Album Reviews by Stefan Wenger

Eels,   The Deconstruction Here’s a wise, well-crafted rock and roll record with wisdom and dexterity from an indie band that’s aging gracefully. Mark “E” Everett has always had a great gift for sharing his struggles, and he’s had plenty of tragedy in his life to share. The first half still has quite a few songs where Everett’s traditional bleakness is on fill display. But while in the past much of his work has tended to linger in that gloom,  The Deconstruction  provides a glimpse into a newly at-peace and even optimistic E, who has faced plenty of slings and arrows and still found his way to joy (at least some of the time). Musically there’s nothing tremendously new, just good solid indie rock from a mostly guitar-driven 90s band. Highlights: “The Deconstruction,” “Be Hurt,” “You Are The Shining Light”

The Voidz ,  Virtue Formerly "Julian Casablancas and the Voidz," the former Strokes frontman’s new band has removed its most famous member’s name from the title, asserting its identity as a unit. It’s a good move, because the Voidz are not a backing band; they are an original, experiemental, genre-confounding powerhouse of unpredictability. They are also nothing like the Strokes, and frankly, while the Strokes were great at what they did, the Voidz are infinitely more interesting. The band goes wherever it wants to here and there’s not always a lot of rhyme or reason to it. This album is messy and jagged and not the most cohesive record ever made, but in terms of raw creativity, it’s a marvel, and it’s worth every twist and turn. Highlights: “QYURRYUS,” “Pyamid Of Bones,” “All Wordz Are Made Up”

Kadhja Bonet ,  Childqueen The daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, Kadhja Bonet is a multi-instrumentalist with a tendency to obscure her jazz roots by dressing it up with sounds borrowed from other genres. Probably at least half a dozen genres suggest themselves as the music’s central framework — R&B, champer pop, folk and soul among them — each to be discarded after a song or two. At its heart,  Childqueen  is cosmic jazz; sunny, intricate, spacious and warm. Everything else is flavoring. Strings, woodwinds, electronic sounds, bass guitar and drums are all regular contributors, but Bonet’s prime instrument is, unmistakably, her voice, which floats and lilts and soars, often in three-part harmony with itself, warmly expanding into the benevolent ether of jazz that does not sound like jazz. Highlights: “Procession,” “Joy,” “Mother Maybe”

Brandi Carlile ,  By The Way I Forgive You A return to form, Washington state singer/songer Brandi Carlile’s 6th album puts her voice front and center, which seems like a no-brainer. The power and the character of her voice is her main draw and beyond that, it’s the lyrics; both of these are potentially universal in their appeal. While the singer’s slight twang and the album’s production plant this album on the country side of folk music, this is the kind of album that people who don’t think they like country  or  folk music will get into. Carlile belts our her choruses with unassailable conviction, her turns of phrase are clever and her words are emotionally weighty and wise. Highlights: “The Mother,” “Hold Out Your Hand,” “Every Time I Hear That Song”

Loma ,  Loma A beautiful, folk-tinged but electronically adept indie art-rock debut from a Texan trio with a sound all its own, Loma came about when Cross Repair (chiefly Emily Cross and her then husband / musical engineer Dan Duszynski) toured as the opening act for Jonathan Melburg’s Shearwater. The resulting trio is a best-of-all-worlds scenario in which Cross’s voice makes exquisite use of Melburg’s lyrics and melodies, and Duszynski engineers and mixes the music. Sonically it’s a shapeshifter, owing to a Duszysnki using a giant toolbox of sound, folk and electronica and rock and spectral pop instrumentation each coming and going as the songs call for them, and a wide variety in tone as well. Tragically for Cross and Duszynski’s marriage was ending, but the music certainly doesn’t suffer for that. Highlights: “Relay Runner,” “Dark Oscillations,” “Joy”

Sons of Kemet ,  Your Queen Is A Reptile An London-based jazz outfit with heavy African and Carribean influences, Sons of Kemet play joyful, celebratory, emphatically danceable music built for tearing down the walls of white patriarchy. Each song is dedicated, by title, to power Black women leaders, thinkers and liberators (one of whom is bandleader Shabaka Hutchings’ great grandmother). Most of the songs are instrumental, but the vocals first two tracks make the band’s intentions clear: The music is unquestionably jubilant, but it is also pledged in service to a greater cause, and the fierceness and the power of this music is palpable even in the most festive numbers. Musically the core is avant-jazz but reggae, funk, African folk traditions, grime and modern dance music all join in the fun. Highlights: “My Queen Is Ada Eastman,” “My Queen Is Angela Davis,” “My Queen Is Albertina Sisulu”