Angélique Kidjo, Remain In Light

[Kravenworks]
Grade: B+

In 2017, celebrated Beninese singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo led a Carnegie Hall concert with a fascinating concept: to reimagine the Talking Heads’ classic Remain In Light through the lens of the West African music that inspired it. Kidjo’s Remain In Light, now arriving in studio form, is a stunning transformation that sheds the nervous, alien nature of these well-worn songs, turning them into something more human, danceable, and, in some cases, more meaningful. Here, the album’s Afrobeat backbone appears in its natural state, dominating songs like “The Great Curve” and “Once In A Lifetime” with walls of clattering percussion and crescendoing horns. But it’s not all breezy, beautiful funk. Kidjo’s take on “Seen And Not Seen” feels as if it’s confronting a society that holds whiteness as the standard of beauty, as it juxtaposes Byrne’s original poem with eruptions of gorgeously accompanied African chants. And “Listening Wind,” which Byrne himself has said concerns a terrorist attempting to drive Americans out of his home, sounds more harrowing than ever.

RIYL: Fela Kuti. Antibalas. Talking Heads.

Start here: With its knife-edge guitars, copious percussion, and overlapping chants, “The Great Curve” is probably the closest the original Remain In Light came to actual Afrobeat. Kidjo’s version allows that inspiration to breakthrough and run rampant, rendering the song a furious, full-throated jam. [Matt Gerardi]

Lily Allen, No Shame

[Warner Bros.]
Grade: C

Fourth LP No Shame opens with Lily Allen, she of the charming brattiness and disarming vulnerability, in a familiar place: fed up with the haters. It’s an understandable sentiment, but defensively re-litigating the myriad irritations of online discourse, as she does on “Come On Then,” doesn’t always make for compelling pop songs, nor does it offer much artistic progression (see “URL Badman” off of 2014’s Sheezus). No Shame does mix things up with more ballads than usual, with varied results: “Three,” written from her toddler’s point of view, is a bittersweet heartbreaker, while songs like “Apples” and “Everything To Feel Something” repeat themselves ad nauseam. They’re passable because Allen still has a way with crazy-catchy choruses; “Trigger Bang” lilts through a “Paper Planes”-lite sing-song about no longer fitting in at cool-kid parties, one of her better takes on uneasy domestication. But the reggae-lite beats and rap intros of her uptempo tunes feel more labored this time around (and “Pushing Up Daisies” straight up nicks a lyrical conceit from Natasha Bedingfield’s “I Wanna Have Your Babies”). This is a prettier, more heartfelt record than Sheezus, but only a slightly better one.

RIYL: Keeping detailed lists of your friend and enemies. Cool moms. Everything Lily Allen has ever recorded.

Start here: Allen revives her old sound and concerns with the up-tempo kiss-off “Waste,” and her feather-light singing of “who the fuck are you, though?” temporarily erases concerns that she’s running in place. [Jesse Hassenger]

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