Mai

Heart On My Sleeve is the sophomore album by English-songwriter Ella Mai. The album is the follow-up to her highly successful self-titled debut album. Back in 2018, English R&B singer Ella Mai scored one of the year's defining hits in "Boo'd Up," a cozy ballad inflected with the swing and percussions of West Coast rap that was followed by "Trip," another smash ("Boo'd Up" would go on to win a Best R&B Song Grammy). The new offering from the London-born songstress features tracks with the self-proclaimed “Queen of Da Souf'' rapstress Latto; Ella’s longtime collaborator, singer-songwriter Lucky Daye; and Grammy Award®-winning artist Roddy Ricch.

L'arbre de mai (The Tree of May) is a terrifically presented album of early Renaissance music, one that tries to place the listener inside the musical culture of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and does a highly imaginative – sometimes overactively imaginative – job of it. The album divides its 19 works into four thematic groups: Love and Youth, the Tree of May, War and the King, and the Evening of Life. Within each group, works by high-Netherlandish composers like Dufay and Compère are mixed with anonymous works of a more popular quality, and vocal works alternate with instrumental dances.

Enzo Capuano released this mostly instrumental gem on a small label in the mid 1970s. Born in Calabria in 1947, Capuano is a talented guitarist and vocalist who would go on to perform outside the progressive realm for years to come. After this album Enzo would do some acting and have a career in the Chemistry field before returning to singing in the late '80s. Often written off by proggers who got the impression this was a strictly singer-songwriter affair it will surprise many who hear it. It's an interesting progressive album in the form of a long, connected instrumental suite combining some of the Italian folk traditions with a bit different approach than many of the other classic period Italian prog bands. Rather than the manic, wild, anything-goes approach of the day Enzo presents a more measured surface sound that finds its own way of sounding special.