taste and probably yours range from good fun to genius. One called "I Dreamed About Elvis" features professional Elvis imitator Ronnie McDowell. Goddaughter Miley Cyrus steps up to pitch in on "Wrecking Ball." Lizzo mounts that mythic "Stairway to Heaven." "Heart of Glass" beats lissomely in a duet with Debbie Harry. Paul and Ringo join in on "Let It Be." With Mick Jagger beset by scheduling difficulties, poor guy, Pink and Brandi Carlile step up to take his place. And the eight-minute solo version of "Purple Rain" is something like spectacular. A-
15. A. Savage: Several Songs About Fire (Rough Trade): As with Parquet Courts frontman Savage's 2017 solo album, you may wish the second was as dynamic as his let's hope not permanently former band. But just as PCs' 2021 Sympathy for Life was as close as anybody worth namechecking came to a sane, calm pandemic album, Savage's dolor on solo album number two keeps returning to temperature fluctuations that sound like global warming and rich-get-richer double-talk that sounds like get out of town--like for instance to Paris, France, where I read he currently hangs his lheadgear. Eight-story dwellings that arise from not much meet "gods who don't exist or care," and although neither tunes nor tempos are what you'd call compelling, I keep checking them out again anyway, which is pretty much what compelling means, isn't it? A
16. Ashley McBryde: The Devil I Know (Warner Music Nashville): McBryde's multi-artist 2022 concept album Lindeville, which for sheer playability I prefer to Tommy itself, was such a collective triumph I briefly forgot how remarkable McBryde is on her own, for instance on this year's digital Cool Little Bars EP, where every one of the five self-penned songs, all of which are also included on this album, is why I do this for a living: assuaging broken hearts in the title establishments, assuaging broken hearts in return for Kentucky bourbon at a less cool watering hole, sticking with your bad choices, living with learning to lie, the many shades of your mama's advice, hanging in there when you're one big break away. Not all of the six extras that fill out this 11-track album are quite up to their standard, although the impossible love song "Single at the Same Time" and the impossible sobriety song "6th of October" have a depth to them matched on the EP only by "Learning to Lie." Of course McBryde can sing--with impressive clarity and deliberation at that. But it's what she's singing that keeps you paying attention--even on the light-hearted ones, which are definitely there. A
17. Hamell on Trial: Bring the Kids (Saustex): Hamell's physical of choice for his also downloadable 17th album is a vinyl LP with all music credited to his Roland VS-880 that readily accommodates four 8x11 pages of readable lyrics, which with this guy always come in handy not because he ever muffles a word but because there are so many of them. In addition to brisk takedowns of Tucker Carlson and Jeff Bezos he alerts Christians to the theology of karma as opposed to heaven, dreams of tickling the ivories like Monk and Jerry Lee, proffers shoplifting advice to moms with mouths to feed, longs to hear an ex's "I love you," hopes some "naughty naughty girl" drunk-dials him, abbreviates "Nazi killer girl gangs" to "NKGG," is told how many riot grrrls are also rape victims, and that ain't all. The closer is named for departed sound man Johnny Rydell. Its key lyric goes "1-800-273-8255," which Hamell wants you to remember is the suicide hotline and my editor informs me has been boiled down to 988 in case you're in a hurry, as you should be. A
18. Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens: Music Inferno: The Indestructible Beat Tour 1988-1989 (Umsakazo/Gallo): For 35 years, my go-to Mahlathini album not counting the classic multi-artist Indestructible Beat of Soweto comp itself (which you should buy first if for some reason you haven't already), has been the 10-track live Paris-Soweto. Recorded entirely in England and mostly in London, which gives Simon Nkabinde a chance to utilize the spoken English any Black South African knows enough to get a handle on, this belated 15-track sampler includes only six Paris-Soweto songs, and comes across somewhat sharper not just sonically but performance-wise--there's thumping and soaring, discipline and byplay, a whistle here and a saxophone there, queens adding byplay as well as support, and liner notes so encyclopedic they cry out for a magnifying glass. The epochal how-low-can-you-go groaner died at 61 in 1999. But he remains an artist to to be marveled at and a spiritual force to help you do so. A
19. 100 Gecs: 10,000 Gecs (Dog Show/Atlantic): M-f duo prove four years after that they're more than outrageously familiar sonics and stealth-playful mood with two songs that break new barriers in rock thematology. True, Dinah Washington's "Long John Blues" breached the dentistry barrier long ago, explicitly too, but not explicitly like "I Got My Tooth Removed." And "Frog on the Floor" is nothing less than both literal and totally unprecedented--no dumb France jokes, please. A
20. Withered Hand: How to Love (Reveal): If you can't quite recall Edinburgh sufferer Dan Willson, who leads and is Withered Hand, no worries--after a relatively prolific half decade that ended circa 2014, he slipped from view because he couldn't afford to record anymore. But he never got over his passion for song, and the nine he's moved to deliver a decade later suggest he never stopped writing them either. Raised Jehovah's Witness in London, he rejected that faith but named his band after the sufferer in a New Testament parable, which is why it's a little hard to know whether loving God is a bigger thing for him than loving the right human being when he reports in re love "I'm not afraid to try/I'm afraid of trying and not feeling good enough." Musically, the new songs are no less poignant and fetching than the old ones, each the emotional equal of titles like "How to Love," "Crippled Love," "Still Quiet Voice," and "Comedown." Just about every track mitigates the pain with a simple, irresistible melody. And since part of Willson's story is that his wife bought him his first guitar when he turned 30, some two decades ago now, human being fans will be glad to learn that the credits report that "Eva W" is part of the "WH Salvation Choir" that chimes in on so many of these tracks. A
21. Tyvek: Overground (Ginkgo): From what I read, this is the seventh studio album albeit first in seven years from a Detroit punk unit not in my recall memory, and at this historical moment does its indomitable riffing sound fresh. Eight of 11 songs with titles like "What Were We Thinking" and "Going Through My Things" are two minutes or less; they encounter firehoses, U-Hauls, delivery handbooks from the post office. Eventually, however, the seven-minute closer "Overground" feels duty bound to advise us that there's "no point going underground" even if "the nation-state makes liars of us all." None of which is as glum as it might be because the jangling guitars and crashing cymbals remain the kind of kick in the ass we can always use. A-
