Kennedy Administration
Humanity
(Leopard Records)
★★★★★

THE Kennedy Administration — a nod to the JFK Great Society — evolved from an accidental encounter of the Michigan-born singer Ms Kennedy with Czech-born musician Ondre J Pivec when launching a residency at the Groove in New York’s Greenwich Village.

The pairing proved a masterstroke for both. Kennedy’s personal and vocal charisma is in perfect symbiosis with Pivec’s innovative arrangements and results in an irresistible tapestry of sound that laces the bleak topics of isolation and mental health that they address with an infectious positivity.

“I don’t have the answers /Neither do you /There’s a book on everything /So what do you do,” belts out Ms Kennedy in her warm, versatile mezzo-soprano in Better Ways.

A melange of urban music idioms of rich fluidity that will drag you out of any and all nadirs with the I’m So Proud Of Me chorus incantation alone: “Sing this to a better you.”  

Stupendous.

Melanie Pain
How and Why 
(Lucky13 Records/Capitane Records)
★★★★★

MELANIE PAIN has been the iconic voice, with Phoebe Killdeer, of legendary modern chanson purveyors Nouvelle Vague for the past 20 years, and at the same time extending herself with solo projects.

How And Why is Pain’s fourth solo album: “I wanted to reconnect with my first loves: clear melodies, with just guitar and voice to guide me.”

But the echoes of chanson linger in most of these songs and beautifully so in the pulsating Dreamloop and perhaps even more in the trumpet embroidered delightful Magnolia “Bring me back to Tangiers again /I want to smell jasmin in the air /And magnolia.”

The pensive Cold Hands, punctuated by single piano notes, is an evocatively sung mormorando in duet with Brian Lopez: “Whiff of you clings to my skin /You are the one I used to love.” A spectacular up-tempo drumming drives Same, complemented in the finale by an ethereal trumpet.

Un veritable triomphe.

Afton Wolfe
Ophiuchus
(Grandiflora Records)
★★★★★

IF YOU must know, Ophiuchus is a constellation in the northern hemisphere, the “serpent bearer” or Serpentarius, first described by Ptolemy in his geo-centric semi-nonsense Almagest. Technically it’s the 13th zodiac constellation orphaned by the limited availability of calendar months.

As a native of Mississippi, Alton Wolfe is familiar with serpents, horned and otherwise, so his attempt to “cast a complex magic spell, the purpose of which is not fully known to me,” shouldn’t baffle.

That aside, Wolfe’s songs are terrestrial and direct. The mesmerising tango Rules Of War dissects the hold of militarism: “Zip your lip /Get a grip /Load the ship /As long as we all comply /The War will never die.”

The rock-infused Ophiuchus is a gut punch, and the melancholy in Dream Song overwhelms: “I had a dream /That I was the truth /Hidden away,” while the accordion-embroidered ode to love Crooked Roads enraptures.

Indelible work!