Albums of the week: Lucinda Williams, Samm Henshaw, Searows, Joel Ross

World’s Gone Wrong

Lucinda Williams

(Highway 20/Thirty Tigers)

Lucinda Williams’s 2023 album was released shortly after the country and blues singer-songwriter suffered a stroke. Her Lazarus-like recovery continues apace, with these 10 rueful songs about the mess the US is in, including one Bob Marley cover (So Much Trouble in the World). This album will probably not endear the musician to some sections of the country community.

With its despairing tales of unrewarding work, the title track is an angry rallying cry that unashamedly recalls Bruce Springsteen’s blue-collar storytelling. The Punchline foregrounds “false gods and deceivers, playing on our deepest fears”. Black Tears, an electric strut, goes further: “the dream is deferred and the churches are burning,” drawls Williams, whose voice has only grown more gravelly.

Though the news is bad, the musicians make it sound good: twin guitars and organ give this album a timeless feel. Only one rock song, Sing Unburied Sing, feels leaden.

The Marley cover delivers reggae as deliciously swampy Americana. The hymnal closing track, We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around, was originally included on Williams’s 2018 collaborative album with the jazz musician Charles Lloyd. The new version, featuring Norah Jones, has lost none of its emotional punch. Kitty Empire

It Could Be Worse

Samm Henshaw

(AWAL )

The south London singer-songwriter Samm Henshaw has been making soul music for more than 10 years. Following his debut song, Only Wanna Be With You – a pared-back display of his gospelesque tone – there has been an album, Untidy Soul, and collaborations with everyone from Pharrell Williams to the late Quincy Jones. Henshaw’s second album, It Could Be Worse, is a heartbreak comeback LP, full of hope and home truths.

Don’t Give It Up opens proceedings; its bright, optimistic rhythm underscores Henshaw’s lyrics about keeping faith in hard times. The atmosphere in lead single Float is sunny, packed with delicate harmonies and dreamy melodies that glide effortlessly along with his vocals. “Search for love in the wrong places / How can I be so blind?” The musician knows when to switch up the vibe, and the psychedelic soul and funk-inspired Don’t Break My Heart has a satisfyingly dark and smoky bassline.

Henshaw’s singing style is notably reminiscent of that of early John Legend – a mixed blessing, perhaps. But there’s a 70s beauty and authenticity to this project: recorded with live musicians, the album has an old soul feel. Kadish Morris

Death in the Business of Whaling

Searows

(Last Recordings on Earth)

Searows’s 2022 debut Guard Dog sparkled with homegrown, lyrical indie folk. The US singer-songwriter Alec Duckart’s latest album is a treasure too. As the title taken from Moby-Dick implies, Death in the Business of Whaling is immersed in the symbolism of the natural world and our interactions with it.

Nature’s cold implacability scowls over all, and life and death are entwined through these nine lovely songs. They share a seamless, wintry flow: like the Pacific Northwest weather of Duckart’s hometown, his music is always changing yet always the same, following patterns yet never completely predictable.

The record is an enchanting mix of early Bon Iver and Ethel Cain’s delirious southern gothic. While you can’t always hear what he’s singing, Duckart’s foggy yearning over guitars is intoxicating, and you don’t need a lyric sheet to understand the tender desperation of songs such as the alt-power ballad Dearly Missed. The record is a study in how to build suspense: we feel ourselves trapped, waiting for catharsis that rarely comes; waiting for a fever, or wave, to break. Damien Morris

Gospel Music

Joel Ross

(Blue Note)

Joel Ross is in high demand. The 30-year-old vibraphonist, a longtime member of the Chicago drummer Makaya McCraven’s group and a frequent collaborator of contemporary American jazz stars, has become a staple of the genre’s East Coast scene.

Ross has released four albums as a leader since his 2019 debut, KingMaker, developing a fast-paced, restless and instinctive sound. His latest record, Gospel Music, is similarly freewheeling in spirit. Taking inspiration from Bible stories, Ross introduces expansive gospel melodies that lead to sharp improvisations between his sextet.

Across 17 tracks Ross displays the breadth of his arranging skill, journeying from the lilting, meditative melodics of Wisdom Is Eternal (for Barry Harris) to the sprightly swing of Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). While his original toe-tappers are lively and propulsive, it’s his interpretations of spiritual standards that soar, finding yearning emotion in the spacious harmonies of Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ and introspection in Calvary’s swampy blues. Regardless of your religious inclination, you will struggle not to be moved by this record. Ammar Kalia

Dead Dads Club, the new venture from former Palma Violets co-frontman Chilli Jesson, might have given themselves a hard task when hawking merch, but the attention-grabbing name comes with a legitimate backstory.

After the death of his father when he was just a teenager, Jesson threw himself into making music. Palma Violets, hailed as the new Libertines in the early 2010s, burned brightly but briefly and disbanded after their second album in 2015. Ten years later, following a series of stop-start solo projects and a mojo-boosting appointment as a touring member of Fontaines DC, Jesson wrote Dead Dads Club’s self-titled debut as a narrative concept album of sorts: it became a way to process the loss he’d buried for more than a decade.

If it sounds like a heavy listen, rest assured the record is musically vibrant, varied and cheeky enough to keep things upbeat. Produced by Fontaines guitarist Carlos O’Connell, the music bears the mark of Jesson’s time spent playing with the Irish alt-rock band: the swaggering fizz of Don’t Blame the Son for the Sins of the Father, the woozy psych of Junkyard Radiator, the rousing punk-folk of Running Out of Gas. Having a central theme seems to have given Jesson the confidence to go expand his sound. “In the past, I didn’t have the tools to tell the story,” he told DIY Magazine. “Now I feel I have the equipment to write it.” Lisa Wright

Dead Dads Club’s debut album was released on 23 January

Photographs by Mark Seliger/Jati Lindsay/Marlowe Osteara/BARDHA_K/Adrian Lee