Tuareg Niger’s top midpriced wedding band loses No. 1’s third guitar and gains two djembe players, remaining more eclectic than most of their peers, as well as a bit more of a group: the lack of a showstopping singer or virtuoso might limit their exportability, but the weddings look fun (“Nak Deranine”, “Tchingolene”, “Tahawertew Ine Idinette”)
Jeremiah Chiu & Maria Sofia Honer: Recordings From the Åland Islands
Keyboards etc. dude and viola etc. woman go to the Baltic and weave snippets of birdsong and local chit-chat into their long vibratoed notes and echo cranked to eleven to create a sense of unspoiled timelessness—maybe culturally imperialist or something, but an attractive fantasy (“Under the Midnight Sun”, “Snåcko”)
They’re finally starting to write songs with extended periods of tunefulness to balance Grian Chatten’s verbosity when taking sentiments as straightforward as “I Love You” and infusing them with Irish politics and self-loathing, as is the fashion (“Jackie Down the Line”, “Nabokov”, “I Love You”)
Kawaii-yet-tuff songs over busy-yet-kawaii beats: so slight it makes Palberta5000 sound like Palberta6000, but winsome nonetheless (“I Can’t Dance”, “Birthday”, “Keep Lying to Me”)
Michael Baird: Thumbs on the Outside
Zambia-born, Dutch resident percussionist Baird plays circular Afrogrooves with friends who own an intercontinental collection of pluckables and thumpables, along with what appears to be an actual baby who can sing along to 5/4 (“Gabon”, “Baonoko Central Station”, “Hello Hello Lilo”)
John Zorn: New Masada Quartet
Despite having watched Fiddler on the Roof last month, I have no idea how this relates to the Yiddish music tradition (“Tradition!”, I mean)—it just sounds like solid free jazz, with guitarist Julian Lage very good and Zorn more fun on the fast ones (“Tagriel”, “Mibi”, “Hath Arob”)
Undeath: It’s Time… to Rise from the Grave
Kind of the death metal Wet Leg: inviting structures and a jk/not-jk attitude make them easy to enjoy for those with even flagging interest in the genre, while those of us who want formalists to either be unflinchingly honest (sorry) or write at a National Book Award level might become unreasonably irritated by their ellipsis placement (“The Funeral Within”, “Rise from the Grave”)
Rolo Tomassi: Where Myth Becomes Memory
Mathy-proggy-metally Brits led by siblings Eva Korman’s and James Spence’s clean vocals and screaming (not gender-segregated) achieve grandeur the way one might achieve a graduate dissertation (“Cloaked”, “Closer”)
Amber Mark: Three Dimensions Deep
She sells simple premises effectively without getting sidetracked by fancy words or unexpected notes, but the production has too many unforced errors (the multitracked chants of “damn I really made it” collapses the accumulated goodwill of the second-best song) stemming from chasing trends a little too hard for something purports to be alt-R&B (“What It Is”, “Competition”, “Foreign Things”)
Okuté
Don’t know much about contemporary Cuban music, but this seems legit: some rumba, some folkloric stuff, all capably sung and played with enough ass-movement to fend off fossilization (“Caridad”, “Rumbarimbula”)
These Dutch occult psych rockers whose points of difference are a genuinely tragic backstory and dramatic contralto Farida Lemouchi—if you’re sick of indie girl voice, she’s definitely not that—do go on a bit, as occult psych rockers tend to do, but skip the ones over ten minutes and you’re down to a tight half-hour (“Get Out from Under”, “Death Is”)