Best New Records I Heard in February 2024

Some really nice music is out there if you want it

Maurice Louca & Elephantine – Moonshine. This sounds exotic to my middle American ears and probably abstract to most people in Egypt where Louca is from. I love the buzz created by the combination of baritone and alto sax on this record, and the free floating clarinet dancing around it. Louca himself plays guitar and lap steel and a little synthesizer. There are two drummers, a vibraphonist, and both a bassist and tuba player. Sometimes this music is magical, with repeated riffs and dynamic rhythms asking us to dance. Other times it’s contemplative, with maybe the tuba or baritone chanting a mournful solo line waiting for the other instruments to join in. The sounds never hold still, the center of the music is propulsion. I’ve not heard anything like this, and I want to hear it over and over again.

Anna Kiviniemi Trio – Eir. Piano trios can focus on the lead instrument with the bass and drums offering simple support. Or, they can sound like the meeting of three equals pushing each instrument to the best of its ability. That’s what’s happening here, as the Finnish Kiviniemi teams with bassist Eero Tikkanen and drummer Hans Hulbaekmo for eight forceful originals from her pen. The melodies sound drawn from multiple sources away from the standard jazz songbook, which makes this inherently a record full of fresh approaches to my ears.

Friends & Neighbors – Circles. Scandinavian jazz is where it’s at these days. This five-man ensemble (tenor sax, trumpet, piano, bass, drums) is clearly invested in the traditions of Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and other New Thing artists of the 60s. But they aren’t aping anybody, just finding their own way into those wide open sounds. They do have a knack for catchy tunes to get me invested in the controlled frenzy of their improvisations. They also have a way of subtly switching emphasis so that a piece like “Son” can end up with a bit of a Latin feel after starting off with more of a sinuous dual-star pulse on sax and bass. “Latin Phonetics,” which doesn’t remind me of Latin music, is capable of winning some ears that could be very surprised by the rest of the record.

The Paranoid Style – The Interrogator. I’ve known for a number of years that any time Elizabeth Nelson has something to say, it’s worth taking note. She’s one of the best music critics working today, whether in long form pieces or the short and pithy takes she puts on X formerly Twitter. And her band is getting better and better at focusing attention on her allusion-heavy cultural collage styled lyrics. Then they went and added Peter Holsapple to the mix, a man who has never been on a record that wasn’t worth multiple spins in my personal world. (If you don’t know, he was in the dB’s and the Continental Drifters, played with R.E.M. and Hootie and the Blowfish, and he’s released multiple solo records and duos with Chris Stamey.) So, this album is probably the catchiest and most layered the Paranoid Style has released, which somehow allows Nelson’s vocals, which mostly speed by faster than you can catch the references, to relax and breathe a little bit.

Vijay Iyer – Compassion. There is no piano for almost a full minute into this record, but for a little more than an hour after that Vijay Iyer holds court. It’s interesting he lets the great Tyshawn Sorey set the mood for this piano trio record because the drums here are subtle and evocative, not propulsive and commanding. Bassist Linda May Han Oh solos on almost every cut here, but it is Iyer who controls this record. He wrote most of the pieces – there are also Stevie Wonder, Roscoe Mitchell and Geri Allen compositions, which should give you some idea of the range of this record. And his piano sets out the melodies, improvises on them, pushes Oh’s solos, and provides all the colors the music contains.

Vera Sola – Peacemaker. I find myself entranced by this record, and then I find out her parents are Dan Akroyd (whose work I know) and Donna Dixon (whose work I do not know). Sola came up with the stage name presumably to make her own musical endeavors stand apart from her famous parents. She has a rich alto tone in her voice, and though she favors short, snappy melodic phrases, she can belt out with heavy vibrato when the songs feel like going for big endings. Mostly she sings of the ins and outs of love, but with strong images and intriguing word choices. Sometimes her phrasing reminds me of Joe Henry and even Leonard Cohen but just as often she follows no preset templates.

