Ben Nichols & Rick Steff — Lucero Unplugged (Liberty & Lament)

While none can deny the sheer power of Lucero as a quintet, this intimate release, featuring singer-songwriter Nichols and pianist Rick Steff reinterpreting the band’s catalog as a duet, highlights the weave of the singer’s guitar and Steff’s piano with a power all its own. It’s a compelling reminder of the focused, poetic soul at the heart of Nichols’ writing.

Bobby Rush & Kenny Wayne Shepherd — Young Fashioned Ways (Thirty Tigers)

While Rush sought out this collab with Shepherd as a fellow Louisiana native, this full-band pairing, cut at Royal Studios, has a truckload of Memphis in it. With Rush singing and blowing harp over Shepherd’s gritty guitar grooves, there’s an undeniable chemistry between them.

Frank McLallen — Extra Eyes (Red Curtain)

Within this album’s lo-fi aesthetic are moments of sparse quietude and layers of soulful harmonies over chord changes reminiscent of the Beach Boys or Bowie. The album’s closest antecedent might be Tyrannosaurus Rex, but the greatest revelation is hearing McLallen’s voice in a new register, his expressive baritone given more space than in his noisier bands. This is the sound of a man taking stock of his life via lovely melodies, folk-pop riffs, and swinging, swaggering vocals.

Joe Restivo — A Beautiful Friendship (Warbler)

The jazz guitar ace made this album much as artists would have half a century ago, recording live direct-to-tape at Phillips Recording Service as Scott Bomar engineered, playing with fellow ringers Charlie Wood on organ and Renardo Ward on drums. There’s a refreshingly light, swinging mood throughout — the sound of three cats having fun, at the top of their game. Restivo’s originals hold up beside his choice of standards.

Laundry Bats — Hangin On A String (HoZac)

Brevity is the soul of wit, and also punk defiance. Once they heard his laser-focused songwriting, erstwhile Oblivians Greg Cartwright and Jack Yarber rushed to collaborate with Abe White (Manateees/True Sons of Thunder) and the results are electrifying. White has mastered in-your-face confrontation, but with the messy hooks and trenchant ideas of early New York Dolls, and more Stonesy swagger than the Stones themselves have these days.

Lawrence Matthews — Between Mortal Reach & Posthumous Grip

Matthews shrugs off his Don Lifted persona and embraces a more authentic, harder-edged version of himself. After the opener, “Green Grove (Our Loss),” begins with classic soul strings, the track briefly dips into hazy atmospherics until a harder-hitting beat kicks in. Elsewhere, country blues voices pepper the album. Matthews’ new voice is one of grim determination, mixed with a new playfulness that might even make it scarier.  

North Mississippi Allstars – Still Shakin’ (New West)

An oblique tribute to the group’s breakout album, Shake Hands With Shorty, this marks the Dickinson brothers’ evolution as artists. Yes, the Hill Country blues are all over this LP, but so are refreshingly lyrical breakdowns and sonic delights like clavinet and synth bass that still slot right in with the traditional strings and world boogie beats. And the collage of different cameos makes it a truly communal celebration.

Optic Sink — Lucky Number (Feel It)

Compared to their earlier work, the beats are more complex, the arrangements more nuanced, and, with Keith Cooper’s bass more integral than ever, the bottom more heavy. The synth-centered band has always recorded on actual hardware as three humans, and singer-songwriter Natalie Hoffmann’s inclination to play guitar again, first apparent on Glass Blocks, has only grown on this album. Her deadpan vocals have taken on an aggressive tone, that, paradoxically, also gives way to out and out singing. 

The Pop Ritual — The Columns
(Thisco/Black & Wyatt)

Arguably the best gothic techno rock in the nation right now, these Memphians capture our current dystopian era with gripping intensity. Think “Wardance” by Killing Joke, and you’re in the right neighborhood, yet the chants, ambient touches, and sick synth sounds give this album the individual stamp of a group that has always kept things inventive. 

Southern Avenue — Family
(Alligator)

Producer John Burk allows the band to breathe here as never before. And as they drink in the air of the Jackson sisters’ North Mississippi roots more deeply than ever, their personal odyssey becoming a journey into the very building blocks of the blues themselves, to be pulled apart and reassembled just as Southern Avenue sees fit, as they’ve never been heard before.

Tav Falco — Desire on Ice (ORG Music)

While Falco, a man without a country, is no longer a Memphian, this reworking of his back catalog, much of it composed here, captures the surreal combination of genres he’s mined all his life. Yet all of it is reframed by the overarching blend of crime jazz, blues, and rock crafted by musical director Mario Monterosso. Songs born decades apart fit together in a grandiose frame of espionage and intrigue, even as disparate talents from Falco’s past, including Charlie Musselwhite, make their cameos.

Tony Thomas Three — Get With This! (Southern Grooves)

Recorded live to tape at Matt Ross-Spang’s Southern Grooves studio, this trio’s debut album oozes raw Memphis groove played with utter ease by three jazz masters. As with many classic organ trios, compelling originals sit neatly with imaginative reinterpretations of pop songs from the likes of Hall and Oates. Thomas has played the Hammond all his life, and Charlton Johnson (guitar) and Ken Coomer (drums) are similarly seasoned. A study in pure musical chemistry.

Archival release of the year:

Various Artists — Stax Revue: Live in ’65! (Craft Recordings)

A pure slice of Stax magic in its early years, this double LP pairs performances at Memphis’ Club Paradise with shows in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles soon thereafter, at the 5-4 Ballroom, only days before the Watts Riots erupted. Booker T. & the M.G.s can be heard with their then-new bassist, “Duck” Dunn, along with Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, the Astors, Wendy Rene, David Porter, and others. While the Memphis show is loose yet energized, the Watts show is incendiary.