10 new album music releases to bring you out on the town

Do you believe that today’s protest music is lacking in quality? And up until I started looking for it, so did I. The fact is that it has always been there, although on occasion it might be a little challenging to discover. Every month, I look for it, listen to it all, and then compile the finest of it that connects to the political news of the month. This compilation covers April 2023.

1. Album Music– VARIOUS ARTISTS – MANIF HITS (LA BO DES LUTTES) 

On April 2, as protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension changes grew in France, pop artist Girl In Red from Norway was performing in Paris. They shouted “Macron, démission!” (“Macron, resign!”) when she requested them to teach her some French. A compilation CD of tracks based on the strikers’ shouts was issued by the French dance music record company DME two days after they had been recorded. It contains the pro-feminist catchphrase and dance “Because of Macron,” emphasizing how his pension plans discriminate against women. As the label said, “We thought of a compilation whose profits would be donated to the strike funds as we were afraid the movement would run out of steam.” Beyond providing financial assistance, the main goal is to maintain the flame. It was made available on reputable music service Bandcamp. Yet there were also plans for a walkout by Bandcamp employees.

2. Album Music – RACHEL BAIMAN – COMMON NATION OF SORROW

Maladroit, a group of French musicians that includes members of the DME, issued their latest punk album on April 7; it criticizes anti-union millionaires. It is said in the song “Rich Assholes Won’t Save the World” that Jeff Bezos “won’t make a change. Inside the warehouse, modern slaves sob… Elon Musk, who has sent automobiles into space, won’t change. Musk, who is being sued for firing workers without giving them any notice, lost $US13 billion ($20 billion) when his enterprise was rocked by scandal. A few days before, fellow US resident Rachel Baiman’s brand-new folk CD, which criticizes Musk and his like, was published. How many guys do you believe it takes to create a self-made man, asks the daughter of a political activist in the popular song “Self Made Man”? To perform as well as he can, how many fingers must he tread on? Do you really wish to hang out and participate in a small part of his own self-made scheme?

3. Album Music – CARSIE BLANTON – BODY OF WORK

The latest record by fellow American folk musician Carsie Blanton, who has the same activist outlook as Baiman, was published on April 21. Veteran activist from Philadelphia who calls her songs “anthems for a world worth saving” “Now they call it a riot because we ain’t keepin’ quiet,” she says in the song “Out In The Streets” from the album. However, if you are listening, we are aware that you do not accept it. They claim that we have been stealing, but who is the actual criminal? When we are struggling to make ends meet while they are making a killing. So tonight, my pals and I go singing in the streets. We’re going to fight, all of my depressed buddies. Poison Run, who share Blanton’s hometown of Philadelphia, released a new album on April 12 that gives their preferred subgenre of punk with a medieval influence a twist. Singer Mac Kennedy declared, “Instead of knights in shining armor and dragons, it’s a peasant revolt.”

4. Album Music – THE UNDERCOVER HIPPY – POOR LITTLE ENGLAND

On April 17, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s wife lost £49 million ($91 million) in the ancient motherland that served as the inspiration for Poison Run. The couple’s ability to absorb such losses has reignited discussion about the wealth disparity in Britain. Shakin’ Stevens, the 1980s top-selling singles singer in Britain, decried this inequity in the release of a new album on April 28. He snarls, “Welcome to the firm, welcome to the house of lies,” in the song “All You Need Is Greed.” All you need to take the fools on a trip is greed. Since he began his career playing Young Communist League tournaments, his new approach may not be as shocking as some have implied. The new album from former drum and bass rapper The Undercover Hippy, Poor Little England, which takes aim at many generations of British politicians, from past PMs Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson to the present dictatorship of “Rishi Rich,” is less shocking.

