Joanna Newsom: “Have One on Me”

Perhaps more than any other to emerge in the past ten years, Joanna Newsom is an artist defined– almost wholly– by words. And why wouldn’t she be? The lady writes rambling folk songs in Renaissance-era meter, overlapping fairy tales with baroque imagery like a geeked-out homeschooler on steroids, rambling on for so long one suspects Bob Dylan would start eyeballing his watch impatiently. (Let’s be fair: Not every eleven-minute folk song can be “Desolation Row.”) Do you ever wonder why critics describe this lady using words like “elvin” and “kooky?” Me neither. She had no one to blame but herself. Did I mention she plays the harp and has a tendency to warble?

But there are other words to describe Joanna Newsom– lots of words. A few weeks ago, the first one on my list might have been “overrated,” or perhaps “unbearable,” but she’s got a new album that’s given me a whole new vocabulary. Have One on Me doesn’t disprove those earlier words so much as it proves them to be woefully insufficient– just as any words used to describe it are unlikely to stick for long.

Still, there are options. You could go the route of shock value. You could follow after British critic John Mulvey– the first, I think, to review this album– who somewhat cheekily labeled the album “pop.” That’s overstating it, of course, as is the slightly more measured term “approachable,” though it’s a narrative that has its merits: On her third album, and her first since 2006′s maddening Ys, Newsom has loosened up her arrangements; the songs still stretch out to well past the ten-minute mark sometimes, but here they’re loose, at times adopting spare, folksy vibes, elsewhere dipping into roadhouse blues. She’s also learned to sing: Even those who wrote her off as an untrainable voice (actually, those are her own words) will have a hard time denying the control she displays here. She’s no longer Bjork doing her best Billie Holiday, or Joni Mitchell put through a blender. She’s… soulful. It works.

Another track: Go for scare tactics. Use terrifying words like “triple album” and “two hour running time,” words made all the more terrifying by the singer/songwriter’s established tendency toward indulgence. Or you could look at it from another angle, using the words of the album’s own title, and say that Newsom’s third album is a landmark of generosity, a wealth of ideas. Indeed, it does have all the epic sprawl of the great double- and triple-albums, but I’d advise against invoking words like The White Album or Sign ‘o the Times. What made those albums great was their eclecticism– their bang for your buck. Newsom is less concerned with genre-hopping and diversity-showcasing. Her album is deep, not wide, a lengthy and endlessly complicated series of riffs on a theme.

Of course, Newsom couldn’t rightly be called a celebrated musician if all she had was words. Her sonic vocabulary is almost as large (and, at times, as anachronistic) as her linguistic one, and by digging deep, she reveals just how many colors there are in the rainbow of folk music. The title cut, for instance, might have you reaching for the word “jig;” opening number “Easy,” for words like “fractured torch song.” “Good Intentions Paving Company” is a raucous, bluesy jaunt. “Baby Birch” is a country-gospel song of hymn-like solemnity. And those are just from the first disc. But the best word to describe what’s going on here? “Folk.” Not indie folk, not Renaissance folk– just folk. And she’s one of the good folkies– the kind who knows that folk songs are just a razor’s edge away from jazz and blues, and that the interplay between Western and Eastern folk idioms is pregnant with cosmic possibilities. Take away the swords-and-sorcery motifs and the harp and suddenly she’s not so different from Dylan, or at least John Martyn.

But you can’t take away the fairy tales, the impossibly rambling and self-conscious poetry. You can complain about them, if you want to, but Newsom wouldn’t be Newsom without them. You can call them pretentious, and you might be right, but I get the feeling that there is no pretense at all here; this is just who she is. And she may be corny, but she isn’t bereft of talent: A song like “Good Intentions” is so loaded with internal rhyme, with puns and allusions and wordplay, you’re torn between head-scratching analysis and simply singing along. The beauty of Newsom’s work is that it challenges our sense of perspective, and engages on several levels at once. Is the title song an eleven-minute piece of historical fiction touching on themes of love, control, and desire– or is it an eleven-minute nursery rhyme about a spider? Technically, the answer is yes.

