Albums of the week: Robert Plant with Suzi Dian, Cardi B, Cate Le Bon, Joy Crookes, Ala.Ni

Saving Grace

Robert Plant with Suzi Dian

(Nonesuch)

Those keen to revisit Robert Plant’s past will have relished the Becoming Led Zeppelin documentary this year, and there has been a rich bounty of treasures for those following his excavation of music’s roots over the years, including his Grammy-garlanded albums with bluegrass doyenne Alison Krauss.

But Plant usually works on projects with a lower-key band as well – see the Sensational Space Shifters and Band of Joy. Since 2019, he has been singing with Saving Grace, a versatile Black Country ensemble. During lockdown they workshopped songs, touring without fanfare when it was possible. This engrossing album, taking the band’s name, finds the singer and accordionist Suzi Dian taking the Krauss role opposite Plant while the rest of the group add near-Eastern flourishes on songs both ancient and modern.

At the mistier end is a mesmerising take on As I Roved Out, a British isles traditional alchemised by fluttering polyrhythms and Arabic scales, or the African-American spiritual Gospel Plough, delivered as a stark, resilient duet. More modern selections reflect Plant’s open ears: he has long been a fan of the indie rock band Low. Here, Everybody’s Song by the Minnesota trio surges magnificently – a glorious contrast to the understated cadences elsewhere. By Kitty Empire

Am I the Drama?

Cardi B

(Atlantic)

Over the last 10 years, Cardi B has asserted herself as a hilarious, bawdy and no-holds-barred entertainer. Beyond her rap career, the New York artist is prolific on social media and attracts attention through her feuds with other artists and her turbulent romantic life. But her fittingly titled second album, Am I the Drama?, which arrives seven years after her debut, reminds listeners that Cardi B can rap.

It’s a seething collection: she serves up caustic character assassinations with cutting delivery. Take the astonishingly icy Pretty & Petty skewering the rapper BIA (“Name five BIA songs, gun pointing to your head”) or the tracks on which she lists her ex-husband’s infidelities (“Must be a magician, putting pictures in your phone again”).

There are softer, more vulnerable moments, featuring the actress Selena Gomez and singer Kehlani, and a standout banger, Bodega Baddie. But largely the album goes for enemies with all guns blazing. At 70 minutes, and with sometimes grating braggadocio and a boisterous, overwrought array of beats, it does start to wear thin. Yet there’s no doubting Cardi B’s credentials as a powerful MC. This record comes out fighting. By Tara Joshi

Michelangelo Dying

Cate Le Bon

(Mexican Summer)

Carmarthenshire singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon didn’t intend her seventh album to be a meditation on love and all its various aspects, but after the end of a relationship left her heartbroken, that’s what she has made. As befits someone who has produced the likes of Wilco, John Grant and Horsegirl, Michelangelo Dying is exquisitely rendered, its 10 songs full of clever touches and flourishes. Throughout, there are hints at Bowie, Nico and the more experimental end of late-1970s and early 80s pop, but the biggest touchstone is the elusive, dreamlike nature of Julia Holter’s excellent 2015 album Have You in My Wilderness, most notably on Mothers of Riches.

Le Bon’s voice is buried deep in the mix, which lends her lyrics a certain opacity, but key phrases break through amid the impressionistic Elizabeth Fraser-isms: “I’m checking out / It’s me still crying”; “I’m not lying in a bed you made”; and – most arrestingly – “Now I’m older than Lady Diana / Holding out my arms / Starting a fight.” And yet, somehow, for all the ideas here, Michelangelo Dying is an unsatisfying listen, the dense arrangements and the ponderous tempo ultimately sounding stifling and claustrophobic. By Phil Mongredien

Juniper

Joy Crookes

(Insanity)

Joy Crookes’s 2021 debut album Skin established her as the latest in London’s long lineage of renegade soul singers fusing a contemporary outlook with lush, old-school production. It was a marked success for the south London-born, Bengali-Irish musician; that album’s breakout single, Feet Don’t Fail Me Now, is a staple on the playlist of basically every cafe in east London.

Crookes’s second album, Juniper, arrives with less fanfare, but it is an altogether sharper, more coherent offering – an album that ably uses the warmth of its production to hide the prickly combativeness of her lyrics.

On House With A Pool, she captures the avenging-angel quality of some of Amy Winehouse’s music, appealing to a woman in a toxic relationship to have some self-worth. On the pacy I Know You’d Kill, meanwhile, she threatens to be “a real tender tyrant” – and the sinister pulse of the song makes you inclined to believe her.

In Crookes’s universe, a good attack is the best form of defence – hence the many songs here where she seems to cut off a relationship before her partner can hurt her. It makes for a neat twist on empowerment pop. By Shaad D’Souza

Sunshine Music

Ala.Ni

(No Format)

Raised in west London by Grenadian parents, the session singer Ala.Ni found that a relocation to Paris allowed her creative powers to flow. Her 2016 debut, You & I, allied her sultry vocals to torch songs with titles such as Cherry Blossom that recalled a bygone era of romance. Her 2020 follow-up, Acca, layered a cappella vocals and beatboxing while she persuaded Iggy Pop to sing in French. This third album is just as singular, much of it the result of an extended stay in the Caribbean, especially Jamaica.

Co-produced with the fusion cellist Clément Petit, it expands her musical palette considerably, bringing in a breeze of influences – reggae, bossa, zouk – while her vocals croon and flutter with a jazz sensibility. Much of the record lives up to its title; Summer Meadows bursts with carnival horns, Blue Mountain recalls the exhilaration of Jamaican peaks and Hey Moon the swelter of a tropical night. Its love calls – Rain on My Heart, Ton Amour, This Is Why – hark back to Ala.Ni’s debut album, though hinting at darker experiences. Tief is something else, its easy lilt concealing a streak of anger at colonial plunder. A welcome shot of warmth for autumn days. By Neil Spencer

Nostalgia is a common theme in rock music right now, but while some attempt to recreate a particular sound or moment, Crushed avoid cliches. Drawing on the influence of bands such as Portishead or My Bloody Valentine, the LA duo of Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan lean into trip-hop, Britpop and electronica, crafting music that sounds like the fuzz of a slightly out-of-tune FM radio.

Still, there’s an irrefutable freshness to tracks such as Oneshot, a single that Morell says was inspired by a toxic relationship that felt like being stuck on a difficult battle in a video game. Her vocals cut through the vintage guitar strums and bubbling synthesisers, delivering a bittersweet chorus: “You’re poison and I’m one shot baby, sink the bullet in / So toxic and I love the taste of my blood, I’m craving it.”

“You can’t stop because the torture is somehow still fun,” Morell explains in the liner notes to the single, which references the 1998 game Metal Gear Solid. “Oneshot is about lying on the brink of death, and begging to be put out of your misery.” Co-produced with Jorge Elbrecht, who previously worked with Japanese Breakfast and Weyes Blood, the song sets the tone for Crushed’s debut album No Scope – promising maximalist dream pop with sincerity at its core. By Georgia Evans

No Scope is out on Ghostly International

Photographs by Tom Oldham/H Hawkline/Ben Rayner/Ewen Spencer