Blackberry Smoke- Be Right Here (Thirty Tigers)
Get ready to set your speakers on fire with this eighth studio installment from these Southern Rock flag-bearers, who reunite with revered producer Dave Cobb to deliver another satisfying batch of equally stirring and entertaining performances. Be Right Here jubilantly jettisons between rowdy roadhouse blues and rock and folksy country whimsy and introspection, with its core remaining ever in-tune with the group’s signature jam-band energy. Bandleader Charlie Starr’s vocals are as rapturously commanding and infectious as they’ve ever been, while his bandmates continue to raise the bar for musical intensity and dexterity, offering some of their brashest and most impressive instrumental solos to date. High-octane, blue-collar showstoppers like “Dig A Hole”, “Hammer and a Nail”, “Little Bit Crazy”, and “Don’t Mind If I Do” temper increasingly socio-economic concerns with a palpable energy that continues to earn them a place on concert-goer bucket-lists. Meanwhile, poignant moments like “Azalea” and “Other Side of the Light” offer a POV further informed by Starr’s experiences with maturing children and middle-age. Through it all, Cobb does what he does best: providing his acts with a clean and open space that allows them to make the most out of any moment, be it loud and anthemic or soft and reflective. The result is a delicious, fully-realized album that further positions Blackberry Smoke as their own, singular and modern artistic brand, and far more than merely the Skynyrd/Allman/Tucker disciples they’ve often been pigeonholed as.
Brittany Howard- What Now (Island)
Arriving nearly five years since her critically acclaimed solo bow, What Now finds powerhouse Brittany Howard continuing to use her other-worldly pipes to venture far beyond the rock & soul revivalism of her days as the front-woman of roots sensation, Alabama Shakes. This record is an ethereal sonic wonder, requiring a deep and focused presence to fully appreciate all of its alluring magic and power. Howard and returning co-producer Shawn Everett take her bastion of classic influences from soul, funk, rock, and jazz and enflame them in a searingly trippy vat of alternative and avant-garde soundscapes. This once again results in a gloriously haunted and unique aura when paired with Howard’s enormous range as a vocalist, with which she channels everything from vintage Etta and Janis to 30-era Adele in one fell swoop. She tackles every performance with a startlingly measured combination of confident bravado and restrained nuance. The record’s moments of elegant entrancement are as powerfully rewarding as those where she sends your adrenaline through the roof. Eruptive battle cries like the title track, “Prove It To You”, and “Power To Undo” particularly provide a thrilling trifecta of rock, funk, and dance wonder. This is another gorgeously pivotal phase of artistic evolution from one of today’s most daring musical curators.
Hurray For the Riff Raff- The Past Is Still Alive (Nonesuch)
The ninth LP from this criminally overlooked Americana act emerged in the aftermath of the passing of bandleader Alynda Segarra’s father, which unsurprisingly leads The Past Is Still Alive down a path of deep introspection and grief. This doesn’t really lend itself as a significant outlier in the Riff Raff canon, which has already been defined by heady material and world-weary observation. Nevertheless, the thread of this album feels as intimate as anything that’s preceded it. It’s as if you can picture Segarra standing out in the desert, overlooking a vast landscape that’s filled with lost memories and loved ones that must now be mourned and reconciled, not to mention a cruel society that has since dashed one’s idyllic vision of the world we live in. The music is colored with the same rich, evocative texture that Segarra’s voice and the group’s core sound has always been defined by, but with an added dusting of hushed and rustic sparsity. Meanwhile, Segarra’s poetic songwriting reaches new, piercing heights, with the addiction-battered lead single “Alibi” offering a vividly devastating line that will likely go unmatched for all of 2024: “I see your track marks poking through your hoodie sleeve/Tic-tac-toe game to the destiny I grieve.” Well, at least until they match themselves on the penultimate track, “Ogalla”: “I used to think I was born into the wrong generation/But now I know I made it right on time…to watch the world burn with a tear in my eye.”
I Don’t Know How But They Found Me- Gloom Division (Concord)
Much like its bold 2021 predecessor, Razmatazzz, the second volume of music from IDKHBTFM is a thrilling jolt to one’s musical bloodstream. This is despite Ryan Seaman’s 2023 departure relegating the band to solo project status for Dallon Weekes, which has proven to be a trend for groups the latter has participated in (see The Brobeks, Panic! At the Disco). Nevertheless, this line-up change has done nothing to rob the act’s music of its tantalizing nature. Frankly, Gloom Division feels like the undeniable path forward for all of alternative rock. Whether the material is coming from a defiant or vulnerable headspace, Weekes doubles down with limitless confidence and emotion. The beats and instrumentals are instantly addictive. The song hooks insatiable. The production colorful and ballsy. And the dynamic elasticity of Weekes’ vocal range possesses the same charismatic quality as the bountiful crop of legendary frontmen that helped define the golden age of rock. Gloom Division is a dazzling modern example of everything that great rock music should be. Grandiose. Cocky. Emotional. Dramatic. Fun. And utterly unapologetic at every turn.
Usher- Coming Home (Gamma)
The ninth studio outing from the oft-proclaimed King of R&B comes with an interesting and dichotomous career crossroads. While Coming Home marks Usher’s first independently released record, a natural next step for an aging veteran act, it also coincided with a coveted Super Bowl halftime slot, which in recent years has been reserved for current pop-culture icons rather than classic legacy acts. In many ways, Usher is a blend of both, and the music on Coming Home seems to support this as well. He proudly accepts his status as a revered elder-statesman in the genre by welcoming a slew of young talent as guests on the record (including H.E.R., Burna Boy, Summer Walker, and 21 Savage), and it should be noted that he’s clearly leading them here, not the other way around. His suave abilities with a seductive booty-call anthem remain mostly untarnished as well, though the record is not without its share of dated lyrical gimmicks that would have been better left in the Y2K era. And while today’s standards could arguably classify this as an EP, its twenty song run-time gives it a tendency for filler. Nevertheless, Usher’s voice remains as velvet smooth as it was a quarter-century ago, and the same could be said for his defining charisma. That one-two punch offered by strong moments like the soulful “Risk It All” and the bopping “Keep On Dancin'” manage to keep Coming Home, and Usher’s musical relevance as a whole, well above water.
The 706 
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