Music
Claire Givens: Live From the Marigny Opera House (Independent) / MoPodna: I Can Save Me (Independent)
The trajectory of People Museum over the past few years has been a welcome and necessary addition to the New Orleans music scene. Each member brings a special quality to the table that turns a simple math equation (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 =) into exponential bliss. It will come as no surprise that each of them has other outlets. These solo projects help to better understand them as well as the DNA of People Museum itself.
Chris Smither: All About the Bones (Signature Sounds)
Chris Smither is just the opposite of many musicians who migrate to New Orleans to further their careers. He grew up in the Crescent City; his father was a professor at Tulane, and he even won a folk Battle of the Bands in 1960 while still at Benjamin Franklin High School.
$uicideboy$: New World Depression (G59 Records)
Underground rap group $uicideboy$ are back with New World Depression, their fourth full length album. Despite an enormous fan base who will eat this up, had they kept the first four tracks, left the others in the vault, and made it their 29th EP, this would be a much stronger release and made for a far different review.
Jon Hébert: Flash in the Pan (Rouxbadour Music)
Songwriter and guitarist Jon Hébert doesn’t write songs with a specific genre in mind; he just writes them and lets ’em fall where they may. The 15 originals from his 2017 first full length effort, Bayou Wild, largely straddled the line between folk and Americana.
Antoniette Costa: Pitupatter (Independent)
Sabrina Carpenter is having a hell of a summer with the ’60s-esque Italiano flavored hit single “Espresso,” but Italian American chanteuse Antoinette Costa is delivering her own Pucci-swirled delicacy with Pittupatter. Costa is a versatile artist whose musical creations fuse elements of classical, jazz, and Italian folk.
Bubba Hebert: Mais Oui! (Independent)
As the great-grandson of the legendary Iry LeJeune, a cornerstone of Cajun music, and grandson of accordionist and cultural traditionalist Eddie LeJeune (Iry’s son), Bubba Hebert comes from Cajun royalty, though he would never say it that way. As a youth, Hebert was once considered a prodigy, creating a buzz about his advanced accordion chops early on.
Ingrid Lucia: The Big Time: A Memoir (Westview Publishing)
At one point in her memoir, Ingrid Lucia confesses that she’s been dissed in New Orleans for writing “novels” on social media. If you’ve followed her on Facebook—or even read her interviews in these pages—you know what they’re talking about: Her unfiltered posts regularly reveal exactly what’s been going on in her personal and creative life at any given time. That’s who she is as a writer and performer: She gives you all she’s got, take it or leave it.
PJ Morton: Capetown to Cairo (Morton Records / Empire)
The musical the brotherhood and sisterhood that exists between the African continent and New Orleans is instantly recognized on “Smoke and Mirrors,” the exciting opening cut of PJ Morton’s Capetown to Cairo. Initially recorded in Nigeria, acoustic African drums get this tune started and then Morton’s keyboards and a New Orleans horn section jumps in, and things get funky big time Crescent City style.
Kid Eggplant & the Stuffed Melatauns: War…We Love It! (Independent)
This may be the most oddly eclectic album I’ve reviewed in all my years with this magazine. And that’s sayin’ something. Bassist and bandleader Robert Snow has played with a host of different artists—including greats like Little Freddie King, Johnny Adams and Ernie K-Doe—and his band project, now on their third CD, is an outlet for anything he happens to come up with.
The Imagination Movers: Blue Skies (Independent)
Gather ’round children, and I will spin you a gruesome tale of horror and subversion. Your parents have been conspiring to make you listen to their OLD music. For example, on this new Imagination Movers recording Blue Skies, your parents will play it for you, and you will be sucked into these tunes that stay in your head all day with lyrics that sound like you wrote them about real events like going on a road trip or eating an ice cream sandwich or even dreams you have about flying around with jet packs.
