Townes Van Zandt
A Far Cry From Dead (Arista Austin)
If you've forgotten what a genius songwriter Townes Van Zandt was, here's a reminder: 13 tracks from a DAT he left in his wife's care in 1989, bearing two new tunes - "Squash" and the jarring "Sanitarium Blues" - plus 11 beauties such as "Snake Mountain Blues" and "Waitin' 'Round to Die." Dead two years and he's still kicking everybody's ass.
Jamiroquai
Synkronized (Work)
I know, I know. Jay Kay is no Stevie Wonder, and Jamiroquai's music is not '70s funk - no matter how hard they try. But Stevie is playing the Super Bowl, and the '70s are a distant memory, so where's a funk lover to turn but to Jamiroquai? Not surprisingly, given the commercial success - and radio overplay - of Travelling Without Moving, Jamiroquai's sound doesn't take any new leaps on Synkronized. But like their previous albums, this one contains a few disco-flavored dance tracks that'll move you to forgive. And only when you're grooving Jamiroquai-style do lyrics like "I'm hot for you / You're hot for me / So get on" seem strangely poignant. In the end, there's enough here to remind you that Jamiroquai has funk to spare.
Lew Soloff
With a Song in My Heart (Milestone)
For nearly three decades, Lew Soloff has been the first-call studio trumpeter in New York. His sizzling metallic tones are on so many diverse recordings that even his accountant has lost count. True, as a member of the late-'60s horn band Blood, Sweat & Tears, he's played to his share of packed arenas, but in his mind's eye Soloff has always been the unmitigated leader of his own intimate jazz quartet. On this, his first domestic release as a bandleader, he directs with profound results. Always with mute in (à la Miles Davis), Soloff does a take on middle-register brooding by dancing over and around a gorgeous set of mostly jazz standards and brilliant originals. After years of brassy bravado, Soloff zones in on "Less is more."
Loudon Wainwright III
Social Studies (Hannibal/Rykodisc)
Most aging folkies lose their satiric edge, but Loudon Wainwright III still keeps his pencil stiletto-sharp. Here, he reprises 15 topical songs from the '90s, skewering everything from the Y2K bug to antismoking campaigns. Whether lampooning Hillary Clinton's patience ("out-Tammy-ing Tammy Wynette / When will that woman ever get upset?") or aging rock-and-rollers ("Gerry has a pacemaker"), Wainwright proves a puckish town crier.
Ali Farka Toure
Niafunké (Hannibal)
To Western blues fans, the great African singer/guitarist Ali Farka Toure inhabits a strange parallel universe. It's true, facile comparisons like "the John Lee Hooker of Mali" obscure his West African core - the microtones he teases from his guitar, the subtleties in his voice. But you don't need to be an ethnomusicologist for Niafunké to convince you that the Niger and the Mississippi flow from the same mysterious source.
Luscious Jackson
Electric Honey (Grand Royal/Capitol)
Former street icons turned Gap girls, Luscious Jackson bring out the heavy hooks on their fourth album. Electric Honey veers from the sonic cohesion that made them critical darlings to pure pop synchronicity (check the girl-powery "Nervous Breakthrough"), with Kate Schellenbach's kinetic drumwork playing expertly amid the six-stringed funk of Gabby Glaser and Jill Cunniff. Electric Honey is the sound of trendsetters growing up - exploring the road more traveled and blazing a trail nevertheless.
Corey Harris
Greens From the Garden (Alligator)
On Greens From the Garden, Harris pulls together all sorts of soulful genres that are part of his musical/cultural heritage. The payoff is an amazingly cool, eccentric record. We should have seen this coming; Harris is too smart and has taken too many hits off the New Orleans spliff to fall into any kind of musical rut. He's all over the place with these tracks, motoring between country, blues, ragtime, mambo, rock, and some vague rap influences. Meanwhile, the whole project reeks of Caribbean cookin'.
Kool Keith
Black Elvis/Lost in Space (Ruffhouse)
"I need a release date!" intones this MC - well known both for his eccentric wordsmithery and for his brutally honest criticism of the music industry - on the album's first track. That the bulk of this effort was completed more than a year ago, only to be delayed in the major-label machine, does not lessen the potency of the product, which finds Keith reasserting his role as the pimp of intergalactic funk.
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