Maelstrom Run

For nearly 40 years, New York songwriter Willie Nile has given his global cult of fans albums unapologetically romantic in their streetwise rock & roll poetics and poignant in their keen, sweeping observations of everyday life's yearning, brokenness, disappointment, and optimism. Children of Paradise is a return to original material after 2017's Positively Bob: Willie Nile Sings Bob Dylan. Nile's sound, equally steeped in roots rock, hooky garage pop, vintage punk, and urban folk music, is readily on offer on this unabashedly political album. Co-produced with Stewart Lerman and performed by Nile's road band, this set is assembled from 12 unreleased songs old and new, soldered together in the urgency of the era. Cristina Arrigoni's iconic black-and-white sleeve images of street denizens are riveting, drenched in layers of meaning.