#fiona-apple

#fiona-apple

The songs on Meshell Ndegeocello's magnificent new album, The Omnichord Real Book, are always in flux.In its seven-and-half minutes, ASR hints at fusion jazz, Funkadelic, Ethiopian pop, reggae and psychedelia; the guitarist Jeff Parker, from Tortoise, teases the music forward.As the song accelerates, Ndegeocello sings about pain, heartbreak, healing and perseverance, and she vows, We're here to set the clock to here and now.

Over a balky wireless connection that seemed to symbolize how fleeting human contact has become, Natalia Lafourcade smiled as she showed off her garden in Xalapa, the capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz.She had emerged from the recording studio she built there, rattling off the trees that surround her home  guayabo, higuera, mulato  as she explained the genesis of her new album, De Todas las Flores (Of All the Flowers), which bloomed in the aftermath of a romantic split.