22. Wednesday: Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans): Clotted, murky, ruefully sarcastic, yet also resigned, grateful, and at moments even funny in a "There's a sex shop off the highway with a biblical name" kind of way, these 10 just barely rockin' songs in 37 minutes add up to the story of a pair of lovers neither of whom deserves the other while remaining a decent bet to stick it through even so, because they're smart enough to understand how much worse it could be, as in the drugged decrepitude their neighbors put up with. Where Ashley McBryde's Lindeville peeked beneath the made-up surface of a two-faced Alabama town and played its hypocrisies for fond laughs, Jarly Hartzman and her gang know the outskirts of country-hipster Asheville too well to think its habitual hypocrisy anything but some cross between pathetic and tragic. So they figurel the best way to escape its pitfalls is look them in the eye and dare them to do their worst. A
23. Speedy Ortiz: Rabbit Rabbit (Carpark): Their fourth album in an unrushed career going back to the retrospectively preliminary 2013 Major Arcana, Sadie Dupuis's quartet puts music over lyrics even though she's even more renowned as a well-published poet than as an expansively textured indie-rocker. Guitar effects combust and spill out of the mix without number, so dense and engaging that it hardly matters that you don't know just what she's singing about while of course figuring that it's fairly interesting. It couldn't be, could it, that the secret of the way those riffs and tunelets roll over you as they hurry you along is the production advice of Illuminati Hotties' ever hooky Sarah Tudzin? A
24. Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers: I Love You (Domestic La La): Bratty name or no bratty name, punk affect or no punk affect, this Canberra femme foursome think like recognizable adults. Having debuted with an EP featuring songs about bedrooms by the thruway and roommates leaving dishes in the sink, ponder briefly what kind of audacity it takes to not only write a song baldly titled "I Love You" but name your first true album after it. Not that everything's roses and cream, not with lyrics like "I always want what I can't have until I get it," "I think I'll stay at mine tonight," and--most alarming, I say--"you hold me too tight." But love is the goal nonetheless, and they're not so bratty they don't try and figure out how to make it work. A-
25. Bobbie Nelson and Amanda Shires: Loving You (ATO): Sister Bobbie, who died at 91 in March, for decades a stalwart of Willie's band on piano and a font of music on his tour bus, picked all 10 songs on this tribute cum last will and testament, with the self-composed instrumental title track, which leads into a closer called "Over the Rainbow," conceived as its anchor--in part, organizer-fiddler-vocalist Shires says, because it encapsulated Bobbie as "a believer, a mother, an artist, a lover, a sister, a grandmother, and a friend." Those who think of Shires as a rocker, which she can be at will, may be surprised by the fluting delicacy with which she delivers such chestnuts you believed stuck in their shell as "Always on My Mind," "Summertime," "Dream a Little Dream of Me," and "La Paloma." Like the two Tony Bennett-Lady Gaga ventures, this is another way to hear such gems fresh. A
26. Megan Moroney: Lucky (Columbia): Yet another intelligent young woman from the new deep south who puts more smarts into her lyrics than than any two mannish alt-rock bands chosen at random. True, she does have male song doctors at the ready, although it could be that they're there primarily to help her with the kind of hooks that'll nail "Tonight my only ambition/Is to make a bad decision," "I sleep on my side/And you sleep with everyone," and "You can't love the boy more than you love the girl in the mirror." For sure the all-Moroney closer with its "I write sad songs for sad people/But I wrote this love song for you" summum gives a romantic reason to hope so. A-
27. The Human Hearts: Viable (Open Boat): Musically, 64-year-old frontman-pianist-songsmith-Ph.D-Bandcamper Franklin Bruno will never be any kind of virtuoso or heartthrob. Formally sapient and technically accomplished enough never to blow a note of simple yet well-honed melodies he has the good sense to design as mere albeit catchy tunes, he never misses a well-chosen note as a singer. But for all that there's something in his plain, conversational timbre that leaves the pursuit of anything that could be called beautiful to the likes of Jenny Toomey, the indie frontperson turned Ford Foundation honcho who graces several of these tracks. From the flag pin he refuses to wear over his heart to the promos he requests you save from the sell pile, Bruno writes socially conscious although not therefore ideological songs, which means he's a very smart guy who sees the world the way I and I bet you do. For the cherry on top he covers an Everly Brothers obscurity called "June Is as Cold as December." And before you go all global warming on him, be aware that June is actually just the prettiest girl in town. A-
28. Alvvays: Blue Rev (Polyvinyl/Transgressive '22): Something bothered me about the sound of this much-admired album by Canadian power poppers I was on early only not with album three, which made many top 10s. So I got to it late by buying a CD whose hi-fi I thought might help separate the tunes proper from the shoegaze fuzz that dimmed them when I Spotified it--and still does, but less hence not decisively. Instead what converted me was yet more replays plus closer attention to the lyrics. First I noticed how explicitly collegiate they were, situating Molly Rankin both culturally, in her devotion to aesthetic usages less staid than "the lettered life" she once aspired to, and generationally, as the postgrads who populate her songs negotiate love lives they're seldom ready for. "Is she a perfect 10? Have you found Christ again?" she asks one soon-to-be ex. "You were my Tom Verlaine," another is reminded as she enjoys the feel of the breeze on her back. And the noisy double-time three-minute kissoff "Pomeranian Spinster" levels so many insults at one or more whoevers you can hardly believe it leaves room for an extra touch of anticlericalism: "Presbyterisn ministers/Travel in packs and never split/They deviate in the tiniest concepts." Rock and roll! A
29. Lori McKenna: 1988 (CN/Thirty Tigers): At 55, McKenna takes her maturity seriously by leading with a typically striking commonplace that understands how far she still has to go: "The Old Woman in Me," who's "peace in a house dress" where McKenna herself remains a mere "work in progress." Not that this is a departure. Honoring the commonplace has been McKenna's lifework, with the youth audience welcome aboard but by no means a target, although note that the two songs her sons Chris and Brian cowrote are markedly adult-appropriate: "Happy Children" ("I hope you have happy children," who are welcome to try their hand at the family business) and "1988" ("I've been your biggest fan since 1988," which is when she and her husband Gene plighted their troth--a troth that's nothing less than the light at the end of a closer called "The Tunnel"). A
30. Jinx Lennon: Pet Rent (Septic Tiger '22): The stick-to-it-ive Lennon's best album in years is also his most musical ever, which has zip to do with tunes or solos. It's about making a racket, not principally from Chris Barry's "electric guitar" but from Lennon himself on not just "vox" but "keys, guitar, bass, samples, noises, drums, beats." Just about every one of these 25 songs or rants sounds different as Lennon rants more than sings his tales, lessons, complaints, and expostulations. Topics include ice cream, comfort zones, street life, racism, automobile fetishism, sexual objectification in general, spousal abuse, lost mojo, the limits of luck, the limits of New Zealand, feeling stupid inside, standing up for something, self-knowledge, shit happening, and the uses of serotonin. A-