Gruff Rhys – Sadness Sets Me Free. I knew I was likely to enjoy this one as soon as I heard that brightly jogging piano line offset by a wobbly pedal steel that opens the record. Repeated listens just make these songs more and more infectious. Rhys is not a flamboyant singer but he knows how to use his voice to deliver simple, well designed melodic content. And he’s playful, too – check out the way he crams in all sorts of extra syllables into “I Tendered My Resignation” (“Though I hadn’t strayed or done anything inconsistent for our love” takes up the same space as “As I felt I weas undeserving of your love” did earlier). The first lyric of the album – “In the nightclub of my mind, I’m doing cocaine in the cloakroom” – lays out the ground rules, and they are that any kind of image or metaphor might spring from his mouth at any time. Wild lyrics set to pleasurable music – was this what Super Furry Animals did? I never heard Rhys until his last couple of solo records appeared.

Sunny Five – Candid. This is a modern day free jazz super group, with Tim Berne on alto sax, David Torn on electric guitar and live muiti-looping, Marc Ducret on Vendramini guitars and table guitar (and I have no idea what those are), Devin Hoff on electric bass, and Ches Smith on drums and electronics. Berne and Torn are the most prominent instruments in the ensemble, but everybody plays a role in bringing a constantly shifting churn and resolution approach to the music. I particularly love the way Torn will drop in a bent blues note or a power chord to push Berne into a new idea. The electronics and the looping make it all difficult to tell what’s what, especially with all the heavenly overtones from sax and guitars, but I don’t worry too much. Just turn it on, turn it up, and find yourself swaying or staying still at different moments, but never unconnected to the music.

Brittany Howard – What Now. It’s been five years since I played her album Jaime practically every time I got in the car for months. I was initially thrown because this album is nothing like that one, but then I remembered I didn’t fall for the previous record until I’d heard it a few times because it didn’t sound like the Alabama Shakes. So, three spins in, and I’m definitely feeling the grooves on this one, the crazed electronic rhythms underpinning her steadfast classic soul vocals, her indulgences in sonic horseplay, overdriving the vocals and the guitars at different points. I’m not yet holding on to any hooks, which is a little weird considering how much “Georgia” and “Stay High” have stayed in my head over the years. But the album feels like it might still be a grower, and it definitely makes me feel a little intoxicated, a bit muddled in the head but slinky in the body.

Joel Ross – nublues. I’ve learned in recent years that if a jazz album has Ross on it, the odds are it’s gonna be a keeper. Here, he leads Good Vibes, the band he’s played with for a while – Immanuel Wilkins on alto sax, Jeremy Corren on piano, Kanoa Mendenhall on bass, and Jeremy Dutton on drums alongside Ross on vibes. The album feels lived in because the band has played these compositions onstage before they recorded it. Ross wrote most of the tunes, though there’s an exquisite take on Coltrane’s “Equinox” (and a nifty little “Central Park West”) and a fractured look at Monk’s “Evidence.” Most of the time, the tunes bleed into each other with nary a break between them. But then again, one of my favorites here is a short duet between Ross on piano and his partner Gabrielle Garo on multiple overdubbed flutes. A tune called “Bach (God the Father in Eternity)” wins the album for me. Every time Mendenhall’s bass comes in joining Corren and Ross on that distant echo of Bach-styled melody, I have to remind myself to start breathing again.

Little Simz – Drop 7. I keep spending fourteen minutes with this EP every chance I get. Although, if you’ve only got two minutes and twenty seconds, “Mood Swings” is enough by itself to make your day way better. Simz has won me over with her last two full length records, but this short-form release, with seven songs, none over 3:07, just might be my fave so far. I don’t know who’s responsible for the intoxicating beats, but Simz knows how to ride them, rapping, singing, and chanting in ways that up the dance floor desire. Heck, on “Fever,” lasting 1:27, she even brings out some Spanish. Maybe it’s the short length, maybe it’s the high brought about by that first song, but as far as I can tell, this is a perfect contemporary dance release.

