MUSIC FOR LIVING: New CD Reviews October 2009

 

Oumou Sangare
Seya
Nonesuch
www.nonesuch.com
Malian singer-songwriter Oumou Sangare is at the cutting edge of contemporary Afropop. With one foot firmly planted in her native land’s tradition and the other in the sounds of the modern-day dance floor (guest musicians include James Brown saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis and trombonist Fred Wesley), Sangare performs original anthems that are uplifting in their joyful musicality while addressing pertinent sociocultural and political concerns, including women’s rights and the decline of family values. The “Songbird of Wassoulou,” as she is sometimes called, knows whereof she speaks, having been drafted into singing in the street at the age of five in order to help feed her family, her father having abandoned them.

 

Funky Hammond organ and rock-fueled electric guitar arpeggios alternate with the circular melody lines of the balafon (a Malian marimba) and the kamel n’goni (a kind of lute) to make for a stimulating, hyperkinetic musical fusion that underscores Sangare’s rich, colorful alto.

 

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs
Under the Covers Vol. 1 and 2
Shout Factory
www.shoutfactory.com
Talk about guilty pleasures: On these two CDs, a pair of pop-rock geniuses take on familiar and obscure pop-rock chestnuts from the 1960s and ’70s to make for a giddy celebration of classic-rock candy, running the gamut from Bob Dylan and the Beatles to Bread and the Bee Gees, from the Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac to the Who and the Velvet Underground. 

Sweet and Hoffs are brilliant vocalists, and the latter, in particular, exhibits much greater range than one might expect based on her previous work with the Bangles.

 

Their versions remain respectful of the originals while on occasion even, dare we say, improving upon them (listen to their Yes medley and their soulful rendition of “Monday, Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas). To be enjoyed wholeheartedly, and without the guilt.

 

 

The Wailin’ Jennys
Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House
Red House
www.redhouserecords.com
The three-part harmonies of this female folk-country trio from Canada heard here are so soulful and pristine that it took several plays before realizing that this was a concert recording, which makes it all the more impressive that they could pull off such gorgeous melody singing and harmonizing outside of the modern recording studio. Ordinarily I wouldn’t seek an introduction to a new musical group via a live album, but I can’t think of a better way to appreciate the trio’s old-time- and bluegrass-influenced sound—fleshed out by Jeremy Penner’s violin and mandolin, as well as the singers’ accompaniment on a host of string and rhythm instruments—than this document of a 2008 concert at the venerable 1881 vaudeville theater in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, featuring traditionals, original songs, and numbers by contemporary songwriters including Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, and Jane Siberry. [OCTOBER 2009]