Christine and the Queens turns electro gothic, Wizkid is a wonder – the week’s best albums

Christine and the Queens, Redcar les Adorables Étoiles ★★★☆☆

In 2014, the exquisite electro pop anthem Tilted carried Christine and the Queens from Gallic curiosity to international stardom. Their dazzling debut album Chaleur Humaine then reached number two in the French and UK charts in two language versions, while becoming the UK’s fastest-selling debut album of 2016.

This curious group turned out to be a theatrical solo artist, Héloïse Letissier, who adopted a masculine persona for second album Chris in 2018, and now returns with the trans male identity of Redcar for an album with the complicated billing Christine and the Queens presents Redcar les Adorables Étoiles (Prologue).

In a recent interview, the 34-year-old said: “My journey with gender has always been tumultuous. It’s raging right now.” As Redcar, Letissier’s preferred pronoun is he, though the very notion of masculine and feminine is different in French, the album’s dominant language.

I have just about enough French to order a meal in a Parisian café but the fast-flowing lyrics Letissier pours out in multi-tracked cascades of tonally different voices can leave me bewildered. A translated lyric sheet is provided, and even if you don’t grasp every phrase, there is no disguising the fraught and at times explosive emotions of this strange, atmospheric and deeply compelling work.

Essentially, it’s an operatic fantasy about a cosmic knight falling from the stars to erotically sacrifice themselves to a damsel in distress – a metaphor for gender transformation and self-acceptance. I think. Many songs barely have verses and choruses, manifesting as mantras and electro funk grooves over which vocals pour forth like some stream-of-consciousness expurgation. Combien de Temps runs to over eight minutes, with Letissier firing out a tirade about how “from my songs I make oaths / From the magic doors towards comprehension / But my sun is my light / The melody is the primal ocean …” There is something about a stunned Sir Lancelot, and a French pun linking a boat and a penis. It is a lot to take in.

Redcar les Adorable Étoiles was composed in a two-week burst of frenzied activity, with Letissier writing a song a day alone in a Paris apartment. You can really sense that energy on an album that has a kind of relentless mania, with strident beats, wild vocals and melodies shooting off in every direction. The sound is 1980s electro gothic, with harsh, echoing drum machine snares and thick walls of fizzing synths interweaved with squalls of distorted electric guitar.

What is almost absent, however, are the delicate rhythm patterns, liquid bass, open spaces and sleek song construction that brought Letissier such crossover appeal. There are glimmers of his facility for earworm melodies and nimble grooves, but they tend to be overwhelmed by an air of bombastic stridency. The nimble Rien Dire lifts the album like a life-saving breath of fresh air, and not coincidentally it is the closest in sound and style to his breakout hits.

During this same period, Letissier has also been working on a more commercial Redcar album in LA. The prologue sounds like something he needed to get out of his system. It is certainly awe-inspiring, but in the rather ominous sense of a tsunami about to crash onto a dance floor and sweep the lone dancer away. Neil McCormick

Wizkid More Love, Less Ego ★★★★★

Wizkid’s fourth album, Made In Lagos, was always going to be a tough act to follow. Bursting with pan-African pride, the record was one of 2020’s most celebrated releases, an emblem of the continent’s takeover of the global mainstream music scene, spurning super-hit Essence featuring Tems (later remixed by Justin Bieber) and prompting a sell-out of three consecutive nights at the O2 London, a 20,000 capacity venue.

It’s what makes today’s follow up, More Love Less Ego, even more remarkable: it is 32-year-old Wizkid’s, real name Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, finest body of work so far, showcasing a maturity and an artistic vision that cements his status as one of the most influential people in pop music today.

An upbeat, party-perfect record that celebrates love and attraction, the 13 tracks are all killer no filler. But there is depth here, too. Everyday, a song about perseverance, opens with a Maya Angelou speech on why “love liberates”, while on 2 Sugar, featuring up-and-coming Nigerian singer Arya Starr, Wizkid sings about fighting his demons.

The bop-inducing production on 2 Sugar is inspired by Amapiano, a bright, jazzy style of South African house music that has recently gone from homegrown subgenre to international phenomenon, demonstrating that, even with a Grammy win and billions of streams, Wizkid still has his ear to the ground. Amapiano, from the sound’s high-pitched piano melodies to its chant-like vocals, can be heard across the record, from the deliciously energetic Bad To Me, to the slick, hypnotic Pressure.

