‘Bully’ by Ye
★★
‘This Music May Contain Hope’ by Raye
★★★
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“Our story begins at 2:27 a.m. on a rainy night in Paris. Cue the thunder!” That’s the British belter Raye, narrating the first few seconds of her latest album, “an epic autobiography of romantic despair,” said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Over arrangements packed with “show-tune razzle-dazzle, big-band swing frills, retro ’60s R&B, and the occasional club beat,” the 28-year-old Grammy nominee laments her serial heartbreaks with “mighty pipes” that are “as unstoppable as her flair for mascara-melting melodrama.” Whether she’s soothing herself with Edith Piaf records and chocolate cake or falling yet again for a disappointing Romeo, Raye conjures a limitless supply of “glamorously tragic scenarios.” Raye has been dogged by “endless Amy Winehouse comparisons,” said Will Hodgkinson in The Times (U.K.). But she’s “far more florid and theatrical, matching Shirley Bassey for searing drama and operatic bombast.” While her lyrics here can be “excessively on the nose,” Raye also shows ample ambition and welcome flashes of wit, and “the end result is unquestionably dynamic—the musical equivalent of seeing one’s life as a movie.”
‘Honora’ by Flea
★★★
The first bona fide solo album of Flea’s career “sounds nothing like the music that made him famous,” said Sadie Sartini Garner in Pitchfork. Anyone expecting the “screwball energy” of the bassist’s wildest Red Hot Chili Peppers contributions “may be disappointed.” Yet the 63-year-old’s idiosyncratic melodic sense informs the entire project, which features Flea on both bass and trumpet, an instrument he studied as a child. For an album whose six original compositions sound indebted to Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, “jazz is as apt a descriptor as any.” The record also includes a wan instrumental interpretation of Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” and a “strikingly beautiful” cover of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain.” Even in the company of such L.A. jazz luminaries as guitarist Jeff Parker, Flea proves “capable of holding his own,” said Janne Oinonen in The Line of Best Fit. “Morning Cry,” the fifth track, “tips its hat to bebop” while “the 10-minute ‘Frailed’ pitches Flea’s atmospheric trumpet against a minimalist electronic pulse with hypnotic results.” At one point, Flea shouts, “This shit is real”—and “that could apply to the whole of this surprising debut.”