Consumer Guide: March 20, 2024

Intelligence that values the lubricious, blues-soaked fun and politics, engaged yet also casual flow that's too smart for cute, and songs situated in day-to-day dilemmas and disappointments.

Thomas Anderson: Hello, I'm From the Future (Out There) If you've never checked out this longstanding postcollegiate singer-songwriter, I hope a stanza will solve that problem with no further ado: "I was asking Gilda Radner when I met her in a dream/Is this manna from heaven or is it just ice cream?/I try hard to believe but I'm failing every time/I woke up to my eight-track playin' 'Angel Number Nine.'/And the Devil's playing pinball and he's winning every game/And the bowling alley Baptists just ignore him all the same;/I did everything I knew but I tilted every time,/And I'm tired of breathing smoke so I think I'll step outside./And may God keep the faithful who search the interstates/For a girl in a Pacer with Oklahoma plates/Now I don't mind the wait 'cause you see we have a date/So don't be surprised if we're not home/Til very late." Got it? A MINUS [Available here.]

Guy Davis: Be Ready When I Call You (M.C., '21) I've long been mildly impressed by Ossie and Ruby's blues-soaked son, who turns 71 in May. But as I listened harder to his 21st album I found there wasn't much mild about it. Yes there are fun songs here: the near-novelty "Badonkadonk Train," the hopeful "I Got a Job in the City," in its mean way the Trump-thumping bonus cut "It Was You." But it's the specificity and bite of the overt protest songs that had me listening harder, with three earning my full attention: the all too leaden "Flint River Blues," Davis's undiminished outrage at the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, and "Palestine, Oh Palestine," one of the rare responses to that horror to achieve something resembling felt balance without beginning to pretend that all evils are equal. A MINUS

Doja Cat: Scarlet (RCA) In praise of bodily fluids, the slipperier the better ("Wet Vagina," "Paint the Town Red") **

R.A.P. Ferreira & Fumitake Tamura: The First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap (Ruby Yacht) Kenosha-to-Maine rapper Ferreira puts the cherry blossom on top of his escape to Nashville by hooking up with classically trained Japanese beatmaker Tamura ("Culture War Patriots," "Medicinal Hymnal #77") ***

Margaret Glaspy: Echo the Diamond (ATO) A calm, declarative California-to-NYC singer-songwriter who kept auditing guitar classes after her Berklee grant ran out is determined not to give up on this love thing either. "Between a rock and a hard place/I'll be your lily pad," she vows, and if you personally are the beneficiary of that promise don't let the chance pass. There's sweetness here, but also thought and the kind of intelligence that values the lubricious without getting swamped by it. Thirty-five she may be; jaded she's not. A MINUS

Michael Hurley: The Time of the Foxgloves (No Quarter) Not getting any younger at 82, but also not saying goodbye--to songwriting, to pulchritude, to modest swigs of "Beer, Ale and Wine" ("Are You Here for the Festival," "Alabama") *

Idles: Tangk (Partisan) Love as conflict, hence more as texture than as melody, and you bet more abstract as a result ("Gift Horse," "Hall & Oates") *

Les Amazones d'Afrique: Musow Danse (RealWorld) Although the four principals are somewhat less august in this third iteration and an actual trot would be nice, the four women who dominate this third iteration their protest music you'd better dance to are more militantly feminist meaning more proactive politically than either of its predecessors. And while as uptempo Afropop with an insistent tempo you can assume it's danceable, you should be aware that the title translates simply "women's dance." True, producer Jacknife Lee already has both Taylor Swift and the Killers on his dance card. But you should keep in mind that the refrain translates: "Hey womanhood! Hey womanhood! We're calling on women from around the world." A MINUS

Queen: Greatest Hits (Hollywood, '92) It took me years with periodic pep talks from my daughter to admit with more delight than I would have figured that while I'd never warmed to the art-rock glitz of these international standouts, most of these 17 songs are good-humored rather than melodramatic--played not for laughs, but for ebullience and sprezzatura. I assume that no matter how many alternate versions of the 1992 Hollywood-label best-of have surfaced here and there (some of which including my own would seem to do without "Bohemian Rhapsody"), the lead tracks here are universal from "We Will Rock You" to "We Are the Champions" to "Another One Bites the Dust"--and also that "Fat Bottomed Girls," "Bicycle Race," and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" are for normal humans every bit as enjoyable. Just in general the grandiosity that always annoyed me about them from a distance is played not for laughs, but to highlight an unmistakable joie de vivre very much bound up in Freddie Mercury's loud and joyous clarity. A MINUS

Peter Stampfel/Eli Smith/Walker Shepard: Wildernauts (Don Giovanni) Recorded in 2019, before the ringleader's now recovering 85-year-old voice bottomed out, the singing on these chestnuts scares up a clarity that somehow it skirts--here a cowboy whooping, there a teenager cracking. But the present-day eccentric and his two younger longterm buddies refuse to recline throughout. Try "Crazy Arms," "There Stands the Glass," "Not Tonight Dear, I Have an Earache." B PLUS

Tierra Whack: World Wide Whack (Interscope) Cheerfully compulsive 28-year-old Philadelphia-Atlanta rapper-singer-rhymer Whack made her big splash in 2018 with the 13-song but also 13-minute Whack World, where arithmetic whizzes will be less than shocked to learn she ended each of the 13 songs she showcased at precisely 60 seconds flat, an effect that proved disorienting and charming simultaneously. Her timbre soft, her enunciation impeccable anyway, her conversational, too-smart-for-cute flow is so engaged yet also so casual it's like she's hasn't ruled stardom out but is just too pleased with herself now to start getting pushy about it. A MINUS

Yard Act: Where's My Utopia? (Island) Designated post-punk for want of a more specific slot, this all-male U.K. s-g-b-d hail from Leeds, which in crucial respects says plenty about who they are or appear to be. True, there's no punky thrash or funky thwong to their four-four. But both their collective IQ and their acerbic politics are worthy of not only the Mekons and the Gang of Four, as is their unbowed "How about one last crack at it before we quit the biz?" There's an added attraction as well, namely that most of their songs are situated where they belong--in the day-to-day dilemmas and disappointments they outline. "Welcome to the future/The paranoia suits you," they beckon. "Are we born for nothing if we die alone?" they want to know. "If I leave here before you you'll see our baby through," they aver, and let's both assume and hope that they mean it. A MINUS

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