Babes Wodumo: Crown
Supplier of gqom to Black Panther turned star of an awful-sounding South African reality show has her genre’s template down pat, yet only sings with total freedom when she gets some distance from her problematic husband/producer/reality show co-star (“Omama”, “No No”, “Izegebengu”)
Kottarashky & the Rain Dogs: Doghouse
Sofia-based producer/literal architect combines folk samples from the greater Balkans with, well, everything: functional beats, a pretty good horn section, the dog in doggerel, what is that oh it’s a kaval, and a Franco-Māori singer whose Bulgarian sounds fluent to me (“Drunken Fish”, “Ni Lah”, “Moma”)
Breland: Cross Country
The cross of fluff about Southern towns/girls/booze with very 2022 stuff about finding oneself achieves unusual hybrid vigor, since songwriting with country-level attention to craft and clarity has been rare in American pop ever since [2000 words whining about Jack Antonoff deleted] (“Natural”, “County Line”, “Thick”)
Bella Shmurda: Hypertension
Lagos street-pop’s great hope opens his debut with “New Born Fela”, and if his sax snippets are less Afrobeat and more “I Will Always Love You”, his zeitgeist sense, knack for self-promotion, and ambition for pan-African stardom do the Black Prez proud (“Loose It”, “New Born Fela”, “Philo”)
Tegan and Sara: Crybaby
The sugar rush here is tempered by their knowledge that this ain’t their first rodeo regardless of how much they believe “I Can’t Grow Up”, yet their songforms are as structurally sound as ever, their measured sweetness delights even when the razor blades in the ice cream aren’t that sharp, and there are occasions when their maturity gives new depth to the teen feels they’ve catalogued across media—most so on the marijuana one (“Smoking Weed Alone”, “I’m Okay”, “Pretty Shitty Time”)
Years & Years: Night Call
Telly star Olly Alexander’s ditched the rest of his band with no evident dropoff in quality, with Alexander bringing his passaggio slides and a proud if nonthreatening gay perspective, serviceable-plus dance beats provided by longtime producer Mark Ralph and friends, no too-slow ones, some convincing love-lust-whatever in the short term, and no distracting framing concept about androids unless Kylie Minogue appearing two times too many on the deluxe counts (“20 Minutes”, “Sweet Talker”, “Sooner or Later”)
Momi Maiga: Nio
Senegal-to-Barcelona kora guy’s WOMAD audition is at least Euro in original and semi-interesting ways, with flamenco palmas and guitar that inspire him to do some of his most fleet work (“Mansani”, “1001”)
Weki Meki: I Am Me EP
Yet again a B-list Korean girl group makes a more spirited mini-album than the bigger names typically manage, with material that’s mindless even by the genre’s standards—“you’re my siesta” states the lead chorus—but the vocals show impressive range, the EDM-pop beats are filled with distractions, and the tune structures make up in sophistication what the words lack (“First Dream”, “Sweet Winter”)
Benjamin Epps: Vous êtes pas contents? Triplé!
Gabon-to-France rapper/provocateur who flows like an adept New Yorker (well, Buffalonian), though my French is way too shit to calibrate how ironic he’s being when he says he’s voting National Front because he wants to impregnate the young blonde Le Pen, and these days it’s safest to assume the worst (“Vous n’etes pas content? C’est pareil”, “Encore”)
Loona: Flip That EP
The latest A-list K-pop group to settle into good-but-inoffensive, assuming you’re not offended by ballads on principle, with one token edgy beat and the rest designed with no little skill not to annoy anyone too much—hey, there are eleven remaining group members, that’s still a lot of mouths to feed (“Pose”, “Pale Blue Dot”)