‘Comes in Waves’ by Carly Simon
★★★
“At this stage in her life, Carly Simon has every right to turn in a biblically gloomy record,” said Victoria Segal in The Times (U.K.). Yet despite her recent announcement that she has been struggling with Parkinson’s disease, her first album of new material in 18 years proves to be “far from doom-laden.” Recorded mostly at her studio on Martha’s Vineyard, the record’s dozen songs are “remarkably full of good cheer, quiet wisdom and, at times, a twinkling playfulness that rolls back the years to Simon’s 1970s glory days.” Anyone who thought the storied singer-songwriter might tiptoe away from her career “need only listen to the opening track,” said Melissa Ruggieri in USA Today. “Over a jaunty piano melody,” Simon “bulldozes” into a chorus in which she advises a friend to “howl like the wind” to get over a breakup. “Maybe I Never Loved You,” the very next song, addresses her famous ex, James Taylor, but its touches of bitterness matter less than Simon’s still-superb delivery. With just a slight hesitation in the final line, she “turns the song’s intention inside out,” creating just enough ambiguity to let listeners find their own meaning.
‘The Womack Sisters’ by The Womack Sisters
★★★
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“The Womack Sisters’ self-titled debut album is a throwback to the heyday of soul,” said Shawn Donohue in Glide. Little wonder, seeing that Kucha, Zeimani, and BG Womack are the granddaughters of Sam Cooke, daughters of the 1980s duo Womack & Womack, and nieces of R&B legend Bobby Womack. “This music is their heritage” and the three sisters are “perfectly paired” with the retro-soul label Daptone for their 11-song coming-out. “If I Let You,” a Latin-jazz detour, was co-written by Daptone chief Gabe Roth. The sisters’ “tour de force” debut channels a host of influences, said Jonathan Bernstein in Rolling Stone. You can hear ’60s girl-group pop in “Monster,” echoes of socially minded message songs in “Laughter and Tears,” plus “gospel-infused sibling harmony” from start to finish. Despite their lineage, the sisters struggled for more than a decade to get a record like this made. After being told for years how to build a career, the opening track is the sound of a group “finally taking the proverbial wheel.” The song is “Chauffeur,” and it references one of the many side jobs the sisters took on to support their ambitions: driving for Uber.
‘Fata Morgana’ by L’Rain
★★★
“For an artist like L’Rain, the boundaries of genre are places to explore rather than fences hemming her in,” said Grant Sharples in Paste. On her fourth album recorded under that name, the Brooklyn-based musician born Taja Cheek “constructs sonic realms that feel both tactile and free-form”—a fitting trick, given that the album’s title refers to an optical illusion affecting objects seen at a distance. This “beautiful yet unsettling” record blurs the border between pop and experimental such that “Soulless Cycle,” by far the “heaviest” song of her career, “feels right at home with the soft key arpeggios of ‘With Time’ and the ambient soul of ‘Blue.’” With her lyrics here, “Cheek speaks in riddles and questions everything, especially herself,” said Stephen Kearse in Pitchfork. On “Borderline,” she “picks at insecurities like scabs,” while “Birthday” is less a celebration than Cheek trying to talk herself into even caring. At the same time, she and her two bandmates “bury the malaise under layer upon gorgeous layer of instruments and vocals.” This is music that’s “dense as a thundercloud in one moment, sheer as gauze in the next.”