5. Album Music – DAVID ROVICS – KILLING THE MESSENGER

April 11 commemorated four years since WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange was detained in London’s maximum security Belmarsh jail, illustrating the bleak reality of British politics as it still is. Veteran protest musician David Rovics had streamed his new Assange-themed record, Killing The Messenger, four days prior. He sings in the album’s lead single, “Wikileaks was too effective, it had to be beaten out, let there be no doubt,”. The majority of us are just standing by, waiting for this prisoner to die, and now they want to kill the messenger. The media’s part in defaming Assange was highlighted by award-winning media analysts Media Lens on April 18, who also demonstrated how journalists were murdering another messenger. The Washington Post and New York Times worked to have US airman Jack Texeira jailed rather than publishing the highly secret military data he had released a week earlier.

6. Album Music – YAEJI – WITH A HAMMER

The Texeira leak demonstrated how the US was snooping even on allies like South Korea while threatening China and charging it with spying. On April 24, Australia announced an increase in its criticism of Beijing by adding an additional $19 billion for missiles aimed at its largest trade partner, China, to the $368 billion it is already spending on nuclear-powered submarines. The Sydney “Warmongering” Herald described the news as “admirable” despite months of red-baiting China. Yaeji, a South Korean musician living in New York who just released a new album on April 7, would not be blind to the hypocrisy. The enormous hammers she has fashioned to express her rage at anti-Asian bigotry are referenced in the book’s title and cover image. Due to one major factor—possibly the coolest-sounding music you’ll hear all year—her cutting-edge, inventive electronica—expressing such beliefs is unlikely to restrict her audience.

7. Album Music – REG MEUROSS – STOLEN FROM GOD

British nobles who benefitted from slavery are reportedly pressing their nation to pay reparations as a way of atoning for such prejudice, according to a story published on the news website Quartz on April 24. Britain sent 3.1 million Africans to its colonies in the Caribbean, as well as to North and South America, trading more slaves than almost any other nation. Reg Meuross, a white British folk musician, has published his latest album, “Documenting It All,” on April 7. An CD with the subtitle “a song cycle unfolding the history of England’s involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade” received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Check out Dave Okumu’s CD, which came out a week later, for perspective from individuals who were personally impacted. According to the album’s liner notes, “I Came From Love is a tapestry of the Black experience that explores ancestry, the legacy of slavery, what it means to exist in an unjust society, and Okumu’s own family history.”

8. Album Music – NAKHANE – BASTARD JARGON

On April 5, gay house music artist Nakhane discussed their new album, which “probes deep cultural and political questions” in South Africa, the country with the worst reputation for colonial racism. Specifically as a South African, my entire existence has been politicized, they remarked while discussing the song “Tell Me Your Politik,” which advises finding out someone’s views before having sex with them. As a result, “Tell Me Your Politik” was merely a song that I thought should sound fierce but yet joyful. They were talking about National Public Radio, which said on April 12 that it had stopped uploading content to Twitter after its owner, Elon Musk, mistakenly referred to it as “state-affiliated media” and subsequently “government-funded media” on the social networking site. Quartz noted that more government financing goes to Musk’s businesses than to NPR. Musk has already made Twitter a less welcoming place for transgender individuals.

9. Album Music – TERRY – CALL ME TERRY

Musk frequently criticizes the mainstream media. As a result, he shocked many when he was photographed sitting close to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch at this year’s Super Bowl, despite Murdoch’s newspaper dubbing Musk a “$61 billion joke”. On April 18, Murdoch made news once more when he paid the manufacturer of voting machines Dominion $US787 million ($1.2 billion) for falsely alleging that it manipulated the 2021 US presidential election. The latest record by Melbourne indie band Terry, which criticizes Murdoch, was released on April 14. “Call Me Terry is the most political album yet from a band that was already nearly monomaniacal in its study of Australia’s rotted colonial legacy,” wrote US music journal Pitchfork. Each song is shown alongside a picture of a politically divisive location on the album’s sleeve, such as the BHP mining company’s headquarters or a News Corp. skyscraper owned by Rupert Murdoch.

10. Album Music – SCARLETT COOK – REQUIEM FOR THE EARTH

Scarlett Cook, a fellow Melbourne musician, examines Australia’s corrupt colonial heritage in her most recