Jazz Legend Charles Lloyd Is Still Making Fresh Music Charles Lloyd – The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow  Blue Note The opening piece on Charles Lloyd’s first album as a leader, 60 years ago, was titled “Forest Flower.” A track at the heart of this new one is called “Late Bloom.” It’s only a minute long, Lloyd duetting with himself joyfully on alto and bass flutes. But it connects then to now with profound spirit. Emphasis on the now. This is a fresh, multi-hued bloom on an ever-growing stem—Lloyd still reaching toward the light, pursuing his lifelong quest to create something new, so ..read more

Mount Kimbie and King Krule Get Psych-Rap Makeover From Oneman and Jeremiah Jae Mount Kimbie – The Sunset Violent Warp It’s a remarkably confounding experience when nature’s beauty becomes warped by the context of personal life tragedies.  “Dumb Guitar,” the first single from Mount Kimbie’s new album, The Sunset Violent, illustrates a couple drowning in their relationship and trying to find safe, shallow water while on vacation at a fictional beach resort somewhere in China. “I watch the sunset violent,” Andrea Balency-Béarn sings calmly. “Lose it all in silence / Dig a hole in my mind ..read more

Shabaka's Flute Fantasias Shabaka – Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace Impulse! When tomorrow’s jazz historians are pondering our current era in their rent-controlled spaceships, they’ll see a state of the music divided into two schools, or two pathways to achievement.  Down one, the older model: the Great Jazz Musician as a singular improviser, spinning athletic and imaginative lines from original tunes and standards, (hopefully) apprenticing with an established bandleader before helming their own groups. Down the other, a newer, more slippery pop-like strategy: atmospheric wo ..read more

Lana Del Rey, Maggie Rogers, boygenius Team for All Things Go Festival Maggie Rogers – Don’t Forget Me Capitol Records It would have been easy for Maggie Rogers to embrace the fully-formed pop star trap that launched her career.  After her whimsical electro-pop debut “Alaska” impressed Pharrell (and subsequently went viral), she landed a major-label deal and a coveted guest spot on SNL. But following the release of her catchy but overly produced debut, 2019’s Heard It in a Past Life, Rogers pivoted to rock star mode: With her 2022 follow-up, Surrender, she sharpened her storytelling and ..read more

The Enchanting Pain of Blake Rose How far would you need to be to risk total high school humiliation? For Australian native Blake Rose, it was 3,428 miles: the distance between Perth, his hometown, and Cairns, on the other side of the continent — the first place he let anyone hear him sing in public. The first night he tried busking was, in Rose’s words, “shit.” But he loved the adrenaline rush, so gave it one more go. This time, moving his open guitar case to the city center. By the end of the night, it was stuffed with $300. Eight years later, Rose bites his lip to suppress a laugh. He has ..read more

Leyla McCalla Explores Matters of the Heart on Sun Without the Heat Leyla McCalla – Sun Without the Heat  Anti- Records Leyla McCalla, erstwhile Carolina Chocolate Drop and occasional Our Native Daughter, is on a search: “I am trying to be free … I’m trying to find me,” she sings at the start of this album’s first song, “Open the Road.” Then later, near the end of Sun Without the Heat, she delivers herself a message: “Give yourself a break.” In between, she depicts a struggle to balance life as a single mom with her mission as an artist and activist. It’s not that explicit, of course. O ..read more

Phoenix Unveils New Album and Song Featuring Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us (Columbia Records) Vampire Weekend have been thinking about mortality.  Only God Was Above Us takes its title from a front-page New York Daily News headline quoting the panicked survivor of Aloha Airlines Flight 243. Fittingly, throughout the trio’s existentially charged fifth album, they ponder contradictions of life and death over the rousing strings, buzzing rhythms, and austere baroque pop production that made their name.  This is the band’s second album sans foun ..read more

Vegyn Finds a Way to Cruise Around Life’s Potholes Vegyn – The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions PLZ Make It Ruins Vegyn’s latest album, The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, brushes up against the divine. The 13-track odyssey is both melancholic and euphoric, a combination that feels like an acceptance of life’s relentlessness. The London-based producer uses holographic synths, glittering electronic organs, lifting orchestral strings, and drums that shift from gentle to frantic to humbled. His highway-lit rhythms make most of The Road to Hell seem in transit, searchin ..read more

Khruangbin Releasing Five Live Albums Before End of Year Khruangbin – A LA SALA Dead Oceans Khruangbin have given rock scholars plenty to deconstruct. A lovely, ingenious aberration, the Houston trio made reverb-soaked guitar instrumentals a pop proposition for the first time since the surf era. More importantly, they did this not as revivalists—surf’s Achilles’ heel—but in a personal and contemporary way, reflecting the diversity of their hometown and the upside of globalization known as music discovery. Guitarist Mark Speer (“Marko”) channels an ethnomusicologist’s Spotify library through ..read more

Gary Clark Jr. Snags Stevie Wonder, George Clinton For New LP Gary Clark Jr. – JPEG Raw Warner When he emerged in the early 2010s, Gary Clark Jr. was anointed a genuine guitar god—he even earned comparisons to perhaps the greatest of all time, Jimi Hendrix. But over a decade later, the 40-year-old is still proving that he’s much more than a virtuoso. With his fourth album, JPEG Raw, the Austin native continues to stretch out musically—broadening expectations and leaving few genres unexplored.  The biggest surprise, though, is the relative ease with which he inhabits so many styles. On t ..read more