But Newsom’s words are rich in something else– in feeling. Or, if you prefer, in humanity. I’ve never been entirely sure what all her words mean, but here, for the first time, I’m sure that they mean something. The singer herself says the record is about different kinds of love– romantic, fraternal, divine– and about the concept of home. Critics have called it a map of the heart, a trajectory of love and longing. I think they’re all right. As to exactly what each of these stories is meant to suggest, what every mythological or fairy-tale allusion is meant to invoke, let me get back to you in six or eight months. What I can say right now is that the details here are important, and so is the big picture. On their own, these songs work as scenes, as character sketches. On a whole, the sequencing is deliberate, the connections more obvious on each listen, the album as a whole taking on the form of something incredibly dense and interrelated.

Still more words come to mind: Fantasy, whimsy, wonder– these are things that Newsom values. You can call the album indulgent if you wish, but I’ve come to think of it as exploratory. She’s feeling her way through these things, she’s taking her time, and she’s unearthing riches along the way. I love the childlike joy in her voice as she sings about the daddy longlegs in the title cut, and I love the gravity she brings to the heartache and quiet resolve of “Does Not Suffice,” the chilling closing song. I love how the winding passages of winds and percussion mirror her curiosity, and how the harp helps carry a sense of dignity. I love that passages of nearly impenetrable– and possibly silly– nursery-rhyme poetry give way to insights of extraordinary pathos and humor, and that both kinds of writing are given equal seriousness.

It’s a long album. I doubt even Newsom herself has actually listened to the whole thing, front to back, in one sitting. But the songs justify its length: There is no filler, and what’s more, having this kind of expansive canvas is necessary when you’re exploring such big ideas with this kind of dynamic range. It’s a sprawling playground on which Newsom’s obsessions and impulses are allowed to run free– and I’m as surprised as anyone to find myself saying that that’s a lot more enjoyable than it sounds. The album is excellent– but what else is it? Honestly, I just don’t think there are any more words to describe it.

Shearwater: “The Golden Archipelago”

Call them old-fashioned: There’s nothing about Shearwater that makes any sense in the digital age. For one, there’s their commitment to the Album– a 38-minute cycle of recurring images and interlocking motifs, songs that bleed into each other and show a greater proclivity for dynamic ebb and flow than anything resembling traditional pop hooks. In other words, they won’t light the iTunes singles chart on fire. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that new album The Golden Archipelago– with its stark cover photo and its themes both gothic and ecological– is in large part the brainchild of Jonathan Meiburg, who, when he isn’t crafting classically-minded works of orchestral indie pop, makes a living as a bird scientist.

The Golden Archipelago might be their most antiquated (in the best sense of the term) recording yet; it isn’t as immediately stirring as 2008′s Rook, but its mysterious darkness suggests levels of depth and allure that make it Shearwater at their most rewarding. Actually, in some ways, it feels like it could almost be the debut of Shearwater the Band. Previously, their albums have always felt like the orchestrations of Meiburg, standing at a high podium and conducting waves of devastating beauty and deafening quiet with the wave of his hand, his baton directing every minor movement of his heaving, labyrinthine compositions. Here, Meiburg is still the maestro, but he’s also part of a band: The supporting players are still serving his vision, but their own contributions are woven deep into the music, as though they’re less vessels of Meiburg’s ecstatic whims, more full-on collaborators.

