Kevin Devine "Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong"
In simplest terms: Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong is a grown-up break-up (or break-ups, as it were) record, for strugglers by strugglers, a kitchen-sink 10th album pivot, painstakingly brought to life by two career-long collaborators and their shared (& split) obsessions.
The mission: alchemize a chainsmoked series of destabilizing life experiences into something musically dynamic & progressive & expansive;
be lyrically evocative & excavating & unflinching without irresponsibly printing your journals;
navigate two successive endings, and the “how did I get here,” and the dark night of honestly assessing the soul, and digging a tunnel, and the stubborn humanity in beginning again.
(It’s also sort of a fatherhood record.)
And now: to get people to hear it.
A Billi Free & The Lasso "Holy Body Roll"
Holy Body Roll is a groove-filled guidebook for healing, the soundtrack to help you move from tear-streaming breakdown to full-body boogie. The first collaborative album from Michigan multi-instrumentalist/producer The Lasso and New Mexico-based singer/rapper A. Billi Free, it’s also a quest for self-realization and self-preservation. With the aid of musical trio Tri Magi, The Lasso imbues thumping ’80s boogie, guitar-wailing funk descended from Midwest legends, heart-pumping house and techno direct from Detroit, celestial and spiritual jazz, and slices of krautrock with hip-hop sensibilities.
A. Billi Free sings in warm, comforting melodies and raps with force and encouraging sincerity, pushing us to reconnect with our bodies in the present while accepting the unknown ahead. However, when the duo began working on the album remotely, The Lasso was still reeling from a divorce. Realizing Free’s sonic visions helped him transmute his anguish into uplifting, dance-inducing instrumentals. During mixing sessions in Michigan and Tucson, the pair drove through forests and deserts, the album on repeat. Listen closely, there is wisdom in every note and lyric, a chance for you to dance as the pain fades and the future comes into focus.
Destroyer "LABRYNTHITIS"
Destroyer’s 2022 album brims with mystic and intoxicating terrain, the threads of Dan Bejar’s notes woven through by a trove of allusions at once eerily familiar and intimately perplexing.
More than an arcane puzzle for the listener, LABYRINTHITIS warps and winds through unfamiliar territory for Bejar as well. Written largely in 2020 and recorded the following spring, the album most often finds Bejar and frequent collaborator John Collins seeking the mythic artifacts buried somewhere under the dance floor, from the glitzy spiral of “It Takes a Thief” to the Books-ian collage bliss of the title track. Initial song ideas ventured forth from disco, Art of Noise, and New Order, Bejar and Collins championing the over-the-top madcappery. “Our version may have been punk clubs, but our touchstones for the album were more true to disco,” says Bejar.
April March "In Cinerama"
April March has quite the resume: an animator on Pee Wee’s Playhouse and for Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” video, and collaborating with Brian Wilson, Jack White, LL Cool J, Jonathan Richman, Ronnie Spector and Bertrand Burgalat. But she also has an acclaimed recording career, heavily influenced by French pop music, making a name for herself in France with her self-produced albums as well as albums with Bertand Burgalat and Aquaserge.
Following a quarter century of recording, March unveiled In Cinerama as a vinyl-only release for Record Store Day in 2021. It was an unprecedented success, selling out of its small run before most could hear the magic. In Cinerama has a wide sonic span from Nigeria to California, with Fela Kuti’s drummer Tony Allen at the helm and The Beach Boys’ Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford by his side, as well as talented friends ranging from the French underground to Nashville; The 11 tracks, co-written and co-produced by Mehdi Zannad, recall the 5th Dimension, Belle And Sebastian and even your favorite Gainsbourg or Curt Boettcher productions but stand on their own just as fresh and contemporary as the waves of Malibu or a Parisian Uber.