Here are some albums where I have more to say than I can fit into an Odds & Ends entry no matter how much I abuse semicolons, but for which I’m not prepared to subject myself to the rigor of polishing into a Semipop Life blurb—that includes grading (always less fun than non-graders think), but if you hung a B+ on all of these I wouldn’t bother to argue. The next time the flagship column covers something you don’t care about (i.e. metal), feel free to substitute whatever tickles your fancy from here.
Cheat Codes: One Night in Nashville
Country-EDM! Which really means country-rock-EDM, since Nashville’s where classic rock’s gone to die! A whole album of it! Heavy on the bros, complemented by bro-curious women, plus Dolly Parton! Gratuitous lyrical detail in the verses, resolving to one-finger hooks! I’m not sure if anybody wants this unless they’re currently six drinks into a Broadway bachelor/ette party (or whatever your preferred equivalent voluntary cognitive impairment is), but I have to admire their ruthless efficiency—as if they have cheat codes. Should anyone work out how to expand this stuff into country-rap-rock-EDM, it could take over every state redder than Vermont, but let’s not give Morgan Wallen's enablers any free ideas. (“Already Hungover”, “One Night Left”)
Davido: A Better Time (2020)
A crucial figure in the continent-wide popularization of Afrobeats-with-an-s (start with 2013’s “Skelewu”), he’s been chasing the international success of his peers Burna Boy and WizKid for a while—this logically named 2020 sequel to 2019’s A Good Time was his second straight album with a Chris Brown cameo—and come close to achieving it (he was a respectable sixteenth in Billboard’s 2022 year-end Afrobeats artist chart, a mere four spots behind Bieber.) He genially accommodates guests whether fitting (Bella Shmurda), game (Lil Baby), incongruous (Nicki Minaj), or just more interesting than him (Sho Madjozi), and if your playlist omits that Chris Brown one, nobody would object to your putting this on during the golden hour. Nothing here screams megahit, and he has little to convey beyond that he’s rich and he loves you, sister or mother—closest is “Something Fishy”, where some jealousy seems to creep in, although his delivery makes it hard to distinguish from a literal fish. Still, he’s in a profitable place, so he might continue to be rich and love you for some time. (“Something Fishy”, “I Got a Friend”, “The Best”)
Davido: Timeless
The middle of Afrobeats’ big three in terms of quality, he deploys this title on an album that’s extremely 2023, March, somewhere towards the end of the month. There are a variety of right-this-moment beats from the continent and beyond—some dancehall, some neo-highlife, tons of amapiano—and combined with the shortness (!) of the songs, it comes across as a refusal to commit to anything. Given this, the amapiano tracks turn out the best, offering the highest baseline for a charismatic singer who doesn’t currently have much to say. (“Unavailable”, “In the Garden”, “Na Money”)
El Michels Affair & Black Thought: Glorious Game
As far as “take a sample and run it into the ground” rap production goes, this is way above average, both because the samples are more diverse than usual (Shabba Ranks! “Both Sides Now”!!) and because L(eon) Michels organizes them into actual songs, sometimes with actual choruses. Black Thought you know what you’re getting from at this point. (“Glorious Game”, “I’m Still Somehow”, “Grateful”)
Hans Abrahamsen/Bayerische Staatsoper: The Snow Queen (DVD)
The most anticipated opera of recent years reunites composer Abrahamsen with soprano Barbara Hannigan (they previously collaborated on the acclaimed song cycle Let Me Tell You, whose closing “I Will Go Out Now” is the most moving moment in 2010s classical music I know) on an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen proto-Frozen story. Hannigan’s no eight-year-old, so the fairy tale kids get adult doppelgangers, and if you’re going to have doppelgangers you might as well go for tripelgangers. The resulting work unites the ostensible subject of mental illness with traditional hero(ine)’s journey tropes. Though the dramatic conceits have a high miss ratio (early in Act 3, the music turns dramatic and it’s not clear at all what happened until a reindeer starts explaining the plot in a monotone), the score is excellent—you can listen with little difficulty if you turn subtitles on (that’s what they’re for), but pay attention and the ways in which the singers’ rhythms interlock are dauntingly complex. Hannigan is on stage the whole time and is precise in voice and acting, while Rachael Wilson in the genderbent role of Kay generates most of the emotional heft. Two crows talking crow stuff threaten to steal the production before being co-opted by the monarchy. The extended happyish ending—the reindeer does become a clock reminding us of the inevitability of death, but what do you expect, it’s art—provides some release without coming close to the finale of Let Me Tell You. (“Gerda! Dearest Gerda!”, “Caw-caw! Good day!”, “Snowflakes! Flying!”)
