Consumer Guide: May, 2024

Three (count 'em, three) albums from a universalist, one from a Welsh beatmaker blessed with a silver tongue, the latest from our greatest female pop singer, and jazz’s greatest tenor player at 28.

Africatown, AL: Ancestor Sounds (Free Dirt/PM Press) “An album  of landmark recordings featuring residents of the Africatown community including descendants from the last slave ship brought to America, the Clotilda” (“First Thing He Did When Freed Was Build a Drum,” “Sent to Vietnam, but Never Been to Africa”) ***

Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter (Parkwood/Columbia) Not a country album—without too much fuss we've gotten that straight. Just a confidently eclectic pop album with countryish flavorings and countryish provocations that claims and indeed establishes that our greatest female pop singer, who we know is also a pretty darn good songwriter, has a fair claim on that fiefdom. Her songwriting does peter out slightly for the last five or so of 25 (CD!) tracks, but for the most part the impressive variety of these songs only strengthens her not so audacious claim. She sings as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a descendant, an inheritor, and a sexpot. She enlists ever-obliging 90-year-old Willie Nelson, outclassed 28-year-old Post Malone, a sexy Miley Cyrus, a delighted Dolly Parton, and Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” in her quest and gives ample room to 81-year-old special guest Linda Martel, who became the first Black woman to (briefly) crack the Grand Old Opry half a century ago. Epochal? Maybe, maybe not. But a hell of a good record. A