Weekly Music Roundup: Kendrick Lamar, The Smile, Vieux Farka Touré

Week of May 16: This week, the return of Kendrick Lamar, a new Radiohead spinoff, and a rocking Tori Amos cover by Amythyst Kiah. 

Kendrick Lamar Is Back

In 1972, Rick Nelson sang “you can’t please everyone/so you got to please yourself.” This line was delivered in such a breezy way in his hit song “Garden Party” that it seemed like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. Skip ahead fifty years, to a time when the phrase “Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper” is a real thing, and Kendrick Lamar shows just how hard it is to wrestle with responsibilities to others – whether that’s a growing family or a huge following of fans – while still trying to take care of yourself and maybe, if you’re lucky, grow a little bit as a person. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers has been five years in the making, during which time Lamar has won the aforementioned Pulitzer, and appeared in the Superbowl halftime show. He’s also been in therapy, which he mentions at the beginning, middle and end of the new album. “I can’t please everybody” Lamar chants (as opposed to rapping or singing) on a song called “Crown.” There’s also a standalone single that is currently ruling YouTube, “The Heart, Part 5” (a continuation of the series of tracks he began in 2010), which is tinged with grief after the death of Lamar’s friend and fellow rapper Nipsey Hussle. That sorrow is another thread in the full LP, from the opener “United In Grief,” where he repeats the line “we all grieve different,” through the remarkable closing song called “Mirror.” Using an orchestral soul/funk sound and singing rather than rapping through most of the song, Lamar references counseling and the difficulties of juggling a baby daughter, the demands of fame, and having to let down a lover as he focuses on his own life. “I choose me, I’m sorry” is the simple declaration in the chorus. This is not the only moment on Mr. Morale where you may ask, “is this hip hop?”: “Crown” and its minimalist piano may have you asking the same question. But as Lamar says at the beginning of “The Heart, Part 5,” “As I get a little older, I realize life is perspective/And my perspective may differ from yours.”  

Julia Jacklin Offers a Preview of Pre Pleasure

Australian singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin won’t release her next album, Pre Pleasure, until August, but the first single is strong enough to tide her fans over for a while. “Lydia Wears A Cross” is about being young and beginning to wrestle with questions of belief. “I’d be a believer/if it was all just song and dance,” she sings; “I’d be a believer/if I thought we had a chance.” Rather than her usual guitar, the song begins with tolling piano chords and a steady electronic beat, before blooming with the late arrival of live drums, synthesizers, and harmony vocals that seem to envelop her soft lead singing.  

Radiohead + Sons Of Kemet = The Smile

Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead have teamed up with drummer Tom Skinner of Sons Of Kemet to form a new trio called The Smile. Their debut LP is called A Light For Attracting Attention, and first of all, props to the three of them for doing as little to attract attention as possible (no media blitz, interviews, etc.) and just letting the music do its thing. And if that thing happens to sound a lot like Radiohead, well, that will cause few complaints.  Despite the friendly title, The Smile makes music shot through with darkness and anxiety; there are twitchy electronic songs, a piano-based ballad or two, and a couple of out-and-out rockers. This is one of them: it’s called “We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings,” and it harkens back to Radiohead’s now-distant post-punk roots, with Greenwood laying down a pulsing bass line and topping it with wheezing electronics and straightforward electric guitars. 

Amythyst Kiah’s Rocking Cover of Tori Amos’s “Sugar”

Singer and guitarist Amythyst Kiah made a strong impression with her solo album last year called Wary + Strange, which tackled racism, suicide and addiction in songs that showed their roots in Americana but also showed Kiah as a musician who’d grown up listening to 90s alt-rock bands like Nirvana. She also showed off her banjo chops as part of the quartet Our Native Daughters. Now she’s released a hard-charging version of “Sugar,” a song by Tori Amos that, in Amos’s live version (the one that inspired Kiah), has only piano accompaniment. Kiah turns Amos’s gently wistful/sardonic tune into full-on, amps-to-11 blues-rock.

“Grief And Whatever Comes After” – A Debut From Revelators Sound System

Revelators Sound System is a collaboration between MC Taylor, the mastermind behind the avant-folk band Hiss Golden Messenger, and the bassist Cameron Rolston. Their debut album, Revelators, comes out on June 16, and they’ve just released the track called “George The Revelator,” a title that for blues fans will immediately summon the classic “John The Revelator” made famous by Son House; but aside from a certain cosmic/apocalyptic sensibility there is little sonic connection between the two. “George The Revelator” was begun the day after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer and evolved over the following months; it draws on the spiritual jazz tradition of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders but also leans on a slow-funk bass line and lightly psychedelic orchestral and electronic touches. Taylor says Revelators is a record “about grief. Grief, and whatever comes after. We were looking for a way to communicate that musically.” 

Vieux Farka Touré Returns To His Roots

Being a West African guitarist is hard – IF your father was the man considered the greatest guitarist West Africa ever produced. So Vieux Farka Touré, son of the late, great Ali Farka Touré, has spent much of his career carving out his own path, playing with Dave Matthews, recording an album with experimental singer Julia Easterlin, and teaming up with Israeli composer Idan Raichel for an ongoing band project, etc. Finally, though, he is returning to the deeply-rooted Saharan blues that his father helped popularize, on a new album called Les Racines (“the roots”). The album comes out on June 10, but Vieux has just released the single “Ngala Kaourene,” which uses the style’s hypnotic 6/8 rhythm, the metal castanets, traditional flute, and repeating electric guitar lines reminiscent of the elder Farka Touré. It’s the sound of a confident musician reclaiming his heritage.