Albums of the week: SML, Beth Orton, Alewya, Various Artists

Spontaneous Music Live

SML

(International Anthem)

Over the course of two compelling albums, LA quintet SML have set themselves up as an uncategorisable, though jazz-informed, unit. Both saxophonist Josh Johnson and bassist Anna Butterss are bandmates of fellow Los Angelean transplant, guitarist Jeff Parker; anyone familiar with the Tortoise member’s recent output alongside his ETA IVtet quartet will sense some kinship here, even as some SML operatives have day jobs with more conventional musicians such as Perfume Genius (guitarist Gregory Uhlmann) or Phoebe Bridgers (Butterss).

Up until now, SML have taken their mantric live improvisations and radically tweaked them with overdubs and more electronics. This time around, as the title suggests, they present their raw materials without the sculpting of post-production: two dynamic pieces, each the length of a side of 12in vinyl, recorded in December 2025 and mixed to tape. It’s a live album, but of spontaneously generated original material.

Percussion, groove and space abounds. Johnson is high in the mix on The Drums, and electronics wizard Jeremiah Chiu is the dynamic core of the operation on Roundabouts. Throughout, though, there is a fivefold sense of trusting curiosity, with the musicians coiling around one another, or standing back, waiting to see where the piece wants to go next. Kitty Empire

The Ground Above

Beth Orton

(Partisan)

Thirty years after her breakout album Trailer Park, Beth Orton remains a singular voice in British music, and her latest LP finds the folktronica artist at her most vulnerable. After 2022’s waterlogged Weather Alive, on The Ground Above Orton self-produces again, but with her feet back on dry land. Here, she’s urgent and assured, her songwriting carrying a new steadiness.

The first half crackles with the energy of a live take. A skeletal piano unexpectedly builds the title track into a howling crescendo, while Cigarette Curls dissolves into a loose, hip-hop groove, peppered with Nick Hakim’s wordless vocals. In its second half, the record turns towards the great American songbook with phrasing steeped in spiritual jazz, as Shahzad Ismaily and Sam Beste bring warmth to the heartbreak ballads Love You Right and I’ll Miss You.

Closing track Otherside makes the strongest case for the album’s central theme of grief and love refusing to cancel each other out. After singing of a blackbird’s dawn melody, Orton pleads for proof of survival (“Tell me you made it through the night / Tell me you made it out alive”), yet the song ultimately lands on a note of hard-won optimism: even after profound loss, Orton still has the strength to rebuild and carry on. Georgia Evans

Zero

Alewya

(LDN Records)

Alewya Demmisse has only released a handful of tracks in six years, but there is a raging beauty to her debut album. Born in Saudi Arabia, the singer-producer-painter grew up in west London’s melting pots. Appropriately, she takes audible pleasure in mixing everything from dancehall and reggaeton to Afropop and Detroit house, then adding heat. Superficially, you’ll hear parallels with alt-R&B peers Naïka and Anaiis, while strident tracks such as Maktoub are reminiscent of Diplo’s early rhythms for MIA. Yet even Alewya’s perkiest songs have emotional depths and aches that others rarely reach.

She also has irresistible flow, a malleable approach to the mic that slips between raspy spitting and rhythmic singing and unravels languorously, syllable by syllable. “Your birdcage empty, we the freest,” she exults on City of Symbols, an excellent introduction to the Alewya aesthetic of euphonic sounds and sticky choruses. This album takes its name from infinity’s twin number and the concept that even nothing has a value. But in its infinite variety, it is so far from zero. Damien Morris

Jutna

Various Artists

(Music in Exile)

The Australian nonprofit organisation Music in Exile has a formidable record of supporting fascinating projects by artists with a history of migration. Recent works include the tender, folk-influenced album Amú by the Brazilian singer-songwriter Alcides Neto and the club-ready R&B EP Canvas from Eritrean singer Shewita. Its latest project, Jutna, brings together an ensemble of six players from London, Senegal and Burkina Faso to create an album of first-time collaborations.

Recorded over two weeks at a studio on the Greek island of Hydra, the resulting seven tracks pair the ebullient sound of west African folk with a gritty layer of psychedelia. Highlights include the squealing synths and thunderous percussion of Burkina, as well as the sensual spoken word funk of Stand Up, which features the emphatic vocals of Sény “Magou” Samb. Instrumentalists including balafon virtuoso Seydou Diabaté and kora player Mamadou Dembélé bring a sense of tradition, while the rhythm section of Gordon Li and Harry Ling ensure added experimentalism, layering a Doors-style organ over the Afrobeat of Foli Yé and a droning bass under Wélé’s melismatic kora, making Jutna an unexpected, beguiling blend of sounds. Ammar Kalia

One to watch: Dead Pioneers

Gregg Deal came late to music. Now 51 and a father of five, he spent years advancing the cause of Indigenous rights through performance art until, in 2020, a grant allowed him to work with musicians on a new project. Quickly realising that his eloquent spoken-word eviscerations of white supremacy and a tight punk band were a winning combination, Dead Pioneers came into being, with the lineup completed by Lee Tesche (bass), Joshua Rivera (guitar), Abe Brennan (guitar) and Shayne Zweygardt (drums). The timing was fortuitous. “I don’t know if Dead Pioneers would have worked 10 years ago,” Deal told the New World in April. “But Black Lives Matter made a huge contribution to opening doors so marginalised voices can be heard.”

Combining the warm, conversational delivery of the Minutemen’s D Boon with the political bite of former Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, Deal – a member of Nevada’s Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe – tells stories of colonialism and the damage done, mixing humour with fury. The Caucasity, one of the standouts from last year’s excellent Po$t American album, recounts the takedown of a white heckler who saw fit to “perceive inconvenient truths to be complaining”.

The follow-up, Wagon Burner, is even more laser-focused: the messages behind No Kings and Nazi Teeth are unambiguous. As Deal says on Seeing Red: “These aren’t just words: they’re proclamations of hope, an inflection of righteousness.” Phil Mongredien

Wagon Burner is out now on Hassle Records. Dead Pioneers play in Liverpool, Nottingham and Brighton, 12-14 July

Photographs by Ariel Fisher, Kasia Wozniak, Lee Trigg, Music in Exile, Derek Bremner