Iris DeMent: Workin’ on a World
She made an excellent political album in 1996, featuring Mark Knopfler and multiple Scruggs. She’s always swung for the fences lyrically and she’s not going to start worrying about the occasional whiff now, so the question is whether she can do enough musically, over and above being one of the ten or twenty best living American singers, without Warnermoth money. And she does more often than not: even if the arrangements offer few surprises, her tunes allow her to bend the notes just right, with the whispering at the end of “Let Me Be Your Jesus” a nice trick and a convenient way to sustain ambiguity. All this doesn’t suffice for greatness, save on “Goin’ Down to Sing in Texas” which those of you who were around here in 2020 might remember made my year-end back then, but it leaves her closer to number ten than twenty. (“Goin’ Down to Sing in Texas”, “The Sacred Now”, “Warriors of Love”)
Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix
“Eclectic” jazz doesn’t always imply mediocre. All sorts of things are going on on Benjamin’s fourth album as leader: post-bop, free funk, one literally called “Trane”, electro-echo stuff, a string quartet, good poetry, dodgy poetry, beyond category poetry (RIP Wayne Shorter) and it all fits together. The core strength is that Benjamin’s a heck of a writer and a very solid improviser, in particular when she has trumpeter Josh Evans to play off. Benjamin and co-producer Terri Lyne Carrington also deserve credit for making the album sound cohesive: almost all the moving parts help make Benjamin’s alto sound better, and that’s fair enough, it’s her record. Only Angela Davis, opining on revolutionary hope, gets deserved deference. (“New Mornings”, “Phoenix”, “Amerikkan Skin”)
Lewis Capaldi: Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent
Everydude as Adele, belting big-but-clear feelings in a big voice, except he’s a baritone spending a lot of time in tenor range, so the strain on his high notes is palpable. Unless you’re a laryngologist, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that—in fact for some it’s surely the appeal, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had won any given TV singing competition—but without anything as good as “Someone You Loved” until maybe the closing “How I’m Feeling Now” (a major contribution to the anxiety-pop canon), for me 43 minutes of this is a bit much. If someone would quantify the songs by proportion of time spent above an F, I’d give ear time to an EP of the songs scoring lowest on that metric. (“How I’m Feeling Now”, “Wish You the Best”, “The Pretender”)
Margo Price: Strays
Another solid effort in the fitting country-rock niche she’s settled into: in a better world she’d either be making Chris Stapleton money or have the acclaim of guest Sharon Van Etten. She can stay on pitch in high passages with volume and is appealing enough to make the slow bits painless, while indie rock producer Jonathan Wilson delivers Moog bass and a hot single just in case public radio suddenly stops being prudish. The writing starts to dip once the shrooms wear off, save for “Lydia”, which starts at an abortion clinic then tours a post-apocalyptic dystopia that claims to be LA but is actually Vancouver. (“Radio”, “Been to the Mountain”, “Lydia”)
Moonlight Benjamin: Wayo
Born and orphaned in Haiti, she’s now based in Toulouse, where she’s adapted her homeland’s traditions for the festival circuit. The predominant form is garage blues, with simple riffs and drum beats designed to be maximally effective when pumped into the kilowatts. She gets away with this because her voice, in addition to being gigantic, conveys genuine feeling, so that when she calls for “freedom fire” I can’t help but concur, whatever it means. Somebody hire her to sing at some World Cup or another; distribute earplugs. (“Haut là haut”, “Lilè”, “Bafon”)
Tomorrow X Together: The Name Chapter: Temptation EP
The world’s second or third most popular boy band doesn’t have personalities as distinct as BTS does, but they have the hunger of a group still on the rise, as well as an adventurousness: one song here is vaguely Afrobeatish. (It’s called “Tinnitus (Wanna Be a Rock)”, but that’s not important right now.) The only flop is the track with Benzino’s daughter, whom since the biz is desperately trying to make her happen I’ll eventually give in on but not today. Otherwise, candy. (“Sugar Rush Ride”, “Tinnitus (Wanna Be a Rock)”, “Devil by the Window”)