Rosalia traveled in one direction over the course of her first three albums, from flamenco to reggaeton and from acoustic textures to electronic beats, so I kind of assumed that her fourth album would continue on that path, even slicker and more club-friendly than Motomami. Her fourth album isn't a reversal per se, but a pivot to this big ambitious song cycle accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, a bit like mid-period Bjork, who Rosalia collaborates with for the second time on "Berghain." "Dios Es Un Stalker" is the song where this all comes together really amazingly and feels like a natural evolution from her earlier work. But it all sounds fantastic and showcases her gifts as a vocalist better than ever before, and predictably I love the song in 5/4, "Divinize." 

I was a little disappointed to find that Trugoy only has full verses on I think two songs on Cabin in the Sky, compared to the album Mobb Deep just dropped in the same series that had new Prodigy verses on every song. But I'm still really glad that Posdnous and Maseo put together this album after Dave's death, it's a good way to cap their career. That Roy Ayers sample on "Cruel Summers Bring FIRE LIFE!!" also really hits hard since Ayers passed this year too. I also wrote a bit about Cabin in the Sky when I added it to my Spin ranking of De La Soul albums last week. 

There are a bunch of Willie Nelson albums where he covers the songs of a particular friend, peer, or influence, and hearing him delve into Haggard's catalog is a particular delight. It's funny to hear country's most famous pothead sing "We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee," especially knowing that Nelson eventually converted Haggard to the pleasures of smoking weed many years after "Okie From Muskogee" was released. Workin' Man has some additional poignance because it features some of the last recordings by two longtime members of Nelson's band, Paul English and Bobbie Nelson, who died in 2020 and 2022, respectively. I didn't know that when I first put on the album, and I got pretty choked up when Willie said "sister, play" on "Swinging Doors" and Bobbie took a solo. 

Like Willie Nelson, Mavis Staples is one of the very few musicians born in the 1930s that's alive and still making records today (I went down a rabbit hole the other day after I had this thought). And Staples is still game to sing all sorts of stuff, including Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Frank Ocean covers on this album, and a new song written by Hozier and Allison Russell. But what really blew me away was Staples singing one of my favorite Sparklehorse songs on Sad and Beautiful World's title track. I wish Mark Linkous was here to hear that. I'm going on a lot about the feelings conjured by hearing the work of deceased musicians in this post, but I'm really grateful that music can help keep someone's memory alive. 

For a while I just broadly filed Summer Walker away in the 'toxic R&B' category, but after three albums of her Over It trilogy, it feels like her specific subject matter as a songwriter is total romantic disappointment and disillusionment, and a subsequent pivot to cold, calculating transactional relationships. My favorite song she released this year, "Spend It," which was not on the initial release of Finally Over It after underperforming at radio, articulated this well. But the album makes this point pretty entertainingly with both the Anna Nicole Smith-inspired cover art and the opening song "Robbed You" ("I should have robbed you" feels like an appropriate escalation of Keyshia Cole singing "I should have cheated" 20 years ago). 

I've lived in Maryland and spent lots of time in Washington, D.C. and listening to D.C. radio in the, what, 18 years that Wale has been D.C.'s biggest and most famous rapper. And the city definitely has a love/hate thing with Wale, but I feel like it's mostly love, and I still hear his music hear a lot more than I think I would anywhere else. And while I think there's too much sulking that he was 'supposed to be the next Hov' or something, he's had a great career, and I'm pretty happy that he's made one of his best albums this far into his career, Everything Is A Lot is kind of a downbeat, introspective album but Wale still proves that he does the melodic R&B hook radio rap thing better than just about anybody of his generation. He even throws in an MMG-style banger, "Michael Fredo," that's fun and sounds like he just wanted to prove he can still get in that bag whenever he wants. 

John Darnielle runs in some of the same online music nerd circles that I do and seems like a really smart, funny guy, and The Mountain Goats are generally revered in all sorts of music nerd circles, but I'm only casually acquainted with some of their records, I suspect if I ever get really into them it'll be the early lo-fi stuff. But Jon Wurster is one of my favorite drummers of all time, and he's no longer playing in Superchunk, so I've start to appreciate more that Mountain Goats records are where I can hear him do his thing, and he's got some great moments on "Armies of the Lord" and "Cold At Night." Hearing Lin-Manuel Miranda's very recognizable voice on some backing vocals on an indie rock album is a little, I dunno, distracting, though. 

The West Virginia band Crack The Sky's self-titled 1975 debut, revered as a hit-filled classic rock album in Baltimore but an obscurity just about everywhere else, turned 50 in November. And 4/5ths of the band's original lineup is still performing and recording together, releasing the band's 21st studio album. I recently read a biography of the band and delved into a lot of Crack The Sky band's I hadn't heard before, so it was exciting to see that the new album was out the other day. John Palumbo still has an utterly unique songwriting sensibility, and Joe Macre is one of rock's great melodic bass players, in great form on "How Can You Sleep?" and "Brain Police." 

I'm not a Mike Patton superfan, but he is a pretty impressively versatile vocalist, and making an entire album with the folk revival band The Avett Brothers is one thing I did not expect from him. Hearing "Eternal Love" on WTMD surprised and intrigued me, and the whole album is pretty good. I wish Patton pulled them into his weird experimental world a little more, but it feels like a true collaborative push-and-pull. 

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