31. JPEGMafia & Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes (AWAL): Both 1989-born Jamaican-Brooklynite-Alabaman Air Force vet Barrington Hendricks (JPEG) and 1981-born Detroit drug-dealing prison vet Daniel Sewell (Brown) are alt-rappers by temperament, and they balance each other off well enough. Hendricks is the one with easily discernible politics, but I find his beats more arresting than his rapping itself or the well-enunciated verbiage it delivers. Though Brown first won my heart with 2011's pussy-eating "I Will," he obviously has brains as well as gusto to spare. But for me it's his sound that puts this partnership across--I can't think of anything quite like the high-pitched squawk that defines their sonics if anything does. Yet at the same time there's a drawl to it that seems quintessentially hip-hop as it achieves musicality with its amelodic dips and swirls, uniquely individualistic and definitively genre-driven at the same time. A
32. The Baseball Project: Grand Salami Time (Yep Roc): "Dying quail, frozen rope, or a can of corn," begins the fourth exhibit in a Dream Syndicate-Young Fresh Fellows-R.E.M. side project that dates back to 2008, and if you have no idea what Scott McCaughey is going on about it's probably not for you. All three phrases are baseballese signifying bloop single, hard line drive, and lazy fly ball respectively, and I should add that "grand salami" equals grand slam and "It might be, it could be, it is" indicates a less than overpowering home run. Nor is it primarily the lingo that captivates these sixtysomething fellows. As with most baseball fans, it's the mythos the lingo is only part of. Neither the medium-tempo guitar rock nor McCaughey's aging-boyish delivery has quite the snap of earlier editions. But lest you suspect rockist male chauvinism, note that on this iteration the fellas not only come up with one called "Disco Demolition" to remind rockists of the racist homophobia that surfaced at that legendary 1979 Comiskey Park vinyl- smashing debacle but go on to link that night to the even more horrific sexism of what was branded Woodstock 99. So believe me when I say that rockism can be a whole lot stupider and crasser than this, where fond fun has a conscience. A-
33. Corook: Best of Corook (So Far) (Atlantic '22): Relative to Serious Person, this older music comprises a relatively conventional lineup of collegiate-to-post-collegiate queer love songs. But much more than the preponderance of such material, it's simultaneously deep and cute. Vocally it milks the breathy sweetness of Corook's petite soprano; instrumentally, it foregrounds modestly playful keyboards. Issues addressed include not telling mom, "if they don't like you they're fucking stupid," the futility of BDSM, who'll get the dog, and the cheesiness of Edgar Allen Poe's "Annabelle Lee." A-
34. Girl Scout: Real Life Human Garbage (Made): Divvied up 50-50 female-male with Emma Jansson singing more sweetly than not and everybody writing songs, this Swedish guitar foursome's EP is nothing like the rage-punk its title suggests. Yes they're alienated, but alienated like just barely ex teens confronting adulthood rather than nascent feminists getting a bead on sexism. Is she a "Weirdo"? Jansson wonders. "Sally where'd you go and where've you been?" she goes on. "Can you run me over with your car?/I want to be a road that leads far far away from here." Not exactly girl-pop, I guess. In fact, far enough away to keep things interesting. A-
35. Water From Your Eyes: Everyone's Crushed (Matador): From a band consisting entirely of instrumentalist Nate Amos and vocalist Rachel Brown, a major-minor-label debut that's their fifth long player all told proves a ramshackle, associative, textural, synthpoppy, sneaky kinda thing that turns modestly captivating inside of a minute despite a lyric that as of that moment still pretty much comprises the single phrase "Your cool thing count mountains." Later the same mystery woman is "wearing gold" in a sequence of songs or "songs" that no one would call catchy except for the inconvenient fact not just that they are but that they could go head to head with the covers EP the duo put out in 2021. Experimental yet also congenial, questing yet also homey, here be two young people finding their voice without saying all that much. I hope they work on that. But if they choose not to I expect to dig them anyway. A
36. Danny Brown: Quaranta (Warp): For sheer artistic grace and reach--flow, clarity, character, presence, verbal wit, verbal command--long-paroled 42-year-old ex-dealer Brown has few true rivals anywhere in hip-hop. But if you doubt he's feeling not just his age but his existential limitations, ask yourself why he called his seventh album since 2010 "forty" (in Italian, not Spanish, where it would be "cuarenta"). Buried in this swift verbiage are the kind of adult anxieties hip-hoppers never cop to, such as marriages floundering and two-bedroom apartments going for three grand a month. The most revealing and also the cleverest is "Celibate": "I used to sell a bit/But I don't fuck around no more/ I'm celibate/Had me trapped in that cell a bit/Locked up with some pimps told me 'Sell a bitch.'" Which I'm of course relieved he seems disinclined to do. A-
37. Balka Sound: Balka Sound (Strut '22): Based across the river from teeming Belgian Congo Kinshasa in less fraught French Congo Brazzaville, hence not directly under the thumb of the tyrant Mobutu, Balka Sound gathered around Albert Nkibi, adept of a rural five-stringed lute called the ngonfi. Their jaunty, amiable, relatively abrupt rhythms rock as much as they roll, barely hinting at the rippling escapist uplift of Zairean soukous but generating plenty of bustle to take its place. These 15 tracks average over five minutes, taking on occasional saxophone as they proceed from the early '80s to June 1997, when the band's studio was looted in one of the military flare-ups that wouldn't peter out until the new century was in place. A-
38. Lucinda Williams: Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart (Thirty Tigers): Whatever you think of this undeniably gifted, notoriously headstrong singer/songwriter/bandleader whose 2020 Good Souls Better Angels remains one of the most scornful anti-Trump screeds to be set to music, the courage it took to create its belated follow-up just can't be denied. That's because the stroke she suffered just after Trump lost in 2020 compelled her to spend well over a year learning to walk and sing all over again--and then, because she has her pride oh yes she does, write these 10 new songs and I bet others just to put her performance skills to the test. Peppy openers dubbed "Let's Get the Band Back Together" and "New York Comeback" get that job done quick; willful closers called "Where the Song Will Find Me" and "Never Gonna Fade Away" are her version of a lifetime guarantee. In between "Last Call for the Truth" and "Hum's Liquor" celebrates her chosen Nashville. Too bad, I feel, that in an accident of timing her comeback emerged almost simultaneously with the Covenent School massacre and the racist political powermongering that has dishonored Tennessee so shamefully in its wake. This has to have made the record hard to fully enjoy in its moment despite the already written but all too general "This Is Not My Town." Since then it seems nobody's advised her to rev up her self-righteousness for the occasion. Somebody should. A-
