By Tim Byron, Kish Lal, Annabel Ross, John Shand, Barnaby Smith and Barney Zwartz
Sampa the Great: An engaging, authoritative presence on a voyage of self-discovery.Credit: Barun Chatterjee.
HIP-HOP
Sampa the Great
THE RETURN (Ninja Tune)
★★★★½
Zambian-born, and influenced by American neo-soul hip-hop, Melbourne resident Sampa Tembo is signed to a British independent record label. The Return is this global-minded rapper's first album, says the press release; her 2017 record Birds and the BEE9 – an Australian Music Prize winner, no less – was only a mixtape. The distinction between mixtape and album in the PR reflects some serious ambition: The Return is a focused concept album about Sampa's voyage of self-discovery as an Australian musician with darker skin and African cultural heritage, via time spent in Zambia. The upbeat Triple J staples Final Form and OMG are joyfully defiant, while the trio of meditative, lengthy tracks that conclude the record – The Return, Don't Give Up and Made Us Better – only foreground the thoughtfulness and depth present in the rest of the album. Sampa is an engaging, authoritative presence and has a way of translating the personal into the universal. Overall this feels like a welcome southern-hemisphere addition to the pantheon of ambitious, socially conscious hip-hop records, like Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly or Solange's A Seat at the Table. TIM BYRON
CLASSICAL
Renee Fleming
LIEDER (Decca)
★★★★
Renee Fleming, one of the greatest operatic sopranos of the past 30 years, has recorded relatively little lieder – her last foray was more than 20 years ago. Now 60 and still vocally glamorous, she has retired from opera and ventured back to art song. Some might find her creamy, opulent voice a little rich for this repertoire, like her earlier compatriot Jessye Norman, and so it seems on the opening track, Brahms’ beautiful Lullaby. But she scales it back for a lovely account of Schumann’s ecstatic-yet-wistful song cycle Frauenliebe und –leben, tracing a woman’s path from the rapture of first love, through marriage to the bleak despair of her husband’s death. Hartmut Holl’s piano accompaniment is masterly. Mahler’s five Ruckert-lieder were recorded live with Christian Thielemann and the Munich Philharmonic. The competition here is even more formidable, but this combination is among the best, with Fleming highly expressive and the Munich woodwind characterful. Hear the way she floats the opening notes (“Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft”/“I breathed a gentle fragrance”) while Thielemann draws an ethereal beauty. Um Mitternacht (At Midnight) is rather dramatic, but successfully so. BARNEY ZWARTZ
INDIE POP
Bat for Lashes
LOST GIRLS (Kobalt)
★★★★
Natasha Khan’s artist name is Bat for Lashes, but she has always immersed herself in other characters, even basing an entire album around a fictional, tragic bride. The titular Lost Girls here refer to a vampire girl gang that Khan has dreamed up for a movie script, but the other major protagonist is her new home of Los Angeles. There is a sense of heat and wide-open spaces in these cinematic, synth-led songs, and Khan has never sounded more upbeat and free. Kids in the Dark is a dusky synth ballad that might have easily appeared in a 1980s romance or fantasy flick (Spielberg and John Williamson were big inspirations); The Hunger turns up the sultriness with smoky guitar and dramatic tom-toms. Feel for You evokes a disco track with which it shares its name, adding spangly synths and syncopated beats, while the instrumental Vampires is a noirish, sax-soaked mood piece. There is a familiarity to these arrangements, so obviously spawned from the soundtracks that captivated Khan as a child, but her innate mysticism adds extra depth and sparkle. Where past records have been cathartic and heavy, Lost Girls sounds like bliss. ANNABEL ROSS
JAZZ
Bill Evans
EVANS IN ENGLAND (Resonance/Birdland)
★★★★
Before the tour on which this previously unreleased double album was recorded at Ronnie Scott's in London, Bill Evans' mother caught the pianist's trio in Washington DC. Coming backstage, she said she couldn't hear her son because Marty Morrell's drums were too loud. Following no less than Paul Motian and Jack DeJohnette into the band, Morrell took this on board, swapping a Zildjian cymbal for a softer Paiste Flat Ride and going on to complete Evans' longest-lived trio with bassist Eddie Gomez. Morrell was an unusual choice: less daring or inclined to be an equal third of the musical conversation than Motian; more agricultural than DeJohnette's skipping finesse. Nonetheless he played with an undeniable effervescence that Evans must have prized. It built contrast into the band and, at a time (1969) when the pianist's elegiac side found little favour with the counter-culture movement, arguably gave the music more emphasis on momentum. This lovingly restored bootleg has occasional minor sonic glitches, but infinitely more often you hear a fine piano singing with Evans' limpid voicings and crystalline lines, while Gomez dances around him or plays his own supremely lyrical solos. JOHN SHAND
PUNK ROCK
Ezra Furman
Twelve Nudes (Bella Union/Inertia)
★★★½
Ezra Furman's electrifying previous albums Day of the Dog (2013) and Perpetual Motion People (2015) were a heady cross between the Ramones and the soundtrack to Grease. While there is, naturally, a sense of humour to this, the Chicagoan's sort-of concept album, Transangelic Exodus (2018), was universally declared a masterpiece: his heartfelt, politicised queer opus. Twelve Nudes is similarly introspective and literate – though not without volume, as the crunch of distorted guitar on opener Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone proves. A slower heaviness comes with tracks such as the superb Trauma, which recalls solo Lennon at his angriest, and Transition from Nowhere to Nowhere, a cutting protest song that addresses signature Furman concerns regarding identity, otherness and repression. Overall, Furman's music now is a little less theatrical, immediate and flamboyant than it once was, as he confronts America's sociopolitical malaise – most devastatingly on What Can You Do but Rock and Roll. His maturity and eloquence are not the revelation they were on Transangelic Exodus, but Furman remains on a journey of extraordinary growth and leadership for the queer community. BARNABY SMITH
POP
Charli XCX
CHARLI (Asylum/Atlantic)
★★★
The idea Charli XCX is “going to save pop music” isn’t just a sentiment expressed by her fans, but also by the pop star herself, whose long-awaited third studio album is her case in point. Like her previous projects, however, it misses the mark. As a celebrity, Charli is a fully realised exercise in innovation, inclusivity and irreverence, but her blind dedication to techno textures (Cross You Out) and PC music soundscapes are alienating experiments that hinder her potential. Unsurprisingly, it’s her most exuberant moments, such as Click, 1999 (featuring Australian Troye Sivan) and her collaboration with breakout star Lizzo (Blame It on Your Love) that showcase Charli at her best: that is, when she is tempered by other artists. February 2017 with Clairo and Yaeji successfully toes the line between electronica and pop, with silvery Auto-Tuned vocals, skyrocketing melodies and the excitement of her previous, and arguably sonically most successful mixtape, Pop 2. But these moments are few and far between – a frustrating dilemma for those who want to see the 27-year-old shine. Despite being a student of Taylor Swift, Charli can’t figure out a cohesive sound, but when she does, it’s going to be pop magic. KISH LAL