Global influences are scattered throughout the album. London’s Skepta features on the bouncy, boisterous Wow alongside fellow Nigerian Naira Marley, while Houston’s Don Toliver makes an appearance on the penultimate track Special, produced by British-Ghanaian heavyweight Juls. Caribbean superstars Skillibeng and Shenseea feature on Slip N Slide, a flirty back-and-forth earworm and ode to Wizkid’s enduring love of Dancehall.

Warm, melodious and relentlessly catchy, this record will no doubt bring Wizkid’s effervescent energy to discos and dinner parties alike. His career may have already spanned a decade, but it’s clear the Afrobeats pioneer is just getting started. Kathleen Johnston

Run the Jewels, CU4TRO ★★★★★

Killer Mike and El-P, the US duo known as Run the Jewels, have been on a riotous, relentless streak since Run the Jewels 2 gained momentum in 2014. Every two years since, they've dropped albums of clever, incisive, politically-charged rap, snap-your-neck beats, thundering bass and showcased the charms of discerning collaborators.

While fans may have been champing at the bit for RTJ5, this comprehensive reimagining of RTJ4 is stellar. New York producer, DJ and seasoned collaborator Nick Hook (Azealia Banks, Hudson Mohawke) curated CU4TRO, which is not a remix album. The original material has been taken apart, cooked up, and served up through the hybrid influences and imaginations of diverse, exemplary Latinx artists both established and new. Think, RATM’s Zack de la Rocha (a repeat collaborator), Baco Exu Do Blues, Iggor Cavalera, Sarah La Morena, Mexican Institute of Sound (fusing reggaeton and mariachi in Ooh La La).

First single Caminando en la Nieve is a trappy, swampy banger that sizzles and pops with the rapid-fire rhymes of Venezuelan-Caracas born Apache, Grammy Award-winner Venezuelan rapper Akapellah, and Brazilian Pawmps – a grungy, hip-hop vocalist with mixtape credentials across rap, reggaeton and cumbia trap. The grimy, sultry sound of Brazilian Baco Exu do Blues transforms Fuera de Vista (Out of Sight) through chopped up, chilled-out trap and favela bass. Another highlight is Mexico’s Antonio Hernanez, aka Toy Selectah’s JU$T, which combines De la Rocha's rumbling, guttural sucker-punch vocals and Pharrell Williams’ profound, peanut-butter smooth rhymes into a ranchera-meets-bossa nova jam. “Look at all these slave masters posin' on yo' dollar!” is their demand. But more potently, “This is New York City...where murderous chokehold cops still earnin’ a living”. The original lyrics don’t lose any painful poignancy.

In creating a platform for the diversity of Latinx artists, its unwittingly a commercially savvy move considering Latin music has more than doubled market growth annually, outpacing all other US music revenues, and is expected to boast $1 billion in revenue by the end of 2022. Nearly 20 per cent of the US population (62.6 million) are Latinx. Expect more collaborations, remixes and re-imaginings. Cat Woods

The White Buffalo, Year of the Dark Horse ★★★★★

Jake Smith is a bit of a late developer. He didn’t pick up a guitar or start singing until he was 19 and he was already touching 30 by the time he released his first album as The White Buffalo. A long haired, big bearded, barrel-chested giant with a tremulous baritone that can stop listeners in their tracks, he has crafted lyrically rich and dark songs in a rootsy, Americana setting. It has been a career by stealth, admired more by his peers than the public, his music featuring in the background of TV shows including The Punisher, This is Us and particularly Sons of Anarchy (on which he has made guest appearance as a Forest Ranger). Now, eight interesting indie albums down the line, at the grand age of 48 and with his beard turning grey, Smith has crafted something that practically demands listeners sit up and pay attention, Goddamnit!

Year of the Dark Horse is a big, bold, uncompromising album in which Smith’s almost confrontationally honest lyrics, rich melodies and emotional voice have been given the kind of expansive setting they deserve. It was recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce, who has worked with such country stars as Eric Church, The Brothers Osborne, Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin. Yet despite hints and inflections, this is not a country album, unless you can picture Pearl Jam and the Bad Seeds tearing up the Grand Ol’ Opry with a copy of the Scott Walker songbook.