39. Buck 65: Punk Rock B-Boy (self-released): The only rapper I can imagine dropping the lines "Tripping on the psilocybin/Listening to Phyllis Hyman," "Sycophants shit their pants better take Immodium," or "The dildo of consequence seldom arrives lubricated" is clearly excited about being back in the business. True--sweat like Aroldis Chapman though he may, he's not gonna serve up a home run every time, or so I reminded myself three-four plays into this one. But then a funny thing happened, and it was literally funny. By the time I got to six-seven I was liking it more all over again. A-
40. Bill Scorzari: The Crosswinds of Kansas (self-released '22): The third album by a retired NYC-based attorney whose gray beard reaches halfway down his torso is packaged as a 70-minute double-fold CD complete with a 16-page lyric booklet. So I strongly suggest you follow along while you listen, which I even more strongly suggest. As a singer he's most of the way to a talker, which is not to suggest that his Americana-in-the-rough melodies don't deliver his songs or that his musicians don't shore and liven them up. Sadly but also rather brilliantly, most describe or ponder failed relationships, not one of which presents itself as either casual or ill-fated on the face of it. They just don't work out, that's all. "With every situation that confronts me to my core, there comes a realization that I seem to have had before." "Now I'm just sittin' here in my car, thinkin' about how you and I have changed, and how there's no guarantee our destiny could ever be the same." "You said you hoped I wouldn't be lonely now that you're leaving me alone." "And then you said to me 'It's cause you never tried.' You never tried. You never tried. You never tried. You never . . . tried." A-
41. Piconema: East African Hits on the Colombian Coast (Rocafort): The amazing thing is what the title indicates: nine approximately nine-minute dance records (what we used to call 12-inches? dunno) originally manufactured or anyway concocted in Indian Ocean Africa but forged or maybe just postulated into a minigenre by dueling Colombian DJs back across both the African continent and the Atlantic Ocean to the South American seacoast (and then inland from there? dunno). Simultaneously delicate and utilitarian, body and spirit, barely hinting at the bassy, more muscular Cuban-derived grooves of Congolese soukous, they're engines of transcendence or maybe just the escape that's the nearest the dancers who cheered them on can get to it. A-
42. David Murray/Brad Jones/Hamid Drake: Seriana Promethea (Intakt '22): With 92-year-old titan Sonny Rollins in involuntary retirement, 68-year-old lion Murray is without question not just the greatest tenor saxophonist working but by now entitled to stand tall alongside Webster and Adderley if not quite Rollins or Coltrane. If jazz was more than an auxiliary pleasure for me, I would have reviewed more than just a couple of his dozen-plus 21st-century albums. But I found this relatively simple thing--eight tracks laid down in one day in Zurich by a "brave new world trio" mid post-pandemic tour--gratifyingly specific and enticing. I don't know 67-year-old go-to drummer Drake's work well enough to claim it's exceptional here, but he definitely stands out the way a guy with his name on the cover should, whereas bassist Jones, who'll turn 60 May 20, does what a good bassist should: subtly thicken and/or elaborate the groove except that one special time when you pick up your bow. As for Murray, he's who you're listening for whether he's reaching high in his register on "Rainbows for Julia" and "Switchin' in the Kitchen" or just making like a sax man. Nor will you be sorry when you do. But you'll also enjoy two surprises he has ready: a switchoff to deep dark bass clarinet and a Sly Stone cover that'll make you scratch your head till you're fully reminded that it's been in the world for half a century. A-
43. Rodney Crowell: The Chicago Sessions (New West): Ten love songs so varied and intermittently challenged I was surprised to learn that having been married to Rosanne Cash between 1979 and 1992, this rocking but basically country singer-songwriter had been married to the less renowned Claudia Church since 1998, with the committed "Oh Miss Claudia" and the one-two punch of "Lucky" and "Somebody Loves You" not all there is to show for it. True, tracks seven and eight flatten out the way 10-track albums do, and Jeff Tweedy's production is no more inspired than you'd figure. But then comes "Making Lovers Out of Friends," which advises against this option, adding a great love song that is also anything but to what is already a consistently intelligent and decent exploration of the most universal theme of pop and country both. A-
44. DJ Shadow: Action Adventure (Mass Appeal/Liquid Amber): I have no idea how or indeed why the human born Josh Davis selects, refurbishes, juxtaposes, and sequences the mostly electronic textures, beats, scraps, notes, phrases, lines, and occasionally even choruses from which he constructs what undeniably ends up his music, although it's safe to presume that at the very least he thinks they "sound good" that way. Admittedly, my own first response to his first album in four years was something like "Nuh." But a few plays in I began to notice that just as individual pieces some of them sounded good to me as well and it was off to the party, then exhibition, then aesthetic experience. No Endtroducing because nothing is. Little if any of the sneak humanism of The Private Press either. Organic whole, not really--too many moving parts. So think of it as a sound collage, or if you prefer a playlist with feints and occasionally ldetours that never vacates your pleasure zone or loses its way. A-
45. Billy Woods and Kenny Segal: Maps (Backwoodz Studioz): With crucial help from Serengeti and R.A.P. Ferreira pal Kenny Segal, who adds crucial musical ballast to rhymes that cruise to a soft landing on a finale that finds reason for militance in a playground, Woods finally delivers music worthy of a mind-body continuum whose wholeness there was never reason to doubt. Danny Brown fucks shit up and Aesop Rock nails shit down, rappers are stricken with gout and there's a suicide at the gentrifier's next door, the acknowledged healing qualities of zithromyecin and New York City tapwater fail to compensate for peace cut with dread, your taxes underwriting police brutality settlements, and other "things you can't undo." With "every victory pyrrhic," you do make it a principle to skip soundcheck. But definitely not to skip the playground, or to scare your kid off the jungle gym you know can be dangerous and he doesn't yet. A-
46. The Moldy Peaches: Origin Story 1994-1999 (Org Music '22): I doubt many readers replay the only previous album by this duo-plus, the eponymous 2001 Rough Trade one I gave an A minus and then put right after "Love and Theft" at number two on that year's Dean's List, a full A after all. But around here it's a standard of sorts, and we own more records than you. In pretty much the same pattern, I soon found myself upping my provisional B plus for these 21 tracks in 34 minutes, which even for Kimya and Adam are pretty hither-and-yon, although only "On Top" and "Little Bunny Foo Foo" (in live as well as studio versions!) repeats from the debut. For fans only? Sure, you poor benighted ones. But ingenuous, whimsical, and shamelessly catchy nonetheless. Check out "Ugly Child." "Put Your Mama in a Headlock" too. A-