It’s an interesting dynamic that yields stirring results. The Golden Archipelago is a slightly more subdued and intimate recording than Rook, lighter on hooks and theatrics, more even and unwavering in its tone (to this end, Meiburg conjures no spirit more than that of Talk Talk, and not just because of his vocal similarities to Mark Hollis– with some Jeff Buckley histrionics thrown in for good measure). It’s an album expertly build on mounting tension and release, but never bereft of a certain quality of quiet dread mixed with hopeful introspection. But as coherent as the album is, it works within its sonic framework to distinguish itself as Shearwater’s most varied album; while Meiburg stretches his somber and slightly sinister mood over the album’s duration, his bandmates reach inside of themselves to find resourceful ways to allow each track to speak with its own voice, part of a greater picture but distinct nonetheless. Give credit to MVP Thor Harris, a drummer of remarkable skill and invention who enlivens these tracks with ethnic percussion and found sound, making rhythm the most savory flavor in many of these arrangements.

Meiburg is still less a pop songwriter and more a composer, of course, but he’s grown more confident, as as such a bit looser. There are none of the forays into noise-rock distortion that acted as palette-cleansers on Rook, but plenty of wide open spaces for simple piano refrains or acoustic guitar strumming. Horns and bells are used sparingly and with discernment, offering shading and dynamic variety. More than anything, Meiburg is an increasingly geographically-inspired soundscaper; the album is said to be inspired by “island life,” and it’s easy to visualize the thrilling discovery of previously unseen beauty in the wide-eyed unfolding of “Hidden Lakes,” or to picture the intricately jagged edges of beaches and cliffs in the taut, breakneck “Corridors.”

Meiburg’s lyrics are equally inspired by coastal landscapes and island ecologies; indie rock’s most eloquent ornithologist wove fairy tales and nature-walk diary entries on Rook, but The Golden Archipelago is more like gothic poetry mixed with travelogues alternatively exotic and desolate. Some of the themes are familiar ones– the beauty of nature, man’s dependence on it– but, perhaps ironically for a record inspired by the rugged coast, this is Shearwater’s most human record: Meiburg’s songs explore loneliness, solitude, and desire. He populates his soundscapes with real humanity, and lends considerable heart to his big crescendos. That adds to the record’s aura of mystery, but also its allure: It’s intriguing and affecting, a bit unusual but perfectly approachable– much like Shearwater itself.

Nick Curran & the Lowlifes: “Reform School Girl”

It’s a winning recipe: Borrow the sound of old-timey, pre-Beatles rock and roll, filter it through the sneering attitude of punk, and ratchet the sleaze factor up to eleven. The result: A howling party record that’s campy in all the right ways and tasteful about being totally tasteless– a rock and roll revival record with a major emphasis on the rock and roll, and proof that what the kids were playing in the 1950s still kicks today.

That’s a fairly major feat, and Nick Curran pulls it off with casual bravado on Reform School Girl, an album whose neon-tinted, punk pin-up album art goes a long way toward describing the attitude of the music contained inside. Yes, Curran sings songs about partying and loose women and rock and rolling all night long. He even writes a catchy little tune about killing an unfaithful lover. But if you think he’s just trying to insert shock-jock theatrics into a retro rock record, the man is one step ahead of you: This is what rock and roll has always been about, and if you think “Kill My Baby” is so vile as to offend, you’d better not listen to any of the raucous, dirty blues songs from the 1930s– or any time thereafter. This stuff is in rock’s DNA, and Curran’s genetic gift is splicing these inherited traits into something thrillingly alive and modern.

He does consider himself a bluesman, by the way, though Reform School Girl bears little resemblance to what they call blues in 2010. But Curran knows his music history: He knows that there was a time when Howlin’ Wolf was considered to be just as much a rock and roll singer as Little Richard, and Little Richard copped more than a few tricks from the blues. And if this record sounds a bit more Richard than Wolf, that’s only because Curran doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about genre descriptions.

