Frazey Ford
U kin B The Sun
(Arts & Crafts)
★★★★

A FOUNDING member of Canadian folk group The Be Good Tanyas, since 2010 singer-songwriter Frazey Ford has been making increasingly impressive solo records.

U kin B The Sun builds on her critically acclaimed 2014 Indian Ocean record, with Ford doing an even deeper dive into country soul music.

There are shades of gospel on the track U and Me and jazz and folk but the album’s heart belongs to Muscle Shoals.

With its organ swoons and soaring, emotional vocals, opener Akad deals with Ford’s unconventional childhood, while The Kids Are Having None Of It is inspired by Greta Thunberg and the #FridaysForFuture movement.

Built around a catchy piano part, Motherfucker is a little more edgy and darker, though it’s going to take me some time to decipher the words.

A gorgeous, groove-based set that brings to mind Natalie Prass’s equally brilliant debut.

Christian McBride
The Movement Revisited:  A Musical Portrait of Four Icons (Mack Avenue Records)
★★★★

THE Movement Revisited is an epic jazz suite about four figureheads of the movement for African-American liberation — Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jnr.

Having continually evolved the piece since its first performance over 20 years ago, bassist Christian McBride acts as arranger and producer, with help from a 17-piece big band and 10-piece choir. Four stellar vocalists, including The Wire’s Wendell Pierce, speak the words of the icons.

It’s a fascinating and stirring set, with the music full of the melancholy of the black experience in the US, as well as joyous ecstasy.

McBride is helped by having two of the greatest orators in recent history — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, Martin Luther King intones — but the inclusion of Barack “drone bomber” Obama’s 2008 victory speech seems the only misstep on this otherwise majestic record.

Real Estate
The Main Thing
(Domino)
★★★★

SINCE they formed in 2009, New Jersey’s Real Estate have spent a lot of time refining a very particular sound — a laid-back, jangly guitar pop perfect for long summer days.

That they are big fans of mathematical indie-guitar wizards The Feelies makes perfect sense, though Real Estate are much more accessible and pop-orientated.

On The Main Thing, their fifth long-player, the band largely continue with their successful formula, though they are smart enough to mix it up a bit, expanding their carefully crafted sound and instrumentation.

Single Paper Cups is slightly more muscular than their previous work, while the title track includes a wah-wah guitar solo.

There are still heavenly grooves and neat guitar hooks aplenty though — check out the beautifully catchy Silent World and the vaguely Tom Pettyesque Procession.

Dreamy tunes for all the Pitchfork musos out there.