47. Ice Spice: Like . . ? (10K Projects/Capitol): The keyword on this charmingly lubricious soft-rap EP is "smoochie," a nice and indeed affectionate way to say "ho" that benefits from the innocent sexuality of the word "smooch" and as it happens has its sonic congruities with SUNY Purchase, the dropout alma mater of a 23-year-old Bronx-born self-promoter christened-or-was-she Isis Naija Gaston. One song here allows as how good old "boo" is also OK with her. Then again, another one claims the title "Princess Diana." A-
48. Big Joanie: Back Home (Kill Rock Stars '22): These three second-generation Black British women are slotted punk and given their new label even riot grrrl. But that sure isn't how they sound, which matters when you've make a rock band your life for 10 years. The tempos are solidly moderate, the tunes sturdy as opposed to hooky and sometimes delivered on simple but striking keyboards including one that sounds like a smallish church organ. The direct, thoughtful lyrics are seldom confrontational but often questioning or just curious, shot through with but not dominated by the interpersonal. Basically their goal is to try and make their lives work. Aren't politics included, you wonder. Of course they are, because all three smart thoughtful women are conscious in the broadest sense and even more likable as a result. A-
49. Morgan Wade: Psychopath (RCA): Celebrating her adolescent attraction to Sylvia Plath, her abiding admiration for Alanis Morrisette, her hard-won sobriety, and her refusal to join the 27 Club, this builder's daughter from small-town Virginia wrote or cowrote 14 well-put new Nashville love/sex songs that presage more to come and make you wonder where they'll take her professionally once she pieces the emotional details together. Exceptionally gifted and ambitious for the work in progress she remains, Wade's music exemplifies Nashville's evolution away from downhome country toward a less regional style of autobiographical pop that when you think about it has its roots in the punk and disco '70s, when big-city singer-songwriters began emigrating to a burg more amenable to their confessional aesthetic. Less given to braggadocio than the men they settle for, the gals have done a lot more with this aesthetic than the guys, few if any of whom would risk a title like "Psychopath," which turns out to be a pet name a boyfriend she's too good for has laid on her. A-
50. Nia Archives: Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against the Wall (Hijinx/Island): In the forefront of a U.K. drum 'n' bass "revival" unlikely to resonate Stateside the way it does in the mother country, the latest EP by this 23-year-old half-Jamaican vocalist-beatmaker is songful dream-pop with an Africanist underpinning, atmospheric rather than groove-propelled. For the 18 minutes these six selections last, that atmosphere has a way of shifting just enough to feel like flow and song at the same time. A-
51. Willie Nelson: I Don't Know a Thing About Love (Legacy): On what is said to be his 164th album including collaborations, compilations, and lives (this is the 63rd I've reviewed, 16 of them A's), the force of nature and walking cannabis commercial who'll turn 90 before April is over partakes of Michigan farmboy Harlan Howard's extraordinary book, which ended up containing some 4000 songs. Among Nelson's choices are the Ray Charles show-stopper "Busted," the Gram Parsons weeper "Streets of Baltimore," a famous Poe poem Howard set to music, and a title song that bespeaks both a nose for the hook and false modesty on the part of both principals. The worst thing I can say about this utterly obvious, utterly surefire album is that it doesn't begin to convince me that Nelson won't yet make a better one, which isn't even to mention posthumous treasures I bet they'll eventually unearth from some mislaid can or other. A-
52. Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: America: The Rough Cut (ESP-Disk'): Jazz loyalist, music historian, saxophonist, guitarist, and major cancer survivor Lowe declares that he doesn't much like today's music, which he claims lacks "funk" without indicating any familiarity with James Brown, who I assume he knows, or hip-hop, where I assume his education is spotty if that. But this hour of sax-guitar-bass-drums jazz got my attention from spin one. Lowe believes various of its tracks evoke "pre-blues ruminations" or "a post-rational burst of tongues," "medicine-show irony" or "old-time hillbilly rag." If so, it does so a little too abstractly or allusively for somebody who continues to find serious as well as pleasurable sustenance in a broad array of today's musics. But as mere jazz it generates a surprisingly compact, uncommonly straightforward, and dare I say pop-friendly sense of identity and purpose. A-
53. Baaba Maal: Being (Atelier Live): This 69-year-old vocalist and guitarist is a Tukulor not a Wolof and hence, at least in his case, a more politically conscious and proactive figure than even a Wolof as socially sapient as Youssou N'Dour himself. But it pretty much goes without saying because who has that he's never approached N'Dour's musical reach or scope, and keeping up with his albums has required more diligence than they seemed likely to reward. That's one reason I missed 2016's The Traveller, only now I'm kind of sorry, because this one is simultaneously raw and delicate, powerful and modulated. One reviewer has praised how openly it integrates younger pop experimental types. What impresses me is that you can't tell they're there. A-
54. Bombino: Sahel (Partisan): Internationalist Tuareg guitar adept Oumar Moctar has never sounded defter or brisker. Subtly yet declaratively, lyrically yet cogently, he's always making desert music one way or the other. But with one-man percussion cohort Corey Wilhelm buoying the boss's rhythms so brightly you could lose your bearings and claim he evokes a bubbling spring, you're grateful that the other West Africans featured here do more than simultaneously pour on the sand and fill out the ensemble. They make it an ensemble, all for one and one for all. A-
55. Brandy Clark: Brandy Clark (Warner): The best country songwriters have tended female in this century, and Clark is pretty much the sharpest, as indicated by her chief rival Miranda Lambert glomming onto Clark's "Mama's Broken Heart" as her smash-hit own. Now 47, a forthright lesbian who's all over Ashley McBryde's small-town musical-beds burlesque Lindeville, Clark writes so much ace material that not one of her four albums lags. In the lead track here, two young sisters murder their abusive father and it feels so uplifting you're proud nobody's the wiser. You know how much she loved her grandma when she calls one "She Smoked in the House" and how much she loves an unnamed other by bragging about how often she comes up in therapy. A-
56. CMAT: Crazymad, for Me (Cmatbaby): Ciara Mary Alice Thompson's second album of original songs was recorded in Bergen, Norway except for one in Kingston, New York--not "California," where she threatens to flee in the opener, but not her native Dublin either. I'm on my way, she wants us to know. And while the songwriting isn't quite as strong as on last year's debut, she does well by a pervasive theme she shares with none other than album of the year favorite SZA: serial coitus, let's call it. Unlike SZA, whose vocals flex, keen, and murmur not as if but because sensuality is her default mode, CMAT's singing is leaner, cuter, and by no means shy about trying hard. But sometimes it seems as if every song finds her in bed with someone else, to less than no avail, with the title "I . . . Hate Who I Am When I'm Horny" a theme statement I wouldn't wish on people I like a lot less than I do her. "I'm sitting in an office paying 80 quid an hour to cry," she tells us. "It started ending our first week," she reckons. "No wrapped in a dressing gown, no curled on your couch," she laments. "Have fun, I'm done," she announces. "What's left for me but poetry/And getting really old?" she wonders. Most likely lots of things, I suspect. Really, girl, it's not over yet. A-
