“When We Swam” has its roots in old time-y rock ‘n’ roll, and as such places its emphasis on the hips, both musically and lyrically. The beat swings gently but with a flirty assurance, and Thao’s words, delivered with a sultry assertiveness, border on outright lasciviousness. There’s no getting around the lust in this music, much less the cocktail of anxieties that inform the experience of the character in the song as she attempts to hold on to something slippery and elusive. Innocent is not the right word to describe this, but there’s a charming youthful ease on display here, and though the song is spiked with nerves, it’s not overbearing at all. If anything, the angst and complication is just part of the fun.

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There are a lot of ways that a Broadway production based upon the life and music of Fela Kuti could go wrong or just be sort of unbearably hokey, but Fela! by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones is an excellent, engaging show that brings Afrobeat into an unlikely context without diluting the music or condescending to either the source material or the theater audience. The production is built around the conceit that you are at Fela’s personal club The Shrine in Lagos, and he is hosting his show and explaining the circumstances of his life via monologue and his music. The narrative is fairly didactic in the first act, including an entertaining explanation of Afrobeat involving demonstrations of the various musical influences on the distinct sound, and more abstracted in the second, which climaxes with a spectacular, impressionistic dance-centric set piece. The story can get a bit wobbly at some points, but the narrative thread is secondary to the brilliance of the music, which is performed by Antibalas, and Jones’ choreography, which is so amazing as to seem unreal.

Given that he is the center of every scene, Fela is an extraordinarily demanding role, and as such there are two actors in the role, switching off shows through the week. I was lucky enough to see a performance featuring Sahr Ngaujah, the primary Fela. Ngaujah is a truly astonishing actor, and he inhabits the role of the charismatic firebrand with freakish grace as he speaks, sings, dances, and plays his saxophone. It’s very hard to imagine the show even existing without him — the skill set is so specific, the performance is so demanding. He’s built like a superhero and has a level of talent that forces you to wonder how a person such as himself can even exist. I trust that Kevin Mambo, the secondary Fela, is very good in the part as well, but it’s hard to imagine that there are many other men who could handle this, much less surpass Ngaujah.

Aside from some narrative issues, the show is not without flaw. The role of Sandra, the American woman who brings Fela to radical politics, is somewhat miscast. Saycon Sengbloh is a fine actress and singer, but her mannered approach to the part does not convey enough passion or excitement to properly sell this pivotal moment in the story, which happens to include what I must assume is the world’s first dance tribute to reading.

Fela! is obviously not the most pure expression of Afrobeat music you are going to find, and its depiction of Kuti borders on hagiography, but it is remarkable in the way it brings the music and aesthetic to theater without diluting the essence of the material. Fela’s songs are abridged and contextualized to fit the narrative, but it’s neither a standard jukebox musical or a bad cover version. It’s perhaps best to think of this work as a world class Afrobeat revue, complete with a light history lesson for those new to the sound that does not insult the intelligence of those who are already familiar with Fela’s life and music.

Buy Fela’s music from Amazon. Buy tickets to see Fela! on Broadway.

I entirely ignored tUnE-yArDs for the better part of this year entirely because I don’t like the name, and every time I saw it in print in promo emails et al I figured it was just another boring band of dudes. This is not the case. tUnE-yArDs is the work of one woman, Merrill Garbus, and her music is so distinct and atypical that I fumble when I try to think of how to describe her in terms of genre.

The songs on her debut album BiRd-BrAiNs are recorded on somewhat crappy equipment as if they were field recordings, but there is a great deal of manipulation in the production, yielding stark contrasts in fidelity and sound level within the pieces. For example, a guitar or ukulele part may be recorded with a crisp, clean tone, but percussion will get blown out and clipped before switching to a more typical sound while shifting placement in the mix. It sounds primitive but it’s an incredibly deliberate and considered work, and the variety of textures floating throughout the album lends a dynamic subtext and the feeling of shifting physical planes. More than any other album in 2009 aside from perhaps Micachu’s Jewellery, BiRd-BrAiNs sounds like something you could reach out and touch, even if the physical sensation would not be consistently pleasant.

Garbus’ compositions are seldom fixed in any particular genre, but she leans heavy on folk, R&B, and miscellaneous African influences. Melody and rhythm come easily to her, but the most striking aspect of her album is her voice, which is fiercely expressive and presented plainly with only natural reverb, so her boldest moments are almost shockingly dry and matter-of-fact. At some points, as when she tenses up to emphatically spit out the words “We can pretend it’s Christmas while we’re locked here in this box / while my brother and all his friends whip out their tiny teenage cocks / if I scream, they’ll hear us or they’ll stop to lull the cops” in “Lions,” it’s a sound of flattened horror. In other tracks, as in the gorgeous, nearly anthemic single “Sunlight,” she starts off with a delicate vocal tone that gradually hardens as sweetness becomes desperation, and desperation gives way to self-preservation. There is a fantastic balance here — raw and focused, immediate and careful, calculated intimacy. You can hear the seams in its construction, but Garbus always sounds entirely present and engaged on a level that goes beyond typical studio performance.

