Fans have been awaiting Bbymutha’s debut LP for some time now, and in November she finally confirmed it was done. With the release of “Club Secret,” listeners at last get a taste. Opening with hair-raising whispers and a backbeat that feels like rebellion, the Chattanooga rapper’s latest confronts its audience with a pivotal question: “Who gon’ check me?” Throughout the track, Bbymutha reminds the world that she’s a force to be reckoned with, every line a warning of the danger of undervaluing her: “Who gon’ disrespect me? / You might as well forget me / If you ready, I might whip this deadly.” Produced by Rock Floyd and Kindora (who also appears on standout cuts like “Sleeping With The Enemy” and “Toxic”), “Club Secret” is a deliciously bold and seamless proclamation. Like an ouroboros, the track circles back to its crystalized thesis. A question and an answer at once, “Club Secret” feels like an omen. [Dianca London Potts]
Did the county lineman ever realize that he inspired one of the 20th century’s most beautiful, enigmatic love songs? Driving down an Oklahoma highway in 1968, Jimmy Webb glimpsed a solitary worker on a telephone pole, silhouetted in the sunset. Webb put him in a song that became aGlen Campbell hit and a pop standard, covered by everyone from Ray Charles and Kool & The Gang to R.E.M. North Carolina’s Skylar Gudasz is the latest singer to take the measure of the sailing melody, which perfectly suits her cool, tranquil chime of a voice. She and her band uncover a grain of dusky noir beneath the original’s lush pastel clouds, but the essence remains: the whistle of wind in wires, the murmur of lovelorn thoughts, and the exquisite loneliness of being one of two silhouettes in a vast landscape, each so imaginable but so inaccessible to the other. [Brian Howe]
