Valerie June’s meditative new album calls on soul great Carla Thomas as its ‘fairy godmother’

Valerie June

The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers

(Fantasy *** 1/2)

At the heart of Valerie June’s fifth album, there’s a 25-second track called “African Proverb,” that’s read by Carla Thomas, the Memphis soul singer that June has called “the fairy godmother of the record.”

The saying goes: “Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.” It’s a sly reference to Thomas’ 1963 hit “What a Fool I’ve Been,” and also a lead in to “Call Me a Fool,” the luxurious, old-school soul song that features Thomas and is The Moon and Stars’ first single.

The proverb advises caution. But “Call Me a Fool” endorses an opposite point of view. It’s a love song about letting go, taking chances, dreaming big. Call June a fool if you like. It’s not her style to dip a toe. She’s diving in.

June plays both banjo and guitar, and has always stood out in the American roots music world as an artist who blends genres to her own end.

What’s so impressive about The Moon & Stars is it expands that vision in collaboration with producer Jack Splash, who’s worked with mainstream acts like John Legend and Alicia Keys, without losing sight of what makes June’s spiritually entrancing music unique.

On the contrary, June sounds more herself than ever, whether being pushed forward by a martial drumbeat and swelling strings on “Stay” or experimenting with Fela Kuti polyrhythms or simply accompanying herself on banjo. The meditative Moon and Stars was recorded pre-pandemic, but the music soothes as if designed for stressful times. Rooted in the real world, it gazes overhead, into the mystic.

— Dan DeLuca

Wild Pink

A Billion Little Lights

(Royal Mountain ***)

A Billion Little Lights, the third album from Wild Pink, feels like a breakthrough. Leader John Ross relocated from New York City to the Hudson Valley, and these songs often find him looking back and moving on, content with a more bucolic natural environment full of dogwood and forsythia, starry skies, and honeybees.

Ross sings in a quiet, tentative tenor, but the music is expansive and confident. Like Philly’s The War on Drugs, he layers guitars and keyboards so that they often blend in the foreground, blurring the lines between synth pop and Americana guitar rock.

While Ross played most of the core instruments, fiddle player Sarah Williams Larsen, singer Julia Steiner (of Chicago’s Ratboys), and, especially, lap steel player Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner have key roles.

Philly’s Brenner can elevate any band he contributes to — witness his work with Marah and John Train. He started touring with Wild Pink after 2018′s Yolk in the Fur, and his sweeping guitar lines are often highlights. They provide the hook in “Oversharers Anonymous,” create a rootsy foundation from the start of “Pacific City,” and weave through the lovely coda of “Bigger Than Christmas.”

A Billion Little Lights is full of subtle, shifting details that repay with close listening; credit also producer David Greenbaum (U2, Beck). It’s restrained, but also rich.

— Steve Klinge

The Melvins

Working With God

(Ipecac ***)

One of Wikipedia’s best features is the color-coded timelines tracing the changing memberships of bands with particularly long and/or convoluted histories.

The version gracing the Melvins’ page is topped by a solid line for founder and frontman King Buzzo, with an almost equally unbroken streak near the bottom for drummer Dale Crover. In between things get a little more complicated, given that their lineup has not only changed constantly but at times existed in multiple incarnations at once.

Their 24th album, Working With God, is an example, featuring the “Melvins 1983” lineup — a reference to the presence of founding drummer Mike Dillard, who only stayed for a year his first time around. Crover, who switches to bass here, replaced him in 1984, which confuses things with typically Melvins-ish irreverence.

Evoking the year of the band’s founding could equally indicate the spirit of this particular trio, which unites brute-force riffs that would feel at home in a garage with sneering, juvenile humor. Witness, for instance, the f-bomb laden rewrite of the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” that opens the album, the cover of Harry Nilsson’s (almost) equally profane “You’re Breakin’ My Heart,” and the eye-rolling doo-wop of “Goodnight Sweetheart,” closing the album with a Sha Na Na reference.

But Buzzo matches his sardonic streak with an unflagging gift for ferocious hooks that steamroll the borders between punk and metal, as catchy as they are bludgeoning. So maybe the Melvins 1983 connection is also a reminder that the Melvins have been churning out solid, uncompromising, never-quite-predictable music like this for nearly 40 years.

— Shaun Brady