Laura Jane Grace – Hole in My Head. Laura Jane Grace takes up eleven more minutes, offering four more songs than Little Simz did. Brevity is the only thing they have in common, though. Grace has been the front person for Against Me! for a long time, and this new solo record comes off kind of like demo tapes for that band. Which is fine – while I wouldn’t mind hearing the fuller arrangements her bandmates might bring, the focus is always on her expressive punk rock panache anyway. There are a couple songs here with more production, the title track and the incredible sing-along “I’m Not a Cop.” These are probably the best numbers here, but Grace knows how to come up with indelible hooks even when she’s just punking around on acoustic guitar, or playing electric with a drum machine. “Birds Talk Too” will remind you of the Replacements; “Punk Rock in Basements” conjures up Cornershop; and “Give Up the Ghost” was clearly written while trying to learn to play “Norwegian Wood” on guitar.

James Brandon Lewis Quartet – Transfiguration. Here’s another jazz record by a consistently working band. Lewis on tenor saxophone, Aruán Ortiz on piano, Brad Jones on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums know each other’s musical personalities intimately by now. This time around, Lewis offers eight compositions, each based on a relatively simple memorable melody. But there’s nothing simple about what these four players do as they improvise together. Lewis, with his remarkably forceful tone and rhythmic sense, takes the lion’s share of the spotlight, though Ortiz gets plenty of solos as well. I’m particularly struck by Jones and Taylor, who play all sorts of tricks with the rhythms, making the tunes swing but frequently emphasizing beats that most players barely notice.

Les Amazones d’Afrique – Musow Danse. A collective of female voices from around Africa, Les Amazones d’Afrique mix and match cultural ballast and create a highly danceable energetic pop music. Though the famous names on previous records – Mariam Doumbia, Angelique Kidjo, and Oumou Sangaré – aren’t involved on this one, the younger singers are just as exciting. It’s all electronic music, with keyboard chords, bass, and drum machines generating polyrhythmic beds for the vocal harmonies and switch-offs. There are a couple songs where things slow down, but for the most part this record is meant to get the body moving on dance floors all over the world. If they hear it, they will dance.

Willi Carlisle – Critterland. It finally just struck me (and it’s entirely possible next time I hear him I won’t think the same) that Willi Carlisle is kind of the Phil Ochs of the Ozarks. Maybe he’s not as earnest as Ochs was – Carlisle deals too much with death and loss and twists of fate. But there is that troubadour spirit, that folkie need to chronicle what is seen in life around them both. Carlisle sees heroin and fentanyl and parents growing older or dying and chickens killed by foxes and lambs born with two heads only to die immediately and be eaten by coyotes. There is no sense of mercy in the world around Willi Carlisle – it’s all hard, dark, full of desire for short escapes into the love of another person or the feel of a dog on one’s lap. That other person dies of an overdose. The dog is only mentioned once. But anyway, Carlisle’s vocals remind me of Ochs – they don’t do much more than carry the most basic melodies, enough to let the words grab hold, the stories unfold. This is bare bones music, but the songs themselves are the skins.

The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy. These young English women have come out with a strong and confident debut album. Side two is immediately better than side one, and it wasn’t a surprise when I looked it up and learned three of these songs were actually singles before the album appeared. But side one is growing on me, and I think I like this band a lot. There is a theatrical component – the album kicks off with an orchestral overture – and some definite art-pop influences stretching back to Bowie and Kate Bush and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Songwriting is a mixture of strong hooks, playful melodies, and head-on-a-swivel changes. Lyrics are intriguing, even if I haven’t sussed them all out yet. Inspirational and very singable verse: “And you can hold me like he held her / And I will fuck you like nothing matters.”

Hurray for the Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive. Alynda Segarra chose long ago to record their music under this lengthy pseudonym. I’ve dipped into their records before, but I think I should have paid closer attention. Segarra has extreme musical charisma – the melodies aren’t particularly strong, the arrangements follow their voice, but the singing can tear your heart out. Romantic connections come and go, friends deal with fentanyl (just like Willi Carlisle’s circle), and Segarra decides they have been born at the perfect time, to watch the world burn. Somehow in the midst of all the darkness, Segarra’s vocals provide connection, even a hint of optimism, at least enough to face each day as it comes. They use elegant phrasing, repetition, occasional emphasis on certain words. Ultimately, I just want to hear it again when the record ends.

Note: This week’s 5 Songs feature will be released on Monday.