And that’s what makes this more than a nostalgic piece. Curran begins and ends his album with cover songs: First there’s Etta James’ “Tough Lover” performed here as a screaming rock and roll raver, and finally there’s AC/DC’s “Rocker,” a punkish hard rock tune that sounds in this setting like it could’ve been a staple of a good old-fashioned sock hop. In between, Curran borrows liberally from Little Richard’s howl and his lickety-split piano vamps, but also from the dirty guitar squall of garage rock. A less confident artist might have pushed this all through a filter to give it that 1950s haze, but Curran keeps his music sounding modern, even as it sounds like a throwback. He brings all the right production touches, too, from frenzied horns to a girl-group homage that would have done Phil Spector proud. In short: This thing is hot.

It’s been done before, of course, but that both states the obvious and misses the boat. The closest antecedent I can think of– save for the albums he’s drawing direct inspiration from, of course– might be Rockpile’s Seconds of Pleasure; like that 80s classic, Reform School Girl betrays an unwavering affinity for 50s rock and roll but no particular desire to replicate its sound in painstaking detail, instead bringing it– kicking and howling up a mighty ruckus– into the present-day.

But an even better comparison is this: Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. Curran’s fondness of this music recalls the director’s own recollection of the grindhouse cinema of his youth, in that he savors not only the form, but the outrageous, B-level camp that lurked just below the surface. He knows what he’s doing has a certain trashy genius to it, and that’s what makes it brilliant. Reform School Girl is pulp rock and roll for a new generation.

Kath Bloom: “Thin Thin Line”

There’s such a thing as being so simple as to be profound, but there’s also a thing called being profoundly simplistic. The difference is all the difference, and separating the two there’s just a thin, thin line. Kath Bloom walks it on her new recording, and she almost always stays on the right side of it; and even when she doesn’t, the listener can never say that she’s anything less than sure of herself and her songs.

Yeah, this is a folk album, in a way that not very many people make folk albums anymore– which is to say, it isn’t some sleepy little collection of quietly-strummed love songs made to be played in cafes. It’s earnest and sincere, yes, but also raggedly, nakedly emotional, bristling with tough truths and seemingly designed to be as prickly to the touch as it is soothing to the ear. It’s the kind of record that seems to have a tough skin but a soft heart: The emotions are candid, but they’re earned. There’s nothing sentimental about it, unless you consider wisdom gained from a life well-lived to be sentimental.

Thin Thin Line follows 2008′s Terror, which itself signalled the end of a hiatus from recording that had more or less lasted a couple of decades. Bloom is still very much an outsider, and this album, like all her albums, is released on a tiny indie imprint, but her profile over the last several years has grown significantly, thanks in no small part to an indie-friendly tribute album featuring the likes of Bill Callahan, Mark Kozelek, and the Dodos; Devandra Banhart, meanwhile, has been her most outspoken supporter, heralding Bloom as one of his favorite singers. But Thin Thin Line doesn’t feel like the singer is cashing on on an increased public awareness so much as she’s making up for lost time; the fourteen songs here are simple but spry, and generally very lively. Bloom plays guitar and recorder and is joined by her Love at Work band, which features drums and bass, different guitars and harmonica.

It all feels off-the-cuff and immediate, not unlike Bloom’s lyrics: She is a poet, to be sure, but also very much in the tradition of the confessional folksinger, and as such her lyrics don’t scan as terribly sophisticated or intricate so much as they’re upfront and intuitive. This is cowboy poetry, the songs sounding almost like they could be campfire songs: The rhymes are very basic, and the basic meaning of any one of these songs is fairly easy to deduce. Bloom isn’t interested in hiding behind complex metaphors or elaborate narratives. These are emotional truths told simply, but richly. Only on occasion do the songs feel like they could use a bit more polish, as on “Freddy,” a tune that seems to be built around the title character’s name being rhymed with “ready.”

This kind of songwriting suits Bloom just fine, because it doesn’t hold the listener at arm’s length, but welcomes the experience of listening with guard down, cynicism cast aside, if only for the CD’s 53-minute run time. Bloom sings in a voice that’s craggy and rough, sounding worn down not by cigarettes or booze but simply by living, which is sort of what the album is about: The Thin Thin Line in question is the fine division between hope and disaster, between love and something other. These are relationship songs that are on the fence, songs about love that can turn on a dime from ecstasy to devastation and back again, and about love that lingers just a bit too long.

