Three American artists this week, although Tyler, The Creator and Tinashe both have fathers with African heritage – Tyler’s father was born in Nigeria and Tinashe’s father is a first-generation Zimbabwean immigrant. Meanwhile, Kacey Musgraves veers further away from the heartland country sound of her early work on her fourth album Star-Crossed.
Kacey Musgraves
Star-Crossed
2021, 8.5/10
Kacey Musgraves became a star with Golden Hour. Its sunkissed and mildly psychedelic sound, with its songs of falling in love, won Musgraves an album of the year Grammy and set expectations sky-high for the follow-up. As the title indicates, Star-Crossed is a divorce album. Musgraves dissects her failed marriage from different angles. She’s strident and dismissive on ‘Breadwinner’ but much more conflicted on the outstanding ‘Hookup Scene’ where she sings “It’s a chapter that ain’t coming back/I could have learned to love it more”.
The arrangements are sometimes tentative, but that suits Musgraves’ own confusion on the record – as she sings on ‘Justified’, “healing doesn’t happen in a straight line.” Crucially, though, Star-Crossed is filled with memorable melodies delivered in Musgraves’ sweet voice, making it one of the year’s strongest records.
The acoustic ‘Hookup Scene’ is one of the few songs that would have fitted in comfortably on Musgraves’ earlier country records. Many of these songs feel deconstructed – ‘There Is A Light’ combines virtuoso flute soloing with a dance beat, and it’s kitsch but catchy. There are plenty of memorable choruses like ‘Cherry Blossom’ and ‘Breadwinner’, and the Spanish conclusion on ‘Gracias A La Vida’ is a dignified ending.
Star-Crossed has only enjoyed a lukewarm critical reception and it’s sometimes an overly tentative follow-up to the success of Golden Hour, but it’s still an excellent record.
Tinashe
333
2021, 9/10
Tinashe Kachingwe started her show biz career young, moving to LA at the age of eight and appearing in The Polar Express and Two and a Half Men. Tinashe started her career strongly with Aquarius before record company interference caused the quality of her records to decrease. 333 is her fifth album and her second as an independent artist.
Free of record company constraints, Tinashe wanders freely around the alternative R&B space. Her most distinctive asset is her amazingly pure head voice, utilised often like the hook to ‘Last Call’. There’s a delicacy to the lovely ‘Angels’, which is a mile away from the raunchy sex jam ‘X [marks the spot]’ (which isn’t about pirates).
Her songs are sometimes tantalizingly short – ‘Shy Guy’ packs a lot of ideas into a mere 1:06. Brief opener ‘Let Go’ is reminiscent of Donna Summer’s ‘On The Radio’. ‘The Chase’ is funky and propulsive, while ‘Small Reminders’ is pretty. The highlight is ‘Undo (Back to My Heart)’, which starts mellow before launching into its huge chorus.
333 is a little inconsistent, but there are a lot of great ideas and it’s easily one of the best new records I’ve heard this year.
Tyler, The Creator
Call Me If You Get Lost
2021, 9/10
Hip hop’s crankiest star is back with his sixth album. Tyler launched the promotion of Call Me If You Get Lost with a giant billboard in Los Angeles. There was no name attached, just the album title and a phone number. If you rang the phone number, you were played a phone conversation between Tyler and his mother, featured on the album as ‘Momma Talk’. He uses the alias Tyler Baudelaire on the record, a reference to the 19th-century author and poet Charles Baudelaire, with whom Tyler feels some a thematic affinity.
It’s perhaps unfair to label Call Me… as a hip hop album. It covers a lot of ground, with a lot of retro soul and jazz in its DNA. After 2019’s dour breakup album Igor, Tyler’s having fun here. On ‘Hot Wind Blows’ he exclaims “we all got our toes out!”, and it’s charming.
It’s a weirdly paced album. The front half consists of fleeting and interconnected tracks, while the meat of the record is in two lengthy tracks that dominate the second half. ‘Sweet / I Thought You Wanted to Dance’ has a terrific breezy hook on the retro soul of the first half, while the second part is almost a hybrid between bubblegum pop and reggae. The nine minutes of ‘Wilshire’ are the emotional centrepiece – after a restless album of genre hopping and bravado, it’s low key and heartfelt with Tyler unpacking a failed relationship.
If you’ve read else anything on this site, it’s obvious that I don’t listen to a lot of hip hop, but Tyler, the Creator is on a hot creative streak right now and Call Me… is more brilliance from him.
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Three more I need to hear! I’m already a Musgraves fan, and the other two are now on the list. Thanks!
I don’t know that I would have had you pegged as a Tinashe fan.
Me? I’m a fan of most things. At least willing to try it out!
The thing about Musgraves’ album is that it has to follow ‘Golden Hour’. Although I prefer that album, ‘Star-Crossed’ is still good.
Tyler’s album really came out of nowhere for me as I had no idea of this release. It’s still good, however, ‘Igor’ is a hard album to follow.
I really like the new Musgraves – I was toying with giving it a 9, and it’s still in the top ten of the year for me at this point.
Tyler basically stuck that mysterious billboard up a couple of weeks before the album came out. I need to spend more time with Flower Boy, but he’s basically on a really strong streak at the moment.
Kacey Musgraves is the one country artist that I actually like…and I don’t like many modern ones…I like her country style music…she is a good writer.
I liked the Highwomen album from a couple of years ago, and the individual members. A lot of modern country has elements of classic rock like big guitars, but Musgraves is pretty traditional musically on her early albums and very provocative lyrically.
Modern country has turned into Southern Rock with a twang…
I do like the traditional country…that is what I first liked about her. She covers a lot of ground. When I heard Follow Your Arrow I didn’t think country radio would play it…but they did.
Sometimes I think it’s just Bon Jovi with a twang.
That is a perfect analogy.
Of the three, Kacey Musgraves speaks the most to me. I’ve heard her name a few times before. Tinashe has a pretty voice.
She won Grammy for album of the year for Golden Hour a couple of years ago. You’d probably dig the Laurel Canyon vibes on that record.
Kacey Musgraves sounds like she’s back in a big way. I’ve always liked her music. I will check it out.
I always quote Kacey in math class when talking about the distributive property.
2(x + 3), draw curved arrows from the 2 to the x and then the 2 to the 3, and Follow Your Arrow!