Immense opening track Not Today drives in on a staccato keyboard, thunderous drums and clanging shivers of distorted guitar, conjuring a hurricane of grungy sound amidst which Smith roars about the potential of “another trip around the sun.” Conceived by Smith as a song cycle set across four seasons, the sonic palette shifts in accord with each song’s intent. Winter 2 rattles like REM on a ghost train crossing a desert, as Smith battles the darkness blues: “It’s like a stick up in my brain / Punch drunk and paralysed / Maybe I need the pain / There’s some truth inside these lies.” On slow building epic Kingdom for A Fool, our beaten antihero wrestles with the spiritual defeat of a nine to five job he hates: “Join the wounded herd / Get in line, shut your mouth / Let the apocalypse come / The end is seldom good.”

As season change, so does the mood, with the arrival of spring advancing the comically lusty She Don’t Know That I Lie, a drunken waltz that sounds like something you might get if Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen boasted about imagined sexual conquests in a Parisienne dive bar. Summer is marked by the tenderly beautiful Love Song #3 and haunting ballad Am I Still Child, whilst I’m assuming the Autumn of an affair inspired outrageous breakup song Donna. The jaunty barroom piano and trilling harmonies bring to mind Paul McCartney leading a 70’s knees up, albeit fronted by a scary Scott Walker on a bender roaring “Donna, you are dead to me!”

Album closer Life Goes On fades back to winter with a campfire ballad that evokes an old cowboy on the freezing plains, failing to warm his bones at the dying embers. “The end brings me to my knees / When I'm gone there'll still be birds and dogs and trees,” Smith ruminates, yet there is something hopeful in the blissed-out guitar cascade and a chorus insisting that “life goes on.”

Year of the Dark Horse is an album of power and invention, where each song has a quality of fierce truth telling, as if The White Buffalo was determined to throw caution to the wind and show what he’s really made of. Some artists just take a bit longer to develop. I hope it helps Smith find the audience his voice and songwriting talent warrants. Neil McCormick

Nas, King Disease III ★★★★☆

If hip hop had a Mt. Rushmore, then it’s safe to assume Nas’ baby-faced frown would be among the first faces to be carved onto the rock. On his groundbreaking 1994 debut, Illmatic, the gravelly-voiced, self-professed “ghetto reporter” rapped with the urgency of a soldier on the frontline, powerfully equating the maze of America’s inner cities with scientists doing experiments on rats.

Historically speaking, the mafia genre is known to be outwardly racist towards Black culture, yet with Illmatic’s flawless (and much darker) follow-up, 1996’s It Was Written, Nas re-claimed this Euro-centric, Italian American Godfather-lite aesthetic for himself, subverting its meaning and re-arranging the power balance. These are just two achievements in a career stacked full of them.

In other words, Nas doesn’t really need to rap anymore and, given an obvious business acumen (a $250,000 investment Nas made in Coinbase shares back in 2017 would be worth in excess of $14m today), he could easily spend the rest of his days chilling to Anita Baker vinyls.

This backdrop makes Kings Disease III such a nice surprise: here, the 49-year-old veteran sounds re-energised, and like he has found a new lease of life. The third in a Grammy-winning series (with producer Hit-Boy), it is focused on the idea of learning from the failings of past Black leaders and creating new cycles of generational wealth.

On the euphoric, G-Funk heavy Hood 2 Hood Nas slides across the beat, powerfully rapping the line: “I’m OJ with the memorabilia / I had to steal it back.” It serves as both a funny punchline and signal of intent around the idea of reclaiming hip hop culture from the capitalists. A shout out to tragically slain LA rapper Drakeo the Ruler (a 28-year-old who rapped like Colonel Kurtz if he could spit bars) is a reminder from a much-wiser Nas of just how short life is, and the beauty of him making it this far.

With its references to Gnarls Barkley, and some slightly conservative views on cancel culture (“Heckers are more respected than the people delivering the message” Nas proclaims on “Till My Last Breath”), this record can occasionally sound like someone’s uncle having a moan over the dinner table. And when talking about matters of the heart, Nas sometimes has a tendency not to consider the other side's perspective. 