The title cut elucidates the album’s themes and elevates it into something spiritual; Bloom isn’t just singing about a relationship, but also about resilience and strength, about the necessity of hope even in the face of uncertainty. “Heart So Sadly” ties things together even better; it’s a post-break-up song that stands between ecstasy and catharsis, fear and release. What makes these songs more than sadsack break-up tunes is Bloom’s belief that love, even when flawed or broken, is worth fighting for, and that without it we aren’t really living. “Like This” is a plea to a lover to leave desperation behind, and the companion pieces “Is This Called Living?” and “Let’s Get Living” sound like breaking points, moments of truth when the singer is forced to choose how she will live and love from this time forward.

All of the relationships written about here– perhaps all relationships period– have baggage with them, but Bloom is determined to leave it behind: Love may not exist apart from worry and doubt, but, at least on this album, it transcends it. My favorite song here is a gem called “Back There,” a sing-along of tremendous release, in which the singer vows to leave her baggage at the door, to proceed forth and embrace life with a hear that isn’t heavy, but open. The gift of Thin Thin Line is that it lets us see things that way, and not just briefly. It’s a challenge– as Over the Rhine sings– to love without fear. That’s a lofty ideal, but it sounds like Bloom arrived at it honestly. And on Thin Thin Line, she shows us how she got there.

CT’s Favorite Films of 2009 (Part II)

A quick note: CT Movies’ “Critics’ Choice” list– the staff’s votes for the best films of 2009– is posted, on the heels of our “Most Redeeming” list. I did not write any of the blurbs for this particular list, as I did with the previous one, though I did vote in it, and I think it’s a fine list overall; though I’m no proponent of Up in the Air or Inglourious Basterds and I’ve yet to see The Road, and the absence of The Fantastic Mr. Fox stings a bit, I’m on board with any list that honors A Serious Man and Summer Hours. And if you’re going to single out the most significant picture of the last year, you could do a lot worse than The Hurt Locker.

Peter Gabriel: “Scratch My Back”

Confession time: I’ve loved Peter Gabriel for about as long as I’ve loved music, but even I always found him to be one of the unlikeliest of pop stars. He’s always been a man too compelled by his myriad obsessions, too dogged in his fascinations and curiosities, to be particularly bothered with the rather more artificial trappings of celebrity. Consider those devices, those enduring preoccupations, that have always driven Gabriel’s music ever since he left Genesis: The dusty rhythms and spooky textures of third world music, the ghostly effects of the latest studio technology, lyrics that, upon close inspection, reveal dark psycho-sexual underpinnings. Gabriel’s has been a career built largely on fleshing out these recurring concepts; how could he possibly be a candidate for pop stardom?

But pop stardom found him, and with no concessions or compromises made. His big blockbuster album was So, and while its success was surely aided by a handful of groundbreaking music videos, it must be said that the music itself was still rich with world beats, with low-moaning synths and then-edgy technology, with lyrics that barely veiled something sinister at their heart. The thing is, though, Gabriel didn’t have to compromise these things, because there’s still another Gabriel obsession, one that he’s somewhat lost sight of since then but was, at the time of So, chief among his concerns and as integral to the fabric of that album as any of these others– and that obsession is song itself. Forget, for a moment, the textured soundscapes of his instrumental works, or even the more production-oriented nature of his Up record; when he made So, Gabriel was still keen on inverting Motown (“Sledgehammer”), creating dance-rock anthems for the MTV generation (“Big Time”), and crafting sweet lover’s hymns that would endure for far longer than their Top 40 shelf life (“In Your Eyes”).

