New and noteworthy

Cook

Lettuce

Because orchestral funk is a Gordian knot, Lettuce’s live collab with the Colorado Symphony (recorded 2018, released last year) was more interesting to watch than to listen (or dance) to. But there’s no orchestra this time, so the sextet’s imaginative and sophisticated improvements on what one might call the Average White Band’s “Pick Up the Pieces” aesthetic proceed sleek and unencumbered. The accomplishment is even more impressive when you realize that the AWB’s “Pick Up the Pieces” aesthetic didn’t need that much improving in the first place.

Grandma’s Gospel Favorites

Jason Mraz

About 20 years ago, Jason Mraz’s grandmother asked him to make her a recording of her favorite gospel songs and hymns. So he did. And as befits a grandma-friendly release, Mraz kept things suitable for Shady Acres—acoustic guitar, fiddle, upright bass, pedal steel (and the like), his own soft voice, and no drums. For this public version, he adds two gospel-adjacent originals, neither of which (in case you’re wondering) propagandizes for the LGBTQ folks with whom he began identifying after his grandma went to her reward.

Smoke Filled Room

Dan Penn

The New York Times made no room for Dan Penn on its recent greatest-living-American-songwriters list. Yet even if he hadn’t written or co-written a slew of Muscle Shoals classics, these demos and other archival recordings would qualify him for serious consideration. It may have been easy to take for granted his knack for using the building blocks of country and soul to zero in on the universally poignant back in the day, but in the age of generative AI, his deep humanity stands out. His ability to feel the gospel down to his bones (“Hellbound Snowball,” “Creator of All Things,” “One Blue Light”) does too.

Chapter 1

Sault

The measures that this band (sorry, “collective”) is taking to maintain its who’s-doing-what “mystery” seem more pointless all the time, and apparently its live presentation is one big unworked-out kink. On the other hand, if such misdirection is what it takes for Inflo (the main producer) and Cleo Sol (the main singer) to create this kind of music—soul, gospel, and funk, pressed down, shaken together, and winnowed until they feel lighter than air—maybe it’s worth it. The lyrics (some of them prayers, some daily affirmations) get sung and sometimes chanted. “Fulfil [sic] Your Spirit” (Phoebe Snow meets psychedelic strings?) is a genre unto itself.

Encore

For the employees at Wagram Music (except maybe those responsible for getting clearances), compiling Scorsese Sounds: A Tribute to Martin Scorsese must have been both a joy and a breeze—a breeze because all they had to do was comb the soundtracks of 15-or-so Scorsese films for musical nuggets, a joy because those nuggets glitter as brightly on their own as they do in the Scorsese firmament. Being juxtaposed in unexpected ways doesn’t hurt them either.

The Dean Martin–Tony Bennett opening might betoken homogenization, and, indeed, there’s Rat Pack redolence in the air. But whether it’s the Inkspots (or the Harptones), the Shirelles (or the Marvelettes), Howlin’ Wolf (or Muddy Waters), Glenn Miller (or Jackie Gleason), Ray Charles (or Lonnie Johnson), or (courtesy of Cape Fear) the Cramps, there’s a lot to keep the currents shifting. The uncool songs come off cool, the cool songs cooler. Eighty-one minutes and 11 seconds has seldom flown faster. —A.O.