Lucinda Williams is anything but subtle. The label-defying trobairitz sounds mad as hell on her new deceptively titled album, “Good Souls, Better Angels,” (Highway 20/Thirty Tigers). Once again, she sounds like she’s spinning out of control, yet manages to lyrically explain it like a calculated plan. The first three tracks clearly state her intentions. On “You Can’t Rule Me,” Williams is simmering and feisty, warbling, “Man, I’ve got a right to talk about what I see/Way too much is going wrong.” And like any roadhouse barroom jam, the rollicking track ends with a plunk and crash as she struts out victoriously. Williams’ intentions don’t come more obvious than the second track, “Bad News Blues.” “Bad news hangin’ in the air, bad news layin’ on the ground,” Williams sings, her voice growling as her band thunders beneath her. The song percolates. “Who’s gonna believe/ Liars and lunatics/ Fools and thieves/ Clowns and hypocrites?” She saves her dead aim and ire for “Man Without a Soul,” trying to shake off her frustration over a famous TV game show host and shady real estate mogul who took over the oval office. On that track, she gnarls, “You are a man without truth/A man of greed, a man of hate/A man of envy and doubt/You’re a man without a soul.” As the album scoops and slithers, Williams is a bad ass, irate without being irrational. Her motor is rumbling. Hop on and hold tight.

—

The Strokes, “The New Abnormal,” (RCA), is their first album of new material since 2013’s “Comedown Machine,” and it rocks and resonates like the New York based-band got the seven-year itch. Fronted by peerless lead singer Julian Casablancas, “New Abnormal” is gritty and memorable. “Bad Decisions,” owes so much to Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself,” with its neo-New Wave jangly pop, that they gave him a co-songwriting credit. And while they’re not particularly innovative, they don’t really have to be. On “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus,” Casablancas laments, “I want new friends, but they don’t want me,” as a catchy synth-driven riff and plunky keyboards pop like Coke and Mentos had a love child. The Strokes have always treaded softly, stepping towards the future of alt-rock by keeping one foot firmly planted in the past. Not a fan of any music-making machine and the capitalism that pumps it, Casablancas said in an interview a couple years back, “There are formulas to make the most amount of money out of music and those formulas don’t incorporate the variable for quality. Artistic value and truth value are casualties of the process.” He went on to say, “I understand that people are trying to make songs that will work at a CVS or in a taxi or in a nightclub or for a 3-year-old. If you can do that, it’s a magical thing, but that doesn’t mean the result is artistically good. And the bummer for me as a musician is that the music world is the one place where commercial success seems to imply artistic quality.”

—

Kenny Chesney doesn’t reinvent the wheel on his new album, “Here and Now,” (Blue Chair Records/Warner Music Nashville), but why should he? The Tennessee hitmaker and stadium-filling country mega-star has borrowed a lick or two from the beachcomber stylings of Jimmy Buffett and added a little Music City bijou to hits like “When the Sun Goes Down,” and “Beer in Mexico.” He even pays homage to Buffett and his parrot-headed wisdom on the anthem, “How Forever Feels.” With “Here and Now,” Chesney’s 19th album, the formula remains the same. He sticks to crowd-pleasing rocking and high living, on tracks like the call-and-response, “We Do,” and the lightly tropical, “Happy Does.” Chesney is an amiable songster, looking for a good time and making sure his audience gets one. His work hard, relax harder ethos has been working for 27 years. This album is strangely satisfying. It may not be the cure for the common lockdown, but there are worst ways to spend an hour. As Chesney sings on the title track, “Nowhere else in this world enough/You and me, ain’t it good to be alive?/Ain’t no better place, ain’t no better time than here and now.”

—

Tower of Power’s superb new 14-track record, “Step Up,” (Artistry Music), celebrates their 52 years as the premiere soul-funk group. The ten-piece outfit, with their searing horn section and dynamic, staccato percussion, are electrifying on this free-wheeling record, showcasing guitarist Jerry Cortez’s intricate licks and the fearless organ theatrics of keyboardist Roger Smith. “Our latest recording was a deep labor of love because we were coming up on 50 years together as a group,” explains TOP founder, tenor saxophonist, and vocalist Emilio Castillo. “One of my old managers told me it was not the time to just throw together 12 songs quickly.” The result is 28 tracks of all new original songs — which were split between two albums — “Soul Side of Town” and now “Step Up.” With clever, quirky lyrics, funky arrangements and unparalleled music prowess, TOP kick it up a notch and prove why they’ve been finding a groove for five decades. “We’re really clicking right now. I’ve had all these great lineups before, but this one feels amazing. We have more energy now — new material will do that for you,” said Castillo.

Newsletter