Lizzo Cuz I Love You (Atlantic) When Lizzo sends the title character of “Jerome” packing even though he “looks good on paper,” it summed up my feeling of listening to the sassy, up-with-me R&B of Cuz I Love You, as Lizzo’s righteous body positivity saturates the album and becomes didactic to the extent that the […]
Budos Band V (Daptone) Pseudos Band? As part of the Daptone stable, Budos Band excels at dialing in various flavors—the collective has helped supply spot-on retro soul tracks for Sharon Jones and Lee Fields, and their own instrumentals have shown up on commercials, video games, and soundtracks for Tequila 1800, MLB: The Show, and “Entourage.” […]
Marvin Gaye You’re the Man (Universal) The follow-up that never was is finally here—and honestly probably sounds better now than it would have in 1972. You’re the Man could hardly have matched the gorgeously sighing melodies, elegant textures, and memorable aphorisms of What’s Going On, and when it tries, it suffers in comparison. Leadoff track […]
Mary Lattimore & Mac McCaughan New Rain Duets (Three Lobed) Essentially a 40-minute jam divided into four segments, New Rain Duets brings more exquisite atmosphere from Mary Lattimore, and, in a somewhat surprising role, Mac McCaughan. Best known for cofounding Merge Records and fronting [...]
Faux Ferocious Pretty Groovy (Burger) When this Tennessee quartet played a C’ville house party back in 2012, they absolutely tore it up—apologies if you were there and I yowled in your face about the spirit of rock and roll. Faux Ferocious kicks out punky jams and bluesy boogie grooves and is [...]
Cass McCombs Tip of the Sphere (ANTI-) The opener of Tip of the Sphere is an interesting mongrel—half Irish folk mantra, half space rock, and ending with three minutes of Jerry-Garcia-circa-1972 wah guitar. All of which sort of sets the tone for Cass McCombs’ latest. There’s easy loping folk on [...]
DAWN New Breed (Young Action) Danity Kane veteran Dawn Richard has forged a reputation as an R&B iconoclast, collaborating with Dirty Projectors and working on Adult Swim. Here she puts forth her NOLA roots with wizened old- people’s voices at the start of several songs—though New Breed [...]
Before 2018 completely disappears in our rear-view mirrors, here’s a recap of some box sets released last year that weren’t The Beatles’ White Album or Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks box. Tom Petty An American Treasure (Reprise) In 1995 Tom Petty released the 6-CD Playback box, and, especially [...]
As always, there are too many albums I didn’t hear in 2018, but here are 10 favorites in roughly chronological order. Khruangbin Con Todo El Mundo (Dead Oceans) This was the runaway crowd pleaser of the winter, spring, and summer. Though they’re from Texas, Khruangbin’s hybridized funk invokes [...]
Ella Mai Ella Mai (10 Summers) Ella Mai declares emotion “a roller coaster” in a brief introductory snippet, spoken in a fetching British accent. And if her full-length debut feels kinda samey on the slow-to- midtempo tip, her lyrics do, as implied, dwell on romantic turmoil— mindfucks swirl [...]
Vince Staples FM! (Def Jam) Long Beach rapper Vince Staples’ third album is 22 minutes long—sadly. Staples sounds great, his humor veering from malevolent to nerdy on a dime; producer Kenny Beats offers a bunch of satisfying trunk rattlers; and guest spots—from E-40, Earl Sweatshirt, and [...]
Prince Piano & a Microphone 1983 (Warner Bros.) In case you somehow missed it, the first posthumous release from Prince’s storied vault is out—the mere fact of which gives a shiver, because what could be next, and then after that, ad infinitum in gloria? Meanwhile, there’s this album of [...]
Anna St. Louis If Only There Was a River (Woodsist) Woodsist calls this the “debut” of Kansas City native Anna St. Louis— odd, since they also released her First Songs full-length last year. Maybe they want us to grade her on the “beginner” scale, but the truth is that If Only There Was a River [...]
White Denim Performance (City Slang) The new record by Austin’s scraggle rock standard bearers opens with the tumble of a spinning radio dial. It sounds ironic but it could also be a statement of purpose; on Performance, White Denim skillfully updates various ’70s rock styles from the jump, the [...]
The Essex Green Hardly Electronic (Merge) I know I’m not alone in pronouncing this spring and summer a total bust—for every nice day, we’ve had a week of muggy, gloomy, rainy weather. Which gives The Essex Green’s Hardly Electronic both a wistful pang and a vicarious thrill, because the album’s [...]
Jim James Uniform Distortion (ATO) Jim James takes enough chances that I gotta pull for the guy— usually from a distance, but hey. Uniform Distortion’s 11 squalling tracks walk the line between garage rock and classic rock demos before landing in the latter camp—the tip off coming on “You Get [...]
Vince Guaraldi The Complete Warner Bros. -Seven Arts Recordings (Omnivore) In “Linus and Lucy,” Vince Guaraldi created one of the most universally beloved recordings of all time, but it’s hard to find his stuff besides A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Omnivore helps with this nifty two- [...]
The Orb No Sounds Are Out of Bounds (Cooking Vinyl) The English ambient house legends have had an uneven if steady output since their landmark debut in 1991, but they seem to have settled into a reliable if redundant groove after their 2012 collaboration with Lee “Scratch” Perry. No Sounds Are [...]
Melody’s Echo Chamber Bon Voyage (Fat Possum) Melody Prochet’s 2012 debut was produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and shared many stylistic markers with Impala’s Innerspeaker, which was just peachy. Bon Voyage was co-produced by Dungen’s Reine Fiske, but while Fiske’s guitar and Dungen main [...]
Chip Wickham Shamal Wind (Lovemonk) Wickham, a flute-and-reeds player who has worked with artists from Badly Drawn Boy to Roy Ayers, relocated from Manchester to Qatar and emerged as a bandleader on 2017’s La Sombra—a fruitful hybrid of ’60s modal jazz and funk with Latin shadings. This [...]
Domenico Lancellotti The Good is a Big God (Luaka Bop) One of the most creative interpreters of traditional Brazilian pop, Lancellotti puts an odd foot forward on The Good is a Big God with the plodding incantation “Voltar Se” before correcting course and finding a groove on the title track, a [...]
The Voidz Virtue (RCA) Albert Hammond Jr. Francis Trouble (Red Bull) It seemed the Strokes had already endured the breathless-hype-into-vicious-backlash cycle even before its debut full-length, Is This It, dropped in 2001. The band’s momentum, attitude and simply perfectly simple songwriting [...]
Van Hunt Popular (Blue Note) The “great lost” album by the vastly undersung Van Hunt is no longer lost, but it’s pretty great. The Ohio savant caught notice in 2004 with his self-titled debut and Grammy-nominated single “Dust,” then took a leap forward with On the Jungle Floor, and its agile [...]