Jim Hynes

We first introduced you to the latest Blue Note signee, keyboardist Kiefer, with the July 10 release,

Ave Trujillo (El Cortez) is Portland-based singer-songwriter Freddy Trujillo’s fifth solo release. Trujillo is also the bassist for The Delines and Richmond Fontaine, with personnel from those bands assisting him here as on past recordings. Like his previous releases, Trujillo digs deep into his personal experiences growing up in Southern California as a Chicano, yet Trujillo presents an imaginative concept: a different bird is at the heart of every song, as one might glean from the album title. Birds become characters, symbols, metaphors, and witnesses, connecting human experience to the natural world. Trujillo tells stories about grief, identity, displacement, environmental change, and hope. What began as a possible children’s album morphed into a deeper concept as the songs grew darker, as is the wont of most singer-songwriters. The result is a balance of the light and dark. So, the bird-themed record became a challenge that Trujillo conquered with aplomb.

Singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier knows what it’s like to be down and out. She’s lived it. This makes her an astute and credible observer of the human condition, told through stories, character sketches, and topics many would avoid. Reckoning (Soundly/Thirty Tigers) has all those, with threads of survival, faith, and resilience running through many of them.

Jazz musicians often recast their favorite compositions or career milestones with a new ensemble, but few have the energetic intensity of 73-year-old saxophonist Azar Lawrence on Turn the Music Up. Most of us came to know Lawrence as a torchbearer of spiritual jazz via his stint with McCoy Tyner in the early 70s’. From there, Lawrence was not a shape-shifter, but had a knack for being in the right place for the right trend of the time. He worked with Miles Davis and Elvin Jones in the post-Coltrane years. As jazz faded from the limelight, Lawrence worked with Marvin Gaye and Earth, Wind & Fire. Today he is a member of the straight-ahead supergroup the Cookers. Over his 50-year career, he has issued 13 albums as a leader, exploring Brazilian jazz, funk, and his core spiritual jazz.

A sense of community drives the nearly impossible-to-categorize bassist, songwriter, singer, producer, and visionary Meshell Ndegeocello. Though she has long embraced the queer community that first gave her comfort, she has now broadened her reach into musical territories many may have presumed were beyond her grasp. In any case, in an ever- increasing trend of guest-filled projects, Synonym, a staggering collection of mostly duets, may be the most overwhelming to date. So many singers and instrumentalists are present that forewarning of eyes glazing over is completely warranted.

Richard Thompson, one of our endearing, indefatigable rock n’ roll warhorses, returns with his 20th studio album, Hippies, Thugs, and Heroes, at age 77. This is Thompson’s follow-up to the highly acclaimed Ship to Shore (2024), also on New West. Few artists have consistently delivered high-caliber records like Thompson. His ardent fans may argue that he’s never made a bad one. The advance press reflects that, drawing comparisons to 1999’s Mock Tudor and 1975’s Pour Down Like Silver. Yes, the lion is still roaring.

Sharing secrets with strangers is more common than many realize. Sometimes it’s just a way to test a reaction, so you’re better prepared to share the secret when it counts. This is one of singer-songwriter

It’s hard to believe that Minneapolis-based blues-roots artist Charlie Parr has now released 20 albums. Parr has risen from a regional treasure influenced by Minneapolis blues greats Dave Ray, “Spider” John Koerner, and Willie Murphy to national and international status, buoyed by his signing to Smithsonian Folkways, one of the most selective imprints, six years ago. First hailed for his blues-roots fingerpicking guitar, Parr has long since become a fully fledged troubadour with a world-weary voice, a champion of the downtrodden, perhaps best realized on this new folk opera, Rooming House. Parr plays his custom nine-string resonator guitar alongside drummer Dave King (from the recently disbanded The Bad Plus).

Tears may well up for those with endearing memories of organ master and multi-instrumentalist Joey DeFrancesco ’s live performances. DeFrancesco sounds so warm and convivial in his stage banter, and the music is compelling and superb throughout. It’s a shame that this is a posthumous release, made just weeks before his untimely passing at age 51 in August 2022. He just seemed so full of soul and musically alive! Fittingly, jazz legend Todd Barkan, owner of Baltimore’s Keystone Korner, booked this searing date, which is not only a lasting memory for DeFrancesco but perhaps one of his best albums:

It’s Lyal Strickland ’s unpolished voice that makes the first impression. Immediately, it’s clear he is not your dressed-up singer-songwriter making a slick record. His songs come from the soil that he tills as a part-time farmer, from the babble of small-town drinking holes, from the sweat and pain of hard work, life’s defeats, and hard-earned small victories. His gutsy songs earn him the title Shooter of Truth, and this is Strickland’s return to recording after a ten-year absence.