Swag

On his brilliant 2015 debut album, Coming Home, Texas singer/songwriter Leon Bridges invited comparisons to Sam Cooke and Otis Redding with his authentic take on soul. Good Thing, his 2018 follow-up, finds Bridges leaving the ’50 and ’60s, instead embracing ’70s icons like The Stylistics (“Bet Ain’t Worth the Hand”) and Chic (“You Don’t Know”). More surprises come in “If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be)” and “Bad Bad News,” contemporary jams that show he can swag it out with the likes of Usher and Pharrell too. Bridges' warm tenor is sturdy and smoky as mesquite wood as he combines deep emotions and nimble wordplay on “Beyond,” “Forgive You,” and “Georgia to Texas”—a moving story of his family’s history.

In 2013, David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label released Who is William Onyeabor?, a compilation of the obscure, but increasingly influential Nigerian musician William Onyeabor. Now (in 2014) follows a 9xCD box set that collects the entirety of Onyeabor’s recorded output.

In the early '70s, Paul Kossoff was a much-heralded young guitarist from a much-heralded young rock band called Free. In a short period of time, Kossoff and his cohorts punched out some classic rock. A brief solo career followed for the inspired axeman, but his untimely death in 1976 from a drug-related heart attack put an end to the potential that his peers and fans were looking forward to seeing fully realized. All one can do is celebrate and enjoy what this stylistically unique and utterly precocious musician left behind, and this 17-track disc, which culls Kossoff's best work from both his days with Free and as a solo performer, is an excellent way to do just that. A player who made his name with unusual phrasings, brazen fills, and an intuitive use of sustained notes – and rarely going for fretboard-smoking speed – Kossoff had a prototypical signature sound. His ability to do the work of two guitarists – Free, for the most part, was a barebones guitar/bass/drums/singer outfit – was one of his greatest strengths and, despite a good deal of studio dubbing, you can hear it in places on this album. The best cuts are definitely the eight Free tracks, which include the raunchy "The Hunter," the good-time rock-blues of "Ride on a Pony," the dramatic "Fire and Water" and "Mr. Big," and the band's all-time classic, "All Right Now".