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Lily Allen is very good at writing songs that bluntly articulate deep, painful fears, particularly those rooted in extremely cynical conventional wisdom about how life works. Even when it is clear that she’s writing from a satirical perspective, it’s hard to imagine that she entirely disagrees with everything she’s singing — she might not want some things to be true or entirely believe that they are, but she’s aware of some very ugly realities. Things may not be quite as bad as they seem in her lyrics, but chances are, your insecurities are quite valid.

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The best songs on Julian Casablancas’ solo debut are the ones in which he sounds just like himself but not much at all like the Strokes, forcing us to reckon with the notion that the two things are not as synonymous as we’d previously thought. This is a bit like playing dress-up, and for the most part, Casablancas has sense enough to only indulge in drag that flatters his features. I’m not sure what exactly you call a song like “4 Chords of the Apocalypse” — Rec room balladry? Sad prom rock? — but you’ve heard this sort of thing many times before, and he slips into it so naturally that it hardly feels like pastiche. He sounds battered and leveled by love, or whatever approximation of love got him to this weakened state. He’s still got some pride though, even if it’s just sticking to his guns in the face of total romantic disaster: “Don’t you know that if a time warp was open, I’d stand right in my place?” You feel for him, but at the same time you just wish he’d know enough to give up the fight.

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The lyrics to “Golden Phone” are like an explanation for all of Micachu’s music: She’s fascinated by every bit of sound around her, but it’s somehow so elusive and overwhelming. The world turns, her body moves, and love comes and goes but she’s just trying to capture and make sense of “that nonsense sound.” This epiphany comes in her most relaxed and streamlined composition, which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. It’s still restless, though. Eyes closed, ears open.

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Experimental Dental School “Basement Fever”

Experimental Dental School strike an interesting, appealing balance between backwoods rock and arty European grooviness, as if to imagine a synthesis of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Can. I’m more attracted to the Kraut-ish elements here, but the shift from eeriness to crunchiness in this song is good for an easy thrill.

Get it for free from the Experimental Dental School website.

Charlotte Hatherley’s new album New Worlds is obsessed with color, to such an extent that nearly every track describes understanding experiences and emotions via color metaphors rendered in sound and words. The art comes from a synesthetic point-of-view more than it evokes synethesia itself, but in a way the former is more intriguing. At points Hatherley sounds like a crackpot, but in the context of her dynamic, perky pop songs, her thrill in color and fascination with life becomes a visceral sensation. In “Little Sahara,” she imagines seeing her lover only as abstracted colorful light, casting aside the body for a total emotional freedom. The idea drifts off, but her excitement does not as the chorus hits over and over with urgency and desire. That’s the fun of New Worlds — not only does it shift perspective, but it embraces the joy of finding new things to see and love in the world around you.

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The singer — I’m not sure of their gender! — sounds rather like Geddy Lee, and the band makes the Arcade Fire sound like a very restrained duo. The song starts with a choral section, and builds to an arena ballad of symphonic majesty. Just so you know, that’s what you’re in for here. Oh No Ono may have a silly name, but they are not fucking around, and as over-the-top as this gets, the emotion and drama of the piece is never tainted by either self-serious pomposity or self-conscious irony. Hugeness does not seem to be the goal it and of itself, but simply what the song must be to properly communicate its feeling. As ornate as the arrangement may be, the most beautiful part of the song is the chorus, which washes over like cool waves, a melodic turn of nearly child-like simplicity in the middle of this epic piece.

Buy it from Oh No Ono.

Spiral Stairs “True Love”

Kannberg’s new music mostly takes its cues from Neil Young and mid-period Bob Dylan, and to a certain extent, the ragged yet expansive sound suits his strengths as a guitarist and his weaknesses as an often aggravatingly nasal vocalist. “True Love”, the album opener, is confident and sharp despite feeling more than a bit generic, and tracks like “Maltese T” and “Cold Change” are minor works, yet successful on their own terms. (More)

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U.S.E. “River Of Love”

The band, who wisely shortened their name from the rather unwieldy United State of Electronica in the five years since the release of their debut album, specialize in evoking delirious bliss and positive vibes by melding the style of post-Daft Punk house music, twee indie rock, and a sort of “Sesame Street”-esque funk. Their formula can produce some truly outstanding and uplifting tracks– “Emerald City” and “La Discoteca” from their debut, “All the World” and “River of Love” on this album– but the catch is, you have to already be in an upbeat mood to appreciate the full effect of the music. (More)

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Telekinesis “Tokyo”

As much as its songs can fit comfortably in the background, several tracks on Telekinesis! reward closer attention. “Tokyo”, a perky rocker about having dreams so vivid they feel like actual memories, stands out as a prime example of songwriter Michael Benjamin Lerner’s gift for conveying a feeling of relaxed urgency. (More)

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Sleigh Bells “Crown on the Ground”

It’s like the final world-shattering salvo of the Loudness War; a deeply unsubtle scrape of metal-on-metal tones so abrasive that it’s almost shocking to discover that the song isn’t actually some kind of Wolf Eyes-inspired noise experiment, but rather a ridiculously poppy club banger. (More)

Visit the Sleigh Bells MySpace page.)

Frida Hyvönen “Jesus Was A Cross Maker”

Whereas Sill backed away from sentimentality in favor of a cool precision, Hyvönen’s take is devastatingly emotional, with much of its power coming from the contrast of her confident voice and the fragility of her accompaniment. (More)

Buy it from Amazon.