57. Elle King: Come Get Your Wife (RCA): Near as I can tell by quickly checking back, the third album by a marginal Nashvillean who was inspired to take up music by none other than the Donnas is her sharpest so far. She's always fast, loose, and long on attitude, although it's hard to imagine her ever topping "I'm gonna try Jesus/See what all the fuss is about/Thinkin' I should try Jesus/'Cause every other man let me down." Fortunately for us, this experiment doesn't work either. Not only does it leave room for the Miranda Lambert cowrite "Drunk (And I Don't Wanna Go Home)," which follows all too immediately. It also provides varied ways for her to spell Tulsa backward, pass out goodnight kisses, and make the most of a bad reputation she's proud she's earned. A-
58. Jeffrey Lewis: Asides & B-Sides (2014-2018) (self-released): [2023 Dean's List: 58: Expanded reissue of When That Really Old Cat Dies]  
59. Ahl Nana: L'Orchestre National Mauritanien (Radio Martiko): Recorded in Casablanca way back in 1971, these 10 six- to nine-minute tracks by a family credited dubiously with foreshadowing the likes of Tinariwen and other desert guitar bands could dub themselves the "national orchestra" of their sparsely populated, largely Saharan and Arab-Berber land because no one else had applied for the job. Their groove devoid of the complex polyrhythms of dance musics from Senegal down to Congo and also the thrust of the Malian and related styles that would soon emerge, they rely instead on what sounds and also looks in the cover photo like an all-female chorus call-and-responsing to drums-lute-kora with vigor, conviction, and delight. Tinariwen are fine. But half a century ago this ensemble was far more singular. A-
60. África Negra: Antologia Vol. 1 (Bongo Joe '22): It would be idiot vanity not to quote the press copy on this one, so ahem: "Heat-seeking, puxa-style blends of semba, merengue, kompas, soukouss, coladeira from the two Portuguese-speaking islands of Sao Tomé & Principe in the Gulf of Guinea." Goes on to assert its place among "the roots of current Lisbon kuduru," a subgenre last referenced by me in January in regard to Angola-born Pongol's Sakadila. For sure its dozen picks tend speedier and more pumped up than not only Franco but, say, Kanda Bongo Man, yet lighter as well. Given that they've been recording since 1981, it should be no surprise that the premier selection assembled here never flags as guitars establish the melody, voices stick with it, and horns bulk it up a little. How irresistible the resulting music proves long haul remains to be determined. But for sure these dozen examples don't quit. A-
61. Algiers: Shook (Matador): This international, multiracial quartet-plus is one of the darkest bands this side of death metal and knows why, which is politics. A prominent trap set drives texturally articulated keyboardish substructures that incorporate enough actual guitar and bass to sidestep any cheap synth-rock catchall genrewise, and on this album has its lyrical content locked and loaded. From the oppressed "We all shatter, it's a sign of the times" to the unbowed "When we die, our beloved, our kinfolk, fear not/We rise," driving force and chief vocalist-lyricist Franklin Jay Fisher knows whereof he sings, and on this album he's enlisted quite the crew of walk-on allies, most impressively Zack de la Rocha raging against hegemony, Billy Woods honoring his Marxist patrimony, and Afro-Canadian trans pioneer Backxwash representing for her fellow ladies as just one legion of the oppressed. And toward the end comes the grueling "Something Wrong," where you just know the cops are gonna brutalize the painfully polite driver-narrator and can't stop yourself from following every detail. A-
62. Janelle Monáe: The Age of Pleasure (Wondaland Arts Society/Atlantic): Her breakthrough album five years behind her, "fine-as-fuck" cultural heroine bets her iconicity on her pan-sexuality and comes out on top of a crowded field that includes Megan the Stallion, SZA, and Amaarae, none of whom has ever even feinted toward the conscious gravitas she rode in on as an audacious 22-year-old circa 2008. Secret classic: "Water Slide," track 10, by which point most of us have stopped noticing lyrics, which here include "'Cause the water feels fine." Do not make this mistake. And no, it's not a sex song--except insofar as it is. A-
63. Amaarae: Fountain Baby (Interscope): OK, maybe she is sex-obsessed--she can afford it. For sure this is as unabashedly erotic and indeed pornographic an album as I can recall, which I say as a heterosexual male who responds more warmly to the varied vaginas she lusts after than I ever did to the panoply of oversized hip-hop dicks that have long since passed from my memory. Her portion of fame proud and earned, her voice simultaneously fragile and self-possessed, her star-time comforts and advantages acknowledged without vanity or apology, she doesn't so much boast about her crushes, trysts, and conquests as lay them out lubriciously or matter-of-factly as the cherished rewards of a lifestyle I wouldn't be surprised to learn she's exaggerating. From "Reckless and Sweet" to "Come Home to God," from "All My Love" to "Sociopathic Dance Queen," she appreciates what she's got without taking it for granted, and without assuming there are no more chapters to her story. A-
64. Quasi: Breaking the Balls of History (Sub Pop): The 58-year-old Portland-not-Seattle organ-not-guitar grunge lifer Sam Coomes--whose first band met cute as the Donner Party and who formed this one with ex-wife and world-class drummer Janet Weiss--could well be the grimmest frontman the northwest ever let out of his niche, and that includes the ones who committed suicide. If songwriters are "just a bunch of dudes trying to sell their egos to the world," as Coomes once remarked, his ego is forever obsessing on "the dead horse before the cart," "flying to Niagara in a lead balloon," "walking on water in your made-in-U.S.A. concrete shoes," "Everyone sleeping in their cars/And all the teenage TikTok stars," "All the houses lost to fire/The anti vaxxers and the climate deniers," and not only could he go on, he does. So recall that it was Coomes who midwifed the pre-inaugural anti-Trump compilation Battle Hymns, a better way to sell his ego to the world than Elliott Smith ever came up with, and figure his darkness is more politico-philosophical than biochemical. In fact, when he and Weiss bring their tour to your neck of this riven land, check them out. Coomes especially could use the money, and deserves it. A-
65. Azuka Moweta & Aniome Brothers Band: Nwanne Bu Ife (Palenque): Moweta's not so much distinctive as felt and textured and arresting baritone is what sells his devotion to the Nigerian highlife variant dubbed ekobe, which enlists such Igbo percussion devices as long gong, woodblock, and it says here pot. Six tracks ranging between six and 16 minutes, all of which deliver soul, groove, and an emotional authority imbued with both faith and tenderness--none of which, I'm obliged to acknowledge, would necessarily be as convincing if I understood the words. A-
