Kadhja Bonet, Childqueen

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”

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Hop Along, Bark Your Head Off Dog

Hop Along, Bark Your Head Off, Dog This Philadelphia band’s complex, literate, off-kilter indie rock gets better with every listen. This could never be pop music, no matter who produced it or what instruments they used. It is too strange, singlar and too unrestrained. Singer Frances Quinlan’s melodic acrobatics are all over the map — “angular” doesn’t begin to cover it — and the rest of the band careens along wildly; the whole thing barely holds together, in the most wonderful way. The same guy who told Mozart he used “too many notes” would’ve said the same to Hop Along and he’d be similarly wrong. The string section, the backing vocals and the occasional synths are apparently new with this album and they offset the band’s punk-infused spirit perfectly. Highlights: “Prior Things,” “The Fox in Motion,” “What the Writer Meant”

Loma, Loma

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”

Caroline Rose, Loner

Caroline Rose, Loner Diverging wildly from both her roots rock and folk pasts, Caroline Rose’s new dance pop album sounds as bright red as her album covers. Having made a deliberate shift to bring her songs more in line with her musical interests and with her playful, sometimes caustic sense of humor, Rose hams it up a fair bit but she’s in her power the entire time and has plenty to say. The instrumentation and production are exquisite, guitars and synths and percussion in perfect synergy. Highlights: “Money,” “Soul № 5,” Bikini”

Album Reviews by Stefan Wenger

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