Consumer Guide Album

The Lijadu Sisters: Afro-Beat Soul Sisters [Soul Jazz, 2011]
These would-be ingenues rarely go all the way. They don't always sing flat, but they always make you nervous about it, and both their consciousness and their English are pretty rudimentary for kin of Fela and Soyinka. Not nonexistent, however--unlikely as their guileless vocal affect makes it seem, how can a song that goes "We're cashing in prostitution yeah/Cashing in revolution yah" be anything but bitterly ironic? (Right??) This best-of isn't everything it might be--Mother Africa's "Iya Mi Jowi" would spruce it up substantially, for instance. But with producer Biddy Wright hooking them up, it's a minor girlpop treasure with a considerable difference. B+