66. Bailey Zimmerman: Religiously (Warner Music Nashville/Elektra): Lyrics eloquent and tempos moderate, melodies workmanlike and affect heartfelt, this 23-year-old Illinois boy scored several minor country hits before he came up with the one-word hook of dreams. The apparently unbalanced full stanza goes "'Cause I don't have the woman who was there for me/Religiously," and there you have the theme of a whole 16-track album. It could move a little quicker, I guess, but Zimmerman clearly believes his lifetime commitment to colloquial English will have to do until he gets this love thing straight. "Before them plans fell due"? "Gettin' over you feels so wrong"? "That's when I lost it. Midnight in Austin. Damn I'm exhausted"? "Good Lord we had a good long run"? Makes an old guy think, yup, she sounds like a keeper, but I guess it just didn't work out. So keep trying, kid. You really seem to have the stuff. A-
67. Grrrl Gang: Spunky! (Kill Rock Stars): Given the spelling of their sobriquet, the temptation to slot these Indonesian two-gals-and-a-guy as riot grrrl is irresistible even though their 10 songs in 25 minutes aren't especially catchy or cutting, hence punk only in the fast-short-hard sense. But for me sociological factors more than compensate, though you can call them psychological if you prefer--either way they provide a convincing glimpse of an exotic yet also generic club-kid culture, and either way what's interesting about guitarist-lyricist-vocalist Angeeta Santana is that she's not defiant or funny like good little punks should be. She's just painfully honest and dolefully insecure the way so many of the defiantly funny are down deep. "Don't know how I got here. I blinked and now I'm 23." "I lack direction. It hurts to sing." "I'm lneurotic, manic, borderline psychotic." "When you hold my thigh, it's never a waste of my time." "I feel caged in my body. I've been flirting with death. Just to see what it has to offer." "I was born in the pit. I gave birth in the pit. I never shave my pits. Let me swallow your spit." "You're never gonna be this young again." A-
68. Bar Italia: Tracey Denim (Matador): As 50 bears down on them and all too quickly waves goodbye, alt-rock oldtimers tend to get exercised about how pure or derivative or clever or facile or cheap or confused or just plain inadequate young style/genre mix-and-matchers like this cheeky and subtle young UK trio may or may not be. But having never fully worked out myself what shoegaze and its satellites even were, I find myself thrown back on ancient pop verities: melody-clarity-decency, whether kind or irate. So I'm touched when sweetly singsong Nina Cristante switches from first person to third person so as better to croon/murmur words of encouragement to a going-on-distraught Jezmi Tarik: "I know you trip and stumble when you're trying to be graceful/And there's no way you don't think it's funny/So brush yourself off and lift yourself up/And I'll be here ready to hold you." Have a heart, oldsters. Whatever their shifty ambitions, they're trying to be nice, and these days that's a good thing. So why don't we just hum along? A-
69. Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday 2 (Young Money/Republic): I'm not sorry I sent Amazon 14 bucks for what turns out to be a 10-song CD with unreadable track listings that many report is better in its longer streamable and downloadable version. Musically, there is no more pleasurable female rapper, and while I wouldn't claim her first album since 2018 is on a par with Queen or The Pinkprint, it definitely adds to what we'll just call her oeuvre if it's OK with you. The pleasure she takes in her undaunted flow and soft yet flawless diction and the pride she takes in her opthamologically challenged young daughter are almost enough to tempt me not to mention her unrelinquished claim that some Covid vaccine or other left a cousin of hers impotent. So now I dare you to tell me how old she is without looking it up. Just short of 50 is the answer. Wow. A-
70. Chai: Chai (Sub Pop): Their fragile signature sound remains as they get older and older, smarter and smarter, although not a whole lot catchier--and this kind of music, insofar as that's a meaningful generalization, is supposed to be catchy. But deep in their perky, fragile souls, these young "new cute" Japanese women never stop learning no matter how far they still have to go. "I should practice my kissing." "Driving through the traffic jam/Views are lovely I need coffee." "Not all needs to change./Every second we age." "We are the female/We are the human being." A-
71. Gurf Morlix: Caveman (Rootball '22): On sheer output alone--Morlix has self-produced 13 albums of original songs since he split with Lucinda Williams prior to Car Wheels on a Gravel Road--the Austin songwriter-guitarist-vocalist-producer is a wonder. But till now he never came close to equalling his 2011 tribute to Austin legend Blaze Foley, with six consecutive 2013-2022s Honorable Mentions hampered by both the gruffness of his sprechgesang and the hitch in his groove. This one maintains throughout, dipping briefly in the middle but soon picking up where it left off and then finishing strong. "Hodgepodge" rhymes with both garage and espionage, the idyllic lookback "1959" ignores Frankie Avalon et al as only a guy born in 1951 could, and "Make Me Your Monkey" volunteers as well to be her "tool" before it even masters the chords to "I'm a Believer." A-
72. Lil Wayne: Tha Fix Before Tha VI (Young Money/Republic): Expecting not much of the annoying little Trumpsucker from the forthcoming The Carter VI itself much less its teasers, I was impressed to find that conceptually catch-as-catch-can suits him as he puts 40 behind him--freed of vague narrative obligations, the talented pardon-seeker had some good ones in his kit or maybe just his subconscious. So although I understand why rhyming "esophagus" with "misogynist" and suggesting that his pubic hair can double as dental floss aren't tropes likely to impress the few if any feminists who value his artistic gifts, in a grab bag like this they're evidence of his continuing if intermittent creative vitality. A-
73. Jad Fair and Samuel Locke Ward: Happy Hearts (Kill Rock Stars): At 69, Half Japanese main bro Jad still sounds like a half lyrical, half cheeky teen twerp. With his pitch elevated and his timbre lubricated, his boyish enthusiasm perches comfortably atop the full-bodied minimalist alt-rock filled in by his latest partner Ward, a sometime comics guy perfectly capable of darker thematics who lists "folk-punk" among his musical gambits. Whether twentysomething cynics are ready to admit it or not, what's not teen at all about these songs is that most of them are lived love songs: "Love is in charge/Love is now ours/We have it now/It's in the stars" is no more simplistic than the crushes of he and his brother David's musical youth and in all biographical likelihood less so--after all, David announced he was quitting the band decades ago so he could spend more time with his family. Jad, however, is set on proving he can have it all. A-
74. Shygirl: Nymph (Because Music '22): No girl shy or otherwise, this Anglo-Grenadian who got her start working as the booker at a modeling agency is soft edges everywhere even when she's earning the right to call a song "Nike" by getting all "hands on my breasts and my batty just do it." Sex and/or sexy is her specialty and her pleasure, but she'd rather murmur about it than make a lot of noise. Embedded in the cushiest of electronics, she cultivates a come-on that always leaves room for a few more frissons. A-
