Albums of the week: Avril Lavigne, Chaka Khan and Methyl Ethel

Chaka Khan - Hello Happiness

****

Her first studio album since 2007’s Funk This, Chaka Khan’s long-awaited latest is a joyous, career-resurgent offering from the outset. The title-track opener channels Off the Wall-era Quincy Jones-like production thanks to its infectious, thumping bass and multi-faceted sonic layering. Working with Major Lazer founder Switch and singer-songwriter Sarah Ruba Taylor feels like a masterstroke.

It’s an impressive opening from the 10-time Grammy-winning Queen of Funk, who has amassed more than 40 years of experience in the industry. Across seven, tightly controlled songs, Khan explores disco, funk, fusion and dub with breathless energy and enthusiasm throughout.

Lead album single Like Sugar received much acclaim on its release last summer and earned repeated airplay from Annie Mac, Nick Grimshaw, Pete Tong and Gilles Peterson. The song quickly became a club anthem of the summer 2018 circuit thanks to its Seventies retro-soul sound, updated for the present day with an added funkier edge. There are plenty of other highlights; Like a Lady is three minutes of pure disco joy, and the edgy dub of Isn’t That Enough shows that Khan’s voice has lost little of its extraordinary power. The only disappointment is that the album is so short, coming in at just over 27 minutes. It’s such a enjoyable comeback that you really don’t want it to end.

(Diary/Island Records)

Avril Lavigne - Head Above Water

**

Still only 34, Avril Lavigne has already been through two rock divorces and had a brush with death. Following her recovery from Lyme disease, the Canadian multi-million-seller’s vocal powers are undiminished. But the same can’t be said for the songwriting: her often overwrought, sentimental sixth album makes pop-punk anthem Sk8er Boi seem profound in comparison.

Dumb Blonde, featuring Nicki Minaj, does at least try to capture that teenage energy. However, Head Above Water is largely a collection of plodding balladry featuring lyrics presumably taken from her mindfulness journal. Souvenir is one of a few moments that shows Lavigne’s lighter touch. But the album’s enervating emotional drama makes this comeback heavy going.

(BMG)

Ry X - Unfurl

***

Ry Cuming, an Australian based in LA, enjoyed big Spotify numbers for early single Berlin. It’s easy to hear why — with his tasteful mix of piano, acoustic guitar and mild electronica, and a falsetto so soft his voice becomes part of the soundscape rather than a deliverer of audible lyrics, he’s perfect for playlists that conjure late-night atmospheres without dominating the foreground. This second album maintains that style, setting a beautiful mood that is sometimes too easy to ignore. Untold stands out thanks to its restless, skittering beats, as does Foreign Tides — it reveals that when his voice gains greater prominence he could be confused for Sting. There’s definitely a perfect time and place for these songs — the classiest of musical wallpapers.

(Infectious)

Methyl Ethel - Triage

****

Methyl Ethel are an arty psychedelic band from Perth, Australia (a bit like Tame Impala). And they’re not really a band, but one man, Jake Webb, a bedroom auteur with a self-prescribed “masochistic social complex” (also a bit like Tame Impala). I will stop pushing the comparison in a sec — no doubt Webb is sick of them — but not before noting that his third album is a bit like Tame Impala’s Visions, ie, the one where everything comes into focus. Last year’s addictive single Scream Whole was a foretaste of an album of brittle-bright synths, agile basslines and anxious funk.

Webb knows how to stage an intervention on the dancefloor — there’s something thrillingly camp about Ruiner — but he also knows when to hold the silence and when to let things build. The influences are at times a little easy to spot (that’s the Anohni song! That’s the Beach House song!) but Webb is best when he’s at his most distinctive: the centrepiece Post-Blue is a creepy, falsetto-drenched melodrama that suggests even better to come.

(4AD)

Theon Cross - Fyah

****

A hair-crackling rumble on tuba, and Theon Cross charges into Activate, the carnivalesque opener on a debut solo album that, even with the current spate of stellar debuts from London’s young jazz mavericks, stands out for its genre-crossing audacity. Cross is best known as a member of Shabaka Hutchings’ Sons of Kemet. Here, flanked by saxophonist Nubya Garcia and drummer Moses Boyd, he gets to show off his range, channel his roots.

Dancehall rhythms and the beats of grime are given electronic sentiment by percussive shuffles and dexterous blowing; solos come like star bursts, reigniting the groove. Cross’s trombonist brother Nathaniel guests on CIYA, a dreamscape that brings pulses down before the incendiary final track, LDN’s Burning. Cross plays Corsica Studios, SE17, February 15.

(Gearbox Records)

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