Consumer Guide: August, 2024

The greatest artist of the 20th century as pop interpreter, an r&b pro gone bluegrass, 13 songs about romantic bliss gone bad, and a thrill seeking soprano with captivating tunes and runaway grooves.

África Negra: Antologia Vol. 2 (Bongo Joe) This band's home base is Sao Tomé and Principe, a tiny island nation of barely 200,000 situated 150 miles west of the African mainland that was only settled--with slaves, naturally--after the Portuguese discovered the islands in 1470. One might hope this isolated population managed to develop its own musical style, and in a sense it did, though it may be more accurate to label it a unique amalgam: a gentle genre mix that evokes and/or duplicates the fetching polyrhythms of related African dance musics from Nigeria down to the Congo and tops them off with the sometimes sweet, sometimes mellow vocals of Sergio Fonseca and João Seria, a figure so beloved his 2023 death occasioned nationwide mourning. A MINUS

Okaidja Afroso: Jaku Mumor (Chechekule) Well-schooled Ghanaian traditionalist transforms ancient musics into postmodern but unmistakably African atmospherics ("Gidi Gidi," "Wole Worhe") ***

Louis Armstrong: Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson (Verve '97) Piano virtuoso Peterson has always seemed a tad light-fingered to me, which I expect is one reason many jazz specialists consider him the nearest thing to Art Tatum God bequeathed mankind. Without question a virtuoso, he was Norman Granz's go-to bandleader cum de facto producer at Verve. So in a sense this circa-1957 showcase highlights both of the artists with their names on the cover, and while I remain faithful to Armstrong's 16 Most Requested Songs on Columbia, this one has its own unmistakable identity, de-Satchmoizing its star attraction by making the most of his skills as a world-class pop interpreter--bringing out the Sinatra in him, if you will. With Peterson providing decisive accents and shading, this expanded reissue of a 1957 session honors the likes of "That Old Feeling," "You Go to My Head," and "Willow Weep for Me" as the indelible standards they are. Also for that reason, it saves Cole Porter for the waggish closer "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)," and I mean right down to "In shallow shoals English soles do it/Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it." A

Swamp Dogg: Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th Street (Oh Boy) The dauntless r&b pro christened Jerry Williams Jr. a few months after I was born has released more albums than I or perhaps even he can count. Of the dozen I've reviewed only his 1995 best-of and 1969's legendary Total Destruction to Your Mind sounded like down-and-out keepers to me. But on John Prine's label, with Margo Price, Jenny Lewis, and closet bluegrass adept/adaptor Vernon Reid contributing cameos, he revs up the songwriting. The Price feature "To The Other Woman" is a special standout, with "Your Best Friend" a made-to-order B side. As a fellow 82-year-old I can only envy his vocal vitality. And the racial charge of the "Murder Ballad" closer is more than a little eerie. A MINUS

Jeff Evans Porkestra: Willow Pillow (self-released) Evans is said to be a regular on Atlanta's alt-country scene, about which I know naught else although Atlanta being Atlanta I assume it has some heft to it. But I was instantly attracted to these six eccentric medium-tempo g-b-d love songs, which leads with one where he casts himself as a spider who shot the sheriff in a murder-suicide but the prints don't match and then compares his girl to the Sea of Japan. In the finale he drives her to the airport so she can fly to the aforementioned island nation and then sings about hoping she comes back. He's so goofy and likable you'll hope along with him. A MINUS

Lupe Fiasco: Samurai (Thirty Tigers) Alliterating like a stutterer who's moved on and rhyming metrics-separate-necklace or obelisk-kabbalist-esophagus is all very impressive, but making your coolest song go "I just want to commit crime in Tibet/Turn and say something divine and then climb in a jet"? More like silly. ("Samurai," "Cake") ***

Claudia Gibson: The Fields of Chazy (self-released) Immigrants' songs, farmer's granddaughter edition ("The Fields of Chazy," "The Night Visiting Song," "Angels Fly") **