75. Lyrics Born: Vision Board (Mobile Home '22): Recording in New Orleans to adjust as opposed to update the no-nonsense Oakland forward march that's been his signature groove for a quarter century, the impressively slimmed-down Tom Shimura has new material ready, as has always been his hard-working practice and commercial ticket. Admittedly, I'm a guy who can't resist someone who rhymes "shuttle bus," "double dutch," "honey bun," and "cummerbund," and also a guy who warms to any rapper I'm sure knows the real meaning of "conjugal" even if the word itself doesn't come up. Will he ever be famous? Not as hip-hop judges such things. But his skills are so real he's still making a career of it as he passes 50, and keeping things conjugal in the process. A-
76. Blondshell: Blondshell (Partisan): NYC born-and-raised Sabrina Mae Teitelbaum is a queer-identified singer-songwriter disinclined to get too binary about it. As of this album she lives with a boyfriend in East L.A. and specializes in plain love songs chocked with unusual interpersonal details. In "Salad" she ponders poisoning an abuser. "The sex is almost always bad" in one called "Sepsis" but she can't help loving him anyway. In "Sober Together" she hangs in there for a partner who's falling off the wagon. In "Kiss City" her "kink is when you tell me you think I'm pretty." Gets around, does Sabrina Mae. And thinks about it too. A-
77. Pony: Velveteen (Take This to Heart): Thirty-one-year-old Torontonian alt-rocker Sam Bielanski is not only pretty and smart but writes songs that are both and sings them like she knows it. The memorable tunes are easily negotiable, the lyrics concise and credible if too often frustrated--so much so they make you wonder whether she's too eager, too demanding, or, more likely as I calculate the demographics, a well-meaning mark who has trouble distinguishing between male confidence and male chauvinism. That's sure the way one called "Sucker Punch" makes it seem, although without ever suggesting that he literally hit her even if catching her when she fell proved beyond his capabilities. Inspirational Verse insofar as it's in control verbally: "My boyfriend is dead/I met him when I moved into a haunted house/Lingering in bed/It's all his fault I turned into a ghost." A-
78. Low Cut Connie: Art Dealers (Contender): A tireless entertainer with matchless chops and a sense of humor so acerbic it isn't funny, Adam Weiner is a high-IQ frontman perfectly capable of writing with more subtlety than he sings with. So even if you give this very post-pandemic album the close attention it deserves, you still may not notice some of the nuances of its gibes, plaints, protests, outcries, and observations. Having identified as a "song and dance man" up front, by the time Weiner showcases a title track he only gets around to as the album approaches a tuckered-out finale he's still trying to come to terms with the middlemen he calls the art dealers--the "dead on their feet" bizzers who "don't live here no more." "Who's gonna listen to my song after everyone is gone?" he wonders. "I feel like a garbage man who's lost his wedding ring," he confesses. Then it's on to the next gig. A-
79. PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying (Partisan): Based on Orlam, the 54-year-old Harvey's book-length poem in the English of the southern county of Dorsetshire, where "wordle" means world and "wildermist" means steam on a window, this album is pure musical switcheroo. With sweetness aforethought, Harvey's piping soprano departs radically from the blues-soaked shout that was her trademark from 1993's Rid of Me to 2000's Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea and beyond. I can imagine working out its meanings sometime. But even in my pitiful ignorance I can attest that while the music here is pretty quiet, its principles stand firm enough to make me hope I'll someday grok what the words boil down to. B+
80. Maggie Rogers: Surrender (Capitol '22): It so happens that in early 2016 I briefly tutored unmistakably bright-and-a-half NYU senior Rogers, whose plan to write an Alanis Morissette 33 1/3 was shelved when Pharrell Williams, then artist in residence at NYU's Clive Davis Institute, heard something in "Alaska" that made her the biggest star the Institute has ever turned out. But it wasn't until early 2019 that Capitol dropped her Heard It in a Past Life album, which I'm not the only one to find overcooked the way multiproduced major-label debuts can be. So I was chuffed to learn that instead of rushing to follow it up Rogers took time off to earn a master's at Harvard Divinity School as she pretty much less simultaneously came up with this cleaner and more focused long-player. Sonically, although with input from Harry Styles producer Kid Harpoon I bet, the music here bears the mark of a singer-songwriter who also leads her own band. Not that it's anything like spare. But despite its orchestral dimensions it projects plenty of detail--strident, yet so intricate that its intensity has a well-wrought delicacy to it. Although the themes are more emotional than erotic, there's plenty of eroticism in there--some spirituality with an appetite for permanence too. At 28, Rogers is no longer any kind of post-teen. You can tell. A-
81. Hemlocke Springs: Going . . . Going . . . Gone! (AWAL): Simultaneously eccentric and simplistic, original and formulaic, these seven electropop songs come from an African-born TikTok find who justcompleted a Dartmouth M.A. in medical research and for all we know could prove a genius, a flash in the pan, or both at once. Right now, I'll note that the two attention-getting openers do have more spritz than the three late entries that serve to bulk up this phase of her oeuvre into EP territory. This could be the start of something special. But if it isn't, then her ebullience is unlikely ever to sound like anything less than that, and in the right proportions enduring ebullience can be a wonderful thing. A-
82. Zach Bryan: Boys of Faith (Warner): This being country music you'd guess the boys who populate this EP are Christians, and probably they were and in some crucial sense still are. But they're also sinners whether they're young Zach's dad betting on his nine-ball prowess or Zach himself selling his oldest Gibson to finance a flight to NYC, where he catches up with a homegirl who's migrated to the East Village and somehow gets to glom a billboard with--what??!!--his picture on it. A-
83. Stephen Ulrich: Music From This American Life (Barbès): Especially with Romanian-Israeli drummer Tamir Muskat making his Gypsy racket, guitarist Ulrich's Big Lazy was pretty disruptive. Here well-connected sidemen Thomas Bartlett on keyboards and Dean Sharenow on drums help him fit in on a show that regularly tests without challenging the NPR politesse that permits Ira Glass to tweak if not pump liberal values without making more trouble than is good for him. Since Ulrich gets full composer credit throughout, I congratulate him for having achieved a rare thing--masterminding 10 easy-listening tracks that have certifiably enlivened not just dinner but breakfast at my house. I've always admired his sense of tune. But I'm nonetheless allowed to hope he still has Muskat in his phone. A-

And It Don't Stop, Jan. 26, 2024

2022

Essay | --

2024