Shopping List: The New and the Notable
The first in a more or less weekly series suggesting ways to wield your purchasing power for the forces of good music.
The Bird and the Bee (Blue Note)
Inara George (daughter of the late Little Feat founder Lowell George) and Greg Kurstin play sophisticated pop with a psychedelic sixties-Brazil lilt on this fetching debut.
Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl)
An unusually rocking, literate, and sonically adventurous break-up album from these independent Americans. Hear "Suffer for Fashion" at Pitchfork.
Sonny Rollins, Sonny, Please (Emarcy/Doxy/Universal Classics)
The tenor saxophone giant sounds rough, gruff, and larger than life on his first studio recording in five years.
Tony Trischka, Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular (Rounder)
"How do you improve the aerodynamics of a banjo player's car? Remove the Domino's Pizza sign from the roof" — and 271 other banjo jokes that Earl Scruggs, Steve Martin, Béla Fleck, Alison Brown, Chris Thile, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, and all the other pickers on this record possibly may not appreciate.
Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life (Blue Note)
Singer Elvis Costello, saxophonist Joe Lovano, and pianist Bill Charlap's version of "My Flame Burns Blue" Is the highlight of this companion album to a new PBS documentary about the composer that airs the week of February 6.
Caetano Veloso, Cê (Nonesuch)
The Brazilian Bob Dylan's collaboration with his son, Moreno, rocks with electricity and poetry.
Harry Connick Jr.; Oh, My NOLA (Columbia), Chanson du Vieux Carré (Marsalis)
He may not be the city's deepest or funkiest musical force, but give Connick credit for trumpeting unfettered hometown spirit on this pair of new albums tapping into the Crescent City tradition. Connick sings tunes by local writers, such as Allen Toussaint's "Working in the Coal Mine," or merely linked to the region (the Satchmo signature tune "Hello Dolly") on Oh, My NOLA. Chanson du Vieux Carré consists of new, mostly instrumental Connick arrangements of jazzier fare.
Norah Jones, Not Too Late (Blue Note)
That amazingly mellow afterglow of a voice and subtle country-folk-pop instrumentation are back. The edge is in the lyrics, where Norah won't make nice: The opening track's POV is that of a girl who loses her lover to war and the next compares a country at war to a sinking ship.
Gipsy Kings, Pasajeros (Nonesuch)
These Spaniards in France follow up their 2005 back-to-basics album Roots by stirring North African, Cuban, and Jamaican flavors into their cantankerous blend of gruff voices, pounding heels, and propeller-flurry flamenco guitars.