Megan Moroney: Am I Okay? (Columbia Nashville) Moroney has writing credit on all 13 of these varied and well-crafted songs about romantic bliss gone bad and nothing but romantic bliss gone bad, although an actual-count 15 song doctors, 10 of them male, also pitch in on between one and six of them. Key indicators include "I'd sound good with your last name," "Mama I lied he ain't a good guy," "When I lie down next to him/I'd rather be with you," "Bet you didn't think you'd wind up in a song," "two months deep in therapy," "another three-six-five have come and gone," "I see your truck and I don't give a," "I hope you're happy as can be/I hope it don't get back to me," and the magnificent and quite literal in its fanciful way "Yeah it hurt like hell/But hell it could have been worse/At least my whole world left me for Miss Universe." A MINUS

David Murray: Francesca (Intakt) Eight tracks ranging between 6:09 and 10:54 featuring the greatest working tenor player and three sidepeople I'm not jazzed up enough to expatiate on. But they're all hyperactive and that's exciting not messy: Marta Sanchez on piano, Luke Stewart on bass, Russell Carter on drums. The music never stops moving around, and while I suppose it could be argued that Murray's virtuosity is too much an end in itself here, that kind of talk is for prigs. This kind of genuine ensemble is one of the things jazz is for. A MINUS

The Old 97's: American Primitive (ATO) "From the barroom floor to the bardo," Rhett Miller and his longtime alt-country mates regroup to assemble yet another album of formally unremarkable, melodically indelible songs. I confess that my sentimental favorite is "Honeypie," which I prefer even to the opener suggesting that we "dance like the world is falling down around you/Because it is," or "Magic" complaining that "these cigarettes are lazy/They'e killing me so slow." And please note that "Legs that go all the way down to the floor" and all, "The one thing she don't like/Is when I call her my old lady." A MINUS

Amy Rigby: Hang in There With Me (Tapete) Opening with one called "Hell-Oh Sixty," she's feeling her age, but though the tunes may have flattened a tad, this is an honorable addition to one of the most disgracefully underappreciated books in all of singer-songwriterdom ("Dylan in Dubuque," "Bricks") ***

Chappell Roan: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (Island) This is a shamelessly catchy album about the sexualization of a once devout Christian born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz who grew up--comfortably enough, I'm guessing, as the daughter of a veterinarian and a registered nurse--in a trailer park near Springfield, Missouri. At 17 she signed a record deal with Atlantic that went phffft, so at 20 she relocated to L.A. for to seek her fortune in show business full-time. Not that the foregoing bio is more than hinted at in these songs, all of them voiced by a thrill-seeking post-teen who gets around; even the seeking her fortune part has to be inferred. The sexualization, however, is explicit and thematic, there for the delectation of anyone with working genitalia--male or female, the songs go both ways, although the guys fade out and the gals are so much nicer in general. I mean, she's not reticent with the physical details. As the album goes on, her demonstrative soprano, captivating tunes, and runaway grooves come to seem inextricable from the encounters and relationships that occasioned them. "Phew," you almost want to say. "Slow down a little, girl!" A

Linda Thompson: Proxy Music (Storysound) "Friends and family sing songs" devised by a woman who was dealt a worse hand than she deserved by both her husband and her body--which doesn't in itself make it a stone masterpiece as opposed to a fitting monument (Ren Harvieu, "I Used to Be So Pretty"; Teddy Thompson, "Those Damn Roches"; Kami Thompson, "The Solitary Traveller") ***

Kathryn Williams & Withered Hand: Willson Williams (One Little Independent) In the early teens, when he enjoyed a spell as a gifted minor cult figure on the U.K. folk-rock circuit, Withered Hand, the Biblical professional name of Edinburgh-based lapsed Jehovah's Witness Dan Willson, put out a smatterring of albums that tried to pin down the meaning of a love he seemed to figure was as close to God as he'd ever get. On the 11 uncompromisingly tender and lovely songs he shares with 50-year-old veteran Williams here, how literally autobiographical I have no idea although they do make it sound that way, especially on the one that includes the startling couplet "Like the first time that you blew me/I'm not hung like an elephant but I got agood memory." Autobiographical? For these two at this moment, that's not the point. In the very same song, "I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend my time with than you babe" is the point. A MINUS

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