Sons of Kemet, Your Queen Is A Reptile

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”

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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

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Caroline Rose, Loner

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Album Reviews by Stefan Wenger

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