Jill Scott

To Whom This May Concern

It’s been 10 years since Philadelphian neo-soul/R&B star Jill Scott last released an album. Explaining the hiatus, she has said: “It was necessary to take a long break…. I don’t think you can create art without having some living in between.” 

This might be true, but no-one could claim Scott’s life has ever been short on experience: alongside two US chart-topping LPs and acclaimed acting roles, her CV includes collaborations with Erykah Badu, Will Smith and Common. Two divorces also figure. 

To Whom This May Concern delivers an update on what Scott has learned since 2015’s Woman, and unsurprisingly, it’s a lot. She lays down gentle lessons on social media’s impact on intimacy in ‘Don’t Play’, expectations of conformity on  ‘Pressha’ and the need to identify harmful behaviours to win emotional peace in ‘The Math’. All this and more appears in a musically adventurous set that draws on jazzy hip hop, honky-tonk blues, smooth disco, boom-bap and psychedelic funk. Guests include Tierra Whack (on the irresistibly punchy ‘Norf Side’) and Too Short (on Afrofunk number ‘BPOTY’), yet this remains very much Scott’s show, her warm, richly soulful voice, with its wisdom and wit, landing like the return of an old friend.

Out now.

Label: Blues Babe 

Hen Ogledd

Discombobulated

Newcastle’s Richard Dawson is a modern folk artist who recounts relatable events  – jogging to help manage anxiety, shopping in the sales on a rainy Boxing Day – in vivid songs that mix prog, quasi-medieval folk, jazz-metal and experimental rock. Not content with just one creative outlet, he also juggles other projects, including musical quartet Hen Ogledd.

Taking the Welsh name for the UK’s Old North, Hen Ogledd make entertainingly wayward pop music with an electronic bent and improv impulse, though the title of their new LP is ambiguous. It doesn’t describe the songs, which are immediate and often groovy, not to mention richly emotional, but rather the baffling nature of our 21st-century world. In ‘Scales Will Fall’, Dawn Bothwell rails at an unjust system, and hails those who’ve fought against it, including the Greenham Common women, and Durham miners’ wives. ‘End of the Rhythm’ is very different, with its urgent hybrid of space rock and proggy kosmische, whilst the 20-minute ‘Clear Pools’ shifts from frenetic freeform jazz into sweetly modulated choral folk.

Label: Weird World 

Mitski

Nothing’s About To Happen To Me

Due to Mitsuki Laycock’s elevated profile, it’s easy to imagine that she enjoyed success early on in her career. In fact, it was only with her sixth album, 2022’s Laurel Hell, that she cracked the US Top 20. That says a lot about her high-impact expression: a combination of darkly potent, alt-pop songs edged with country, a relatable interior world revealed in fearlessly honest, often wry lyrics and a strong, alluringly lustrous voice.

Her style isn’t radically new – Lana Del Rey, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten and Weyes Blood occupy a similar field – but Mitski’s eighth record shows why she stands apart. Conceived as the story of a reclusive woman living in an unkempt house who’s judged an outsider by others, it has Mitski sounding so deeply inside her songs, it’s almost as if they burst into the world by accident. This effect is emphasised by moody orchestration, the use of reverb and as much undersinging – on the darkly psychedelic ‘Dead Women’, for example – as letting rip, as she does in the roaring, humorous ‘That White Cat’ and towering album closer ‘Lightning’.

Label: Dead Oceans

Ishmael Ali

Burn The Plastic, Sell The Copper

Based in Chicago, avant-garde cellist, guitarist and composer Ishmael Ali is embedded in the city’s fertile improv scene. He has embarked on various collaborations, but is perhaps best known as a member of the trio Hearsay. 

Burn The Plastic… is his first solo record and whilst it feels necessarily unpredictable, it’s by no means a difficult listen. 

Running at barely 36 minutes, over eight tracks, the set shifts between calm and tumult, pristine melody and thrilling dissonance. For the most part, it takes a sharp-lined minimalist approach, though there are plenty of softening, even playful elements, too - not least on the terrific ‘Stars In My Pocket’, where tumbling drums, restless, rubbery bass and flighty saxophone provide a perfect frame for his crooning. Cross-currents of wriggling clarinet and sax carry ‘Anaethema’, while ‘Vitality Of Brushstroke’ is built on the sawing and plucking of his cello. Local guests range from reeds veteran Ed Wilkerson Jr to vocalist Brianna Tong, who steps up to the mic on closing track ‘Every Circle Is A Moon’, her childlike chanting a great foil for the funky syncopation behind. 

Label: Amalgam Music

Available on Bandcamp only