And that’s why his latest, oddest project, Scratch My Back, isn’t really so odd at all. It is, admittedly, a bit of a shock at first; Gabriel’s music has always had rhythm at its core but this album is drumless, and where So and his other albums utilized the latest in recording technology, this one is totally orchestral, no digital effects to be heard. There are no guitars, either– just a piano, strings, winds, brass, a choir on one number. And then there’s the fact that Gabriel didn’t write any of these songs: It’s a covers album in concept but so much more than that in execution. Gabriel brings to the set a musicality, an enduring fascination with and a veteran’s knowledge of songcraft that makes this not some lame stopgag, but an exploratory and supremely inventive set, as well as his most enjoyable and consistent pop album since So.

At no point does it sound like Gabriel is doing these songs just to do them; this isn’t homage but interpretation, the singer stretching these songs, finding their breaking points, exploring them from every angle and ultimately presenting them in ways we’ve never heard them before. And it isn’t just a technical exercise, either– Gabriel understands these songs, he understands the lyrics, and his recreations are motivated not just by a professional interest but by a real, learned and musical sense of what they’re about. He opens the album with one of its boldest statements, and it works brilliantly: David Bowie’s “Heroes” is slowed down to a practically funeral pace. In this context it sounds less like triumph and more like mere survival, yet Gabriel captures perfectly both the desperation and the hopefulness in the lyric. Paul Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble” is inverted even further; once again, Gabriel slows the song down to almost a dirge, but this highlights the lyric, which Gabriel sings not with Simon’s confidence but with a sense of incredulity that opens the song into something brokenhearted and mournful, but rich in empathy and compassion.

But not everything is dour, despite whatever connotations a low-key orchestral album like this might have; in fact, Gabriel and arranger John Metcalfe explore an array of colors here, and their ingenuity is a triumph. One might wonder how Talking Heads’ “Listening Wind,” a song so centered upon pulsing rhythms, would translate into a drumless setting, but Metcalfe preserves the song’s core while casting it in a new setting, all nervous energy and building tension in the strings. A brilliant crescendo of strings and brass carried Bon Iver’s “Flume” to a higher, more anthemic place than it’s ever gone before, while Elbow’s “Mirrorball” is given a ravishing, beautiful arrangement that enhances the song’s inherent musicality while bringing to it an entirely new set of colors. As inventive as Metcalfe is as arranger, Gabriel is equally intuitive as a singer; listen to him highlight the wry irony in The Magnetic Fields’ “Book of Love,” or give voice to sheer, abject doubt and dread in “The Boy in the Bubble.”

Gabriel explores the works not only of his peers, but also of indie upstarts, and, to his credit, he avoids easy selections; there are no (more) Vampire Weekend covers here, despite what an short distance one has to travel from that band’s work to Gabriel’s own. And when he does pick a song that might sound on paper like an easy fit– Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage,” which already sounded something like a Peter Gabriel song– it’s taken in the opposite direction you’d think it would be, in this case a sinister piano ballad with horns voicing their anxiety in the background. At the end, the song explodes, putting to rest any doubts about whether orchestral music like this can be truly thrilling and visceral.

Of course, to hear Gabriel tell it, this album is only the first part of an ongoing experiment; he has approached all of the artists assembled here and asked them to return the favor by covering one of Gabriel’s own songs, and many of them, evidently, plan on doing so. But as thrilling as the prospect of Paul Simon doing “Biko” may be, it doesn’t serve this album to bog it down in conceptual narrative; whether a second volume ever appears or not, Scratch My Back stands as a stirring, inventive, and beautiful celebration of song, made by a man who surely qualifies as an expert on the subject, and who here sounds a bit like a musical scholar, but mostly like an artist reconnected to is muse, having fun and exploring his limits like he hasn’t done in years.

