So which Meshell Ndegeocello have we got here, on her new album Synonym? Is it the mercurial jazz bassist, or is it the nu-soul diva? Is it the singer on the fringes of hip-hop, or is it the pop polymath with fingers in each these pies and more? Probably the latter, given the exhausting range of potential styles summonsed forth by the extraordinarily diverse range of songs and guests. Synonym is a further Ndegeocello excursion into Coverland, where she gives her idiosyncratic polish to the concept of abstract musodiversity.
The prodigious Ndegeocello has racked up an impressive 16 albums, Synonym included, where she is the featured name, stemming back to 1993, together with a rack of guest and/or session appearances across a further 28. Encompassing all genres and bases, she has mixed her own material with a healthy regard for covers. These have notably included a whole disc revisiting songs made famous by Nina Simone, Pour une Âme Souveraine, and Ventriloquism, which took shot at a range of ’80s into ’90s R’n’B redoubtables. This time around there is an almost scattergun approach, as she tackles all comers. The Human League and Bob Dylan share her table with Tammy Wynette and J-Lo, just for starters. Moreover, Synonym is an all-duet album, calling in such conceivably disparate spirits as AHOHNI and Cynthia Erivo, Bill Callahan and Chaka Khan. Ooooooooooooookaaaaaay………
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The 1968 Byrds album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, for all intents and purposes, kickstarted country-rock into, eventually, the mainstream. In some unholy sleight of hand, newly enrolled Byrd Gram Parsons steered McGuinn and co full pelt into, rather than any earlier dabbling, what might later be called Americana. With the album awash with banjos, pedal steel and fiddle, these were sounds less commonly encountered at the Fillmores, east or west.
Blaze Foley is one of those eternally dropped names, usually by the hip or the famous (often both) musicians with tales to tell of the late and largely unheralded Texas troubadour and roustabout. Here is a veritable bushfire of fans, friends, acolytes and disciples, all keen to peddle his music to a wider public. If you have heard the name, now’s the opportunity to put his mouth into those of others, ahead, maybe, of risking the real thing.
Dervish have form, having delivered 37 years as one of the premier traditional folk baton holders from the Emerald Isle. Back in 2019, they released “The Great Irish Songbook, Volume I,” culling a bevy of faithful standards from the vaults of the tradition, songs predominantly by trad.arr. This time around they celebrate the current crop, this century and last, of Irish troubadours and songbirds, enlisting, once more, an all-star cast of compadres to expand and embellish the legacy. Last time it was the likes of Steve Earle, David Gray and Rhiannon Giddens. For “The Great Irish Songbook, Volume II” it is the Indigo Girls, Del McCoury, Sarah Jarosz, the recently deceased Moya Brennan and a whole lot more. Songwriters chosen include Van Morrison, Shane MacGowan and Sinèad O’Connor.