Ooh-la-la! Janelle Monae stirs up a sexy summer cocktail: ADRIAN THRILLS reviews The Age of Pleasure
JANELLE MONAE: The Age Of Pleasure (Atlantic)
Verdict: Loved-up summer odyssey
Rating:
SOPHIE ELLIS BEXTOR: Hana (Cooking Vinyl)
Verdict: Disco diva gets a revamp
Rating:
JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT: Weathervanes (Thirty Tigers)
Verdict: Blew me away
Rating:
Given that she is one of pop’s most dedicated chameleons, it’s no surprise to hear Janelle Monae dropping the name of another great maverick midway through her fourth album.
‘They say I look better than David Bowie in a moonage dream,’ she sings, admiringly, on a simmering reggae number called Haute.
It’s not the first time the Kansas City singer has looked to the late British superstar. Inspired by how Bowie devised his Ziggy Stardust character, she fashioned a glamorous, cyber-girl alter ego, Cindi Mayweather, for her debut album, The ArchAndroid, in 2010. She then came up with another sci-fi creation, Jane 57821, for 2018’s Dirty Computer.
Given that she is one of pop’s most dedicated chameleons, it’s no surprise to hear Janelle Monae dropping the name of another great maverick midway through her fourth album
She takes on a more earthbound, and unapologetically sexier, role on The Age Of Pleasure, an album of loved-up summer fun that’s as much a continuous odyssey as a set of individual songs
But the 37-year-old — who has carved out a parallel career as a Hollywood A-Lister, starring in Moonlight, Hidden Figures and Glass Onion — still inhabits a world that’s all her own
Like Prince, who she worked with, and Grace Jones, who supplies a cameo here, she skips between slinky styles
Sensitive listeners might blush at the non-stop stream of raciness and innuendo. Monae isn’t always coy, but she’s also open to a more traditional view of romance
She takes on a more earthbound, and unapologetically sexier, role on The Age Of Pleasure, an album of loved-up summer fun that’s as much a continuous odyssey as a set of individual songs. But the 37-year-old — who has carved out a parallel career as a Hollywood A-Lister, starring in Moonlight, Hidden Figures and Glass Onion — still inhabits a world that’s all her own.
Like Prince, who she worked with, and Grace Jones, who supplies a cameo here, she skips between slinky styles. Whereas her previous LPs have been rooted in funk, gospel and alternative R&B, this one adds African beats, Jamaican dancehall and dub reggae to the mix . . . sometimes in the same song.
Fela Kuti’s former band, Egypt 80, bring a laid-back, reggae backing to the opening track, Float, with the pioneering Nigerian bandleader’s son, Seun, featuring prominently. Grace Jones makes her appearance on Ooh La La, rapping in French, while DJ and singer Sister Nancy crops up on The French 75, a woozy interlude that celebrates the delights of a gin and champagne cocktail.
Monae, who identifies as non-binary but continues to be ‘she’ and ‘her’, also has the birds and the bees on her mind. ‘Bite me on my neck, and you know what’s coming next,’ she teases on Lipstick Lover, a perfect summer pop song. ‘If you pay me in pleasure, I’m a-keep it coming forever,’ she adds on the suggestive title track.
Sensitive listeners might blush at the non-stop stream of raciness and innuendo. Monae isn’t always coy, but she’s also open to a more traditional view of romance. Only Have Eyes 42 (as in ‘for two’) takes the chorus of the doo-wop standard I Only Have Eyes For You (a hit for Art Garfunkel) and gives it an old-school reggae makeover. It’s a highlight of a beautifully sung suite that’s a triumph for one of music’s most enterprising shape-shifters.