CT’s Favorite Films of 2009 (Part I)

As is, by now, our custom, the staff of CT Movies is unveiling not one but two lists of the year’s best films. The first list– our “most redeeming” movies– highlights the ten films from 2009 that are, in some way, redemptive, whether explicitly or subtley so. The list is available here, and includes a couple of blurbs for me, as well as one final plug for my personal top movie of the year, A Serious Man. The second list– our “Critics’ Choice” movies– will be posted next week.

Allison Moorer: “Crows”

I first heard Allison Moorer’s Crows in December, and joked at the time that it was immediately my favorite album of 2010. Two months later, it’s still ranking pretty high on the list, and I wouldn’t bet against it still being on the list come next December, either. It’s a beautiful and gutwrenching break-up album that, like the best break-up albums, goes so much deeper than mere sadness, into meditations on pain, grace, hope… the important things. Musically, it’s a classicist album that borrows from the language of classic country, rock, folk, and pop. All things considered, it’s simply a marvelous recording, and my review of it is posted today at CT’s music page.

Gil Scott-Heron: “I’m New Here”

Don’t call it a comeback; Gil Scott-Heron’s cheekily titled I’m New Here is a damn near resurrection, hailing not only his return to recording after fifteen years in the wasteland, but essentially his return to the land of the living, coming as it does on the heels of prison time for drug-related charges and in the midst of his ongoing struggles with HIV. So you can forgive him if the tone of this one isn’t that of triumph so much as mere survival. Scott-Heron isn’t complaining, though; these songs are marked by a contentment that comes from wisdom, years of hard living having filled every whiskey-soaked crack in his voice with empathy and compassion.

This is an album about lessons learned the heard way– and not, interestingly enough, about the signs of the times or the state of the union circa 2010. Those who’ve long followed Scott-Heron would be forgiven for thinking that his return to recording was prompted by the election of Barack Obama– certainly, the artist’s history of lefty polemics is unquestionable– but the heart of this record has less to do with change we can believe in, more to do with all the things that have stayed the same. The album is bookended by a two-part piece called “On Coming from a Broken Home,” and is the closest thing to a social statement on the whole record; and of course, broken homes are nothing new, nor is the home in question truly broken. Rather, it’s an autobiographical piece about Scott-Heron’s upbringing by his grandmother, and he is insistent that there was so much love and support in the household that it was anything but dysfunctional. “I came from what they called a broken home,” he says, “But if they had ever really called at our house, they would have known how wrong they were.”

But the song is not just a tribute to a loving grandmother; it’s a song about the realities of hurt, about the consequences of death, about the real possibility of survival even after something as traumatizing as a parent’s death. And it’s about the common grace of homes that have lost loved ones, but are not lacking in love. The song, then, and the album as well, are not mere autobiographies, but are, rather, expressions of earned wisdom: They are rooted in the artist’s own struggles, but are not in any strict or confining sense “about” him or his life.

Many of these songs of experience are not songs at all, strictly speaking; the album leans fairly heavily on spoken-word pieces, tracing a clear line back to the kind of performance poetry that Scott-Heron built his early career on. But this is neither an album that embraces nor shuns nostalgia, neither romanticizing the past nor fetishizing the present, and that’s reflected in the album’s production. Richard Russell, the head of XL records and the man who approached Scott-Heron in prison about making this recording, is a shrewd guy who wisely avoids both playing up Scott-Heron’s “godfather of rap” cred with nods to modern hip-hop and taking the Rick Rubin approach of simply sticking his man in an empty room with an acoustic guitar and pressing “record.” Instead, he gives the songs just the treatment that they need: There are some hip-hop beats, yes, but also moody string arrangements and spooky, claustrophobic atmospherics that are borrowed from dubstep.

