This week, Morgan Wallen returns, Colombian singer and songwriter Lido Pimienta goes orchestral, and singer, sax player and songwriter Cautious Clay counts down the hours. Also, Mexican jazz singer Lucía, Adrian Quesada of Black Pumas, and rapper Erick The Architect.
Morgan Wallen Is Back, And Headed For The Top
Controversial country star Morgan Wallen dropped his new album today. It’s called I’m The Problem, and in many ways it’s a typical Morgan Wallen record: it’s enormous, 37 tracks in all; it’s full of midtempo, at times generic songs about heartbreak and relationships going wrong; and it’s destined to top the album charts next week and, if past performances are any indication, for many more weeks to come. The title track, “I’m The Problem,” was played live on the episode of Saturday Night Live where Wallen broke protocol by walking off stage at the end of the show; its title looks absolutely at home on what sounds like a breakup album. But it also has a sneering quality to it, and when he sings “if I'm the problem, well, you might be the reason,” it’s not hard to hear it as being less about romance and more about hitting back at his critics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUHtvbqQXbk&list=OLAK5uy_m7ebZ6lrVAuYpsV3W1kUm66JRCC8sqTo8&index=2
Lido Pimienta Goes Orchestral on Her New LP
The Colombian singer and songwriter Lido Pimienta is now based in Canada, and The Globe And Mail once called her “the future of Canadian rock’n’roll.” Well, there’s still plenty of time for that prediction to come true, but Pimienta seems uninterested in that sort of thing right now. Her new album La Belleza (“Beauty”) is an orchestral suite of songs, with an overture and lots of long passages of instrumental music, done in collaboration with the brilliant Canadian music and arranger Owen Pallett. Despite this most Western of sounds, Pimienta and Pallett manage to honor her Black and indigenous roots in pieces like “Quiero Que Me Beses” (“I want you to kiss me”), which begins as a purely orchestral work before breaking into call-and-response vocals over a lilting folkloric beat.
https://lidopimienta.bandcamp.com/album/la-belleza
Cautious Clay Release A Concept Album: It’s About Time
The singer, sax player and songwriter Cautious Clay (Joshua Karpeh) blends R&B, experimental pop, and jazz in his new album, which I’ll assume is the first of a series because it’s called The Hours: Morning. Each track has a title but also an hour from 5am to noon associated with it. The song “Promises (9am)” is a song that Cautious Clay has been patient with – he began writing it in 2017 and has reportedly reworked it up to 80 times. The final result is a midtempo, but still propulsive song with a catchy chorus, and apparently by 9am his pipes are sufficiently warmed up that he can pull off some of his most stratospheric falsetto vocals.
https://cautiousclay.bandcamp.com/album/the-hours-morning
Adrian Quesada Issues New Song With Hermanos Gutierrez
Adrian Quesada of Black Pumas has a notable solo career as a leading figure in Latin Alternative music, especially with his Boleros Psicodélicos project, which recreates the reverb-soaked, guitar-heavy sounds of Latin American styles of the late 60s/early 70s like chicha. In anticipation of his second volume in the series, he’s teamed up with Hermanos Gutierrez, the Ecuadorian-Swiss guitar duo, on a song called “Primos.” The title means “cousins,” and since the brothers Estevan and Alejandro Gutierrez evoke the same spaghetti western soundtracks and wide open spaces of the American Southwest that has inspired Quesada, it feels like a natural fit, almost like family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IacxS9A8keo
The Next Big Thing In Jazz Vocalists Just Might Be Lucía
Lucía is a 23-year old Mexican jazz singer who won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition back in 2022. Today she released her debut album, also called Lucía– and it is clear what the judges in that competition heard. Here is a singer with a voice that sounds like it’s been transported from the 1930s, performing classics from both sides of the Rio Grande. Highlights for me include a bossa nova-inflected version of Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low” and this lovely reading of the great Mexican folk song “La Llorona” (“The Crying Woman”). This tale of a woman condemned to wander the shores in search of her drowned children does not need an overly emotional performance; in fact, Lucía’s restraint makes it all the more poignant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtu8B2GsIyY&list=OLAK5uy_kDr6RFGRzX04rh-2h1AGKbUsYV6fcgpmI&index=7
Erick the Architect Releases Surprise EP
Erick The Architect is one of the founders of the Brooklyn rap trio Flatbush Zombies, but last year we heard his debut solo LP, I’ve Never Been Here Before, which showed just how wide-ranging his songs could be. The album was a musical and emotional smorgasbord – tracks that dealt with loss, with the fraying social fabric, and more. Now comes a kind of dessert, in the form of Arcstrumentals 3, a set of three short but buoyant songs that marry hip hop and dance music. Maximalist production, R&B grooves, and Erick’s clear enjoyment of his own wordplay make songs like “Lunchin” easy to like.