You could never accuse Sophie Ellis-Bextor of failing to capitalise on the kitchen disco craze she pioneered in lockdown. Having posted a weekly series of wonderfully chaotic family pop performances on Instagram, the mum-of-five has since turned the concept into a brand. She’s broadened the idea to encompass sold-out tours, two albums and a 24-hour sponsored ‘danceathon’ for Children In Need. Come November, she’ll be taking the idea on the road again.It’s all a far cry from the understated solo career Ellis-Bextor, 44, was building in the pre-Covid era. She made her name with club hits such as Murder On The Dancefloor before moving on to more eclectic styles on 2014’s Wanderlust and 2016’s Familia.
This week’s release Hana, her first set of new songs in seven years, is the final volume in a trilogy that began with Wanderlust. Like its two predecessors, it was co-written by Sophie and composer Ed Harcourt, who also produces, and the onus is firmly on her artistry. Those expecting glitterballs and feather boas should hold onto their horses.
Dominated by pounding indie-pop guitars and keyboards, the record looks to the Far East for its musical cues. The title is the Japanese word for blossom, and there’s an acoustic song, Tokyo, inspired by a visit to the city.
Dominated by pounding indie-pop guitars and keyboards, the record looks to the Far East for its musical cues
The notion of tethering the songs to a specific location was established on the first two volumes of the trilogy, with Wanderlust shaped by Eastern Europe and Familia inspired by Latin America
Her lyrics are sometimes — OK, often — silly, but the sense of seeking a fresh start gives Hana its coherence
The notion of tethering the songs to a specific location was established on the first two volumes of the trilogy, with Wanderlust shaped by Eastern Europe and Familia inspired by Latin America.
But the concept is loose and there are as many songs here about space travel as trips to the Orient. We’re ‘soaring up like satellites in the twilight zone’ on Breaking The Circle, while Sophie looks on as ‘galaxies pass us by . . . all we can do is fly’ on Beyond The Universe.
Her lyrics are sometimes — OK, often — silly, but the sense of seeking a fresh start gives Hana its coherence.
It opens strongly, too. Atmospheric ballad A Thousand Orchids is sung with a yearning catch that puts paid to any notion that she is still in disco diva mode.
But the album loses impetus. He’s A Dreamer feels like a set of phrases thrown together with little clarity (‘my favourite synthesiser, escape artist, moving like a dancer’), although Broken Toy is a compelling weepie.
In showing a different side to Sophie, it’s a success. It’s just hard to escape the feeling that her autumn Kitchen Disco tour is the year’s main event.
Let me tell you a story… about one man and his band
As one of music’s best storytellers, Jason Isbell is at the top of his game on the sixth album with his five-piece group The 400 Unit. Whether he’s singing about tricky personal issues or putting the outside world to rights, he expresses himself brilliantly in a four-minute pop song — and there are plenty on Weathervanes.
His road-hardened band — with his fiddle-playing wife Amanda Shires a key member — are integral, playing a role similar to that of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers in augmenting his lead vocals with dazzling harmonies and a sense of camaraderie.
As one of music’s best storytellers, Jason Isbell is at the top of his game on the sixth album with his five-piece group The 400 Unit
Weathervanes was made in just ten days, and its hard-rocking country-soul has a real immediacy as a result. Isbell’s vivid character studies tackle tough topics with sensitivity. Death Wish is a compassionate love song about the fragility of life — but is catchy enough to be a hit single. King Of Oklahoma gets inside the mind of a blue-collar worker contemplating petty crime to pay his medical bills.
As the father of a seven-year-old daughter, the Alabama-born singer also voices his helplessness at U.S. school shootings on Save The World, while other tracks touch on drug abuse (he is a recovering alcoholic) and racism. His love songs aren’t exactly hearts-and-flowers affairs, either, but they do show flashes of humour: on This Ain’t It, he rekindles old feelings for a childhood sweetheart as she’s about to become ‘just some rich man’s wife’.
Isbell is making waves in film, too. He wrote the track Maybe It’s Time for Bradley Cooper’s character in the 2019 remake of A Star Is Born.
He also appears in Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming epic Killers Of The Flower Moon. But it’s his songwriting that’s helping to make The 400 Unit one of America’s best rock bands — and, on Weathervanes, the wind is fully behind his back.
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