But although King’s Disease III might have some tonal missteps, Nas and Hit-Boy should be applauded for bringing warm soul samples back into hip hop culture at a time of such darkness and uncertainty. This is Godfather: Part III if Michael Corleone retired without all the treachery; music about being comfortable with your place and making it to the other side. “Today is the youngest you will ever be” insists Nas on the funked-out Once a Man, Twice a Child. As he approaches 50, this might just be the Queensbridge emcee’s most productive decade yet. Thomas Hobbs

MGMT, 11-11-11 ★★★★☆

New York City’s Solomon R. Guggenheim museum is a sprawling, miraculous feat of engineering that saw architect Frank Lloyd Wright manipulate harsh concrete into spiralling twists and turns as if it were made of clay. From within its walls came the surrealist sounds of 11-11-11, electro-pop band MGMT’s fifth album, which was recorded during a one-off gig at the museum on 11 November 2011.

The band were commissioned to provide music for famously provocative Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s exhibit All, a mad-cap installation that brought together the majority of his work created since 1989 under one roof, pieces strung haphazardly from the Guggenheim’s cavernous rotunda – hoisted by rope, the items were meant to look like a mass execution.

MGMT, made up of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, were a perfect musical fit: a Grammy Award-winning band who had spent their entire careers desperately trying to escape their original commercial success. After being catapulted into the mainstream in the mid-Noughties with Oracular Spectacular (that featured eternal festival anthems Time to Pretend and Kids), they consciously went down a darker path on 2010 follow-up, Congratulations – but they couldn’t escape big-hits for long. 2018’s Little Dark Age saw the title track become a TikTok sensation, earning them a new generation of teenage fans.

11-11-11 contains scarce lyrics and, upon first listen, sounds more akin to a Vangelis soundtrack than an indie record, filled with dramatic echoes and sinister, haunting vocals and synths. But there is some respite from the darkness, particularly on Who’s Counting, a tender, soaring love story that sounds like the soundtrack for a production of Romeo & Juliet held on the International Space Station, and Invocation, where VanWyngarden crashes back to Earth (“Packed out by visions of oceans and hills / Like I’ve always had”). Fans expecting a continuation of Little Dark Age will inevitably be disappointed, but as a display of pure musicality and artistic vision, it’s a triumph. Poppie Platt

Black Eyed Peas, Elevation ★★☆☆☆

If a political moment exists on Elevation, the ninth album from the Black Eyed Peas, you’ll find it buried on the eleventh track. Amid lines urging a crowd to put their hands in the air, the American group mutter “if you wanna rage against the machine,” vaguely echoing the subversive stance of the rap-rockers with the same name.

Black Eyed Peas broke through in 2003 with their timely protest tune Where is the Love. But since 2009 they’ve been responsible for an indigestible glut of party anthems. No surprise, then, that Elevation’s 15 tracks blur into one long club night at a lads’ holiday resort: ringtone riffs that call out across sticky dancefloors, generic repetitions of “put your hands up” and “everybody jump”, and predictable titanic drops. Lead singles Simply the Best and Don’t You Worry – a global hit this summer, featuring Shakira and David Guetta – materialise from the rancid ashes of 2009’s I Gotta Feeling, still somehow one of the biggest songs of the century.

The group’s 2020 faux-Latino album Translation found global success, and Elevation poaches several Latin American stars to continue that sound, including Brazilian singer Anitta and Puerto Rican rappers Daddy Yankee, Anuel AA, and Ozuna. Black Eyed Peas jump onto other trends, too: hammering out house beats (heard on recent albums by Drake and, more successfully, Beyoncé), sampling TikTok’s familiar text-to-speech voice, and inexplicably resurrecting the cringeworthy flirtatious texts (“that body of yours is absurd”) that caused a recent scandal for Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine. Fire Starter, meanwhile, might share a name with the Prodigy’s 1997 classic, but lacks any of its heat.

The Peas interrupted their own party once, with 2018’s politically-charged hip-hip record Masters of the Sun Vol.1. But lead member will.i.am remains a commercially-driven marketing spark and here, the group continue to take accessible pop music to its worst, most soulless extreme. Kate French-Morris