Four star efforts this week from Miguel Mendez and Ashley Monroe.
Ty Myers
Heavy On the Soul: The Fame Sessions
Equally inevitable and unfortunate that he’s already being pushed down a Joss Stone path, with no one having learned any real lessons there. His innate talent is obvious, but so is every seam in the genre cosplay dress-up bin.
Miguel Mendez
The Summer Everything Sucked
I’m tapping the, “Irony is corrosive,” sign, but I’m also not going to be such a hard sell on something that, in its best moments, imagines a foul-mouthed Stephin Merritt cross-pollinating chamber pop with cosmic country. First of his albums I know; correcting now.
Ashley Monroe
Dear Nashville [EP]
Opens with a reflection on not being the Next Big Thing you were supposed to be, then expands into reflections on being unsure of how you ever even know the adult you’re supposed to be. God, she’s just so great, and particularly good singing on this set, too.
Melissa Etheridge
Rise
She’s always been, at most charitably, an uneven songwriter, and that shows up here in how unsure Shooter Jennings sounds from track to track in how to engage, production-wise. She and Stapleton make for great duet partners on the clear standout track, at least.
John Hollier & The Rêverie
Rainmaker
The songwriting’s solid enough, but the aesthetic here is so self-consciously post-genre that it sounds like everything and sounds like nothing at all simultaneously, as though a list of influences would read, “Music, I guess?” That’s tiring after a few tracks.
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