And that’s the ideal sound for a record like this– a record that is content and that exudes wisdom, yes, but also a record that is, quite literally, haunted. Scott-Heron imagines death circling like a vulture, waiting to collect our souls. He imagines addiction as an insatiable monster that must always be fed. Temptation is a very real thing, particularly when the Devil shows up at his door and makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

That last one, by the way, is from Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil,” and its presence here illustrates just how specific a tale Scott-Heron and Russell are trying to tell, and just how little excess they’re willing to allow on this slim, 28-minute recording: Even when they aren’t actually Scott-Heron’s songs, they’re telling his story. In addition to “Me and the Devil,” he borrows spare parts from an old John Lee Hooker blues for “New York is Killing Me,” a tough song about the vices of modern living, and the title song is a number by indie rocker Bill Callahan, of all people; Scott-Heron understands it ironies but mostly plays it straight, turning it into an unlikely but profound song of redemption.

And there is redemption here, even in the sheer existence of this album, everything about which– its leanness, its honesty, its shrewd production– suggests that, as an artist, Gil Scott-Heron isn’t finished, nor could be be if he wanted to. This album feels like it was made because it’s a story that simply has to be told. In Richard Russell, Scott-Heron has found the perfect collaborator, and in this album, he’s given his story its perfect telling, one in which not a single note is wasted on flash or sentimentality, on easy nostalgia or empty style; the sum and total of this record is dedicated to hard truth-telling, and if that doesn’t make it an easy album, it does make it an invaluable one.

Galactic: “Ya-Ka-May”

The last several years have seen a resurgence of music made in and about the city of New Orleans—a testament to just how deep within the city’s marrow music really is, and to the town’s own resilience—but my two favorite records both come with Allen Toussaint’s name emblazoned on the cover. And isn’t it fitting? Not only is Toussaint one of the Crescent City’s brightest musical treasures (and seemingly one of its best-kept secrets), but his two albums show just how deep and wide these post-Katrina feelings run. The first, The River in Reverse, was a collaboration with Elvis Costello and producer Joe Henry, and it was a celebration of the city’s legacy, tempered by political outrage and deep sadness. Then, he ditched Costello but kept Henry for the jazz outing The Bright Mississippi, which was and is a flat-out joy.

Toussaint appears on a single track on Ya-Ka-May, a record named for a New Orleans delicacy and spearheaded by a New Orleans funk outfit called Galactic, and—perhaps unsurprisingly at this point—this one’s still another new stripe of New Orleans record. There’s no politics here, no sadness, and though there are some iconic musicians present here, no nostalgic looks to the city’s past. This is music for the here and now; it’s a parade of bright and dizzying colors, a party album where the funk doesn’t ever let up, and it’s as boisterous and bawdy as anything coming down Bourbon Street.

But back to Toussaint: I mention him because his contribution, “Bacchus,” strikes at the heart of what this album’s really about; the song is a clever and (naturally) soulful ode to inspiration, improvisation, and intuition—a celebration of all the right kinds of in-the-moment decadence. And so is the record itself: Splitting the difference between simple elegance and randy nonsense, Ya-Ka-May is all about the virtues of simply enjoying oneself.

The Galactic crew makes sure we don’t overthink it: The album literally never stops moving. The closest thing to a ballad or a torch song here is a spirited, clap-along anthem by Irma Thomas called “Heart of Steel,” a survivor’s tale that rings true of the city that inspired this music. But most of this music simply revels in the sensual energy of where the city is now, at least musically: the Rebirth Brass Band brings some New Orleans swing but Galactic anchors it to the present-day with dirty hip-hop beats, while an array of impressive New Orleans MCs—you’ve probably never heard of them before—show off a local style called “bounce,” basically an aggressively funky, good-times brand of rap.

It might sound odd on paper, the thought of songs like these brushing up against numbers by Toussaint and Thomas, or by John Boutte’s slightly moodier, cello-accented “Dark Water,” but that’s the record’s appeal: It’s a bright and shimmering collage of sounds and songs, perspectives old and new but always seeming fresh, that are quite literally on parade. It’s not an homage to New Orleans any more than it’s a monument to the endless joys of communal music-making, which, in its own way, makes this a relentlessly fun tribute to a city where the music never dies.