Roots Round-Up (Irma Thomas, Chicken Milk, Missy Raines & Allegheny and more)

A delightful romp through barn-burning bluegrass, Missy Raines & Allegheny’s new album, Love & Trouble (^****), is a great outing from one of my favourite imprints, Compass Records. Founded by Alison Brown, it’s a label that truly supports women in bluegrass, especially female bandleaders like Raines. Known as one of the best bluegrass bassists, Raines knows how to pick talent, featuring hot young artists like fiddler Ellie Hakanson and mandolinist Tristan Scroggins. She writes great songs and features fascinating cuts from other songwriters here as well. What’s nice is that she doesn’t shy away from hard topics, like most others in bluegrass. ‘Coal Black Water’ for example is about fracking in Appalachia. Her band can do it all, from the best bluegrass music around to a surprisingly adventurous chamber jazz tune at the end of the album.

While the US grovels at the feet of the uncancellable garbage human, Morgan Wallen (#1 on the Billboard charts!), real country music still exists. Take the new album, Stone Cold Country Gold (Hillbilly Renegade ^****), from Texas honky-tonker Weldon Henson. Raised in the perfectly named city of Humble, a suburb of Houston, Henson is the unassuming real deal on the scene. He primarily plays old-school Texas honky tonks, and his songs are unvarnished, beautifully roughshod nods to the glories of country’s yesteryears. His rhythm and singing are watertight, buoyed by a band that knows how to keep dancers moving for hours. His last album was a live album recorded in a famed honky-tonk, so you know he takes dancing seriously.

The Soul Queen of New Orleans, Irma Thomas, has a new album out as of April, Audience with the Queen (Tchoup-Zilla Records ^****), with funk jam band Galactic and it’s an absolute blast. Thomas is from an older generation of soul singers, so it’s wonderful to have her back on the scene (she was singing with The Rolling Stones at JazzFest 2024), especially with a band that can mould itself to her music so well. There’s some love and positivity here, some old school blues too, and ‘Lady Liberty’ is a masterpiece of a protest song. Don’t sleep on this one like I did!

The new album, Dave (Hotdog Kid ^****), from mysterious songwriter Chicken Milk, another New Orleans artist, took me completely by surprise. Like the bastard child of Paul Simon and Frank Zappa, Mr Milk (real name Dave Hammer) plumbs human absurdity for some absurdly catchy songs. The album has lush arrangements, clever songcraft, a dizzying array of genre influences (everything from Django jazz to classical strings to Dr John to psych rock), and an innocent heart. You might get whiplash from song to song with how much this album shifts, and Mr. Milk might be a mad genius too! What fun!

Another great album out of Louisiana, Musique(s) (Nous Foundation ^*****) is a compilation produced by Nous, the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures. It features a valuable and rare survey of New Orleans’ Creole traditions, including some that were new to me such as The Baby Dolls, a mask and costume tradition for Black Creole women singing in kouri vini (the Black Creole dialect of Louisiana). Louis Michot of the Lost Bayou Ramblers and Leyla McCalla also feature heavily as well as zydeco artist Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots, Creole chamber ensemble Les Cenelles and indie-pop band Sweet Crude. Anything from New Orleans is tinged with French and usually Cajun French (though Cajun country lies to the west of the city), but it’s glorious to have an entire album purely focused on the Creole language that lies at the heart of Louisiana culture.

nous-foundation.org/album