A- Mary J. Blige
Strength of a Woman
Capitol
Mary J. Blige moves like a forest fire: ruthless, wide-ranging, blunt. She has been scorned and is dead-set on payback.
On "Set Me Free," Blige delivers stern talk to the person responsible: "Tell me how you figure/That you made me and you gave me what I had before I met ya/And gonna have it when you're gone." It goes from rage to finger-wagging and back. Then she pauses, and sings, in a high and sugary voice, "There's a special place in hell for youuuuuuuu."
This album is an unburdening. Blige recently split from Kendu Isaacs, her longtime husband and manager.
Blige is a virtuoso of suffering, and Strength of a Woman is her most affecting and wounded album in several years.
"Should I stick it out? Are you worth this fight?" she muses on "Thick of It." At some moments, she's lost in a reverie of frustration and anger, her verses giving up structure for loose but pointed exhaustion.
The music's relative calm is a reminder to focus on the texture of Blige's pain. Her voice tells stories that instruments can't. Guests include Kanye West, Missy Elliott and DJ Khaled.
The tone shifts from rebuke to righteousness on "Telling the Truth." Blige begins to use her story as a teaching tool. "You gotta love like you've never been hurt/To find a love that you deserve," she implores on "Indestructible." She could be issuing a warning to listeners to examine their seemingly intractable feelings, or she could be looking in the mirror.
Hot tracks: "Set Me Free," "Thick of It," "Indestructible"
-- JON CARAMANICA,
The New York Times
A John Moreland
Big Bad Luv
4AD
A couple of years ago, on a December night at White Water Tavern in Little Rock, a guy with an acoustic guitar was trying to get the ample crowd to be quiet as he played. Between songs he admonished those gathered for chattering among themselves and not paying attention to him.
He was followed by John Moreland, the Oklahoma-based singer-songwriter who is no stranger to Arkansas (his second album, the brilliant In the Throes, was released by Little Rock-based Last Chance Records). With just his six string acoustic, Moreland didn't have to ask the crowd for silence. The whole bar listened, spellbound, to his every word and chord. When your songs are great, people pay attention.
The songs on Big Bad Luv, recorded at Little Rock's Fellowship Sound Hall and a follow-up to 2015's High on Tulsa Heat, are a further example of Moreland's skill. They are eloquent heartland tales of pain and joy, loss and wonder, hate and love. Moreland's warm, raspy vocals and the album's tasteful production turn them into torn-flannel mini-anthems, sometimes bleak, sometimes life-affirming, always powerful.
Hot tracks: "Love Is Not an Answer," "It Don't Suit Me (Like Before)," "Sallisaw Blue," "Latchkey Kid"
-- SEAN CLANCY,
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
A- The Shins
Heartworms
Columbia
By all accounts this is a James Mercer solo record flying under the flag of Mercer's stalwart indie band, The Shins. Mercer has let his former collaborators go and produced Heartworms alone. Perhaps the lack of other voices in these snappy pop-rock compositions might indicate the new status of The Shins, but otherwise it is hard to tell. That said, "Midenhall" is one of Mercer's most starkly direct and autobiographical songs (he sings about growing up in a military family and the direction of his life changing with a Jesus and Mary Chain cassette).
Elsewhere, the opening track, "Name for You," is Mercer at his irresistible best. "Painting a Hole" is insular and overproduced. The last track is called "The Fear" and it floats on an insistent island groove. It's one of the few tracks where Mercer steps aside and lets the music speak for itself. Sweet.
Hot tracks: "Name for You," "Midenhall," "The Fear"
-- WERNER TRIESCHMANN,
Special to the Democrat-Gazette
A- Goon Sax
Up to Anything
Charter Music
Three Australian teens -- one female drummer, a male guitarist and a male bassist -- make excruciatingly simple, guitar jangle music that has no right to work and yet it feels timeless. The simple teenage feelings they sing about -- "I hate the telephone" in the song titled, yes, "Telephone" and the awkwardness of sweaty hands in, no kidding, "Sweaty Hands" -- are missing layers of irony and deflection, thank goodness.
The group probably isn't aware that Jonathan Richman was plowing up this ground in the same deadpan and guileless way ages ago. No matter. If you give this record one half of a chance, you might not think it so simple in the end. You also might cherish it beyond reason.
Hot tracks: "Up for Anything," "Telephone," "Boyfriend"
-- WERNER TRIESCHMANN,
Special to the Democrat-Gazette
Style on 05/16/2017