Consumer Guide: September, 2024

Louis Armstrong lively ups London in '68, the Unholy Modal Rounders do the same to NYC in '77, Chris Smither sings into the void, and Morgan Wade sings with sweetness about the ones that got away.

Laurie Anderson: Amelia (Nonesuch) Spoken words over changeable  atmospherics and effects, some instrumental and on occasion even almost melodic, add up to formally coherent aural nutrition you experience as both musical construct and feminist history. The protagonist is Amelia Earhart, dubbed “first lady of the skies” after she became the first person of her gender to pilot an airplane across the Atlantic in 1928. As Anderson sees no reason to go into—this is only a single CD, after all—Earhart quickly became a celebrity, which she made work for her during the nine years between her cross-Atlantic feat and her doomed 1938 attempt to circle the globe with navigator Fred Noonan, a rendering of which dominates Amelia. Even today no one really knows exactly what became of Earhart’s plane, which disappeared in the vicinity of an isolated island in the western Pacific. But for Anderson her courage and ambition retain their heroism even in what can only be called her failure. And her music makes you feel that. A MINUS

Louis Armstrong: Louis in London (Verve) There are more Satchmo albums than any non-historian can keep track of much less comprehend. I have two definitive early box sets in my office and 19 single- or double-disc jobs on my living room A shelves, and no, I don’t play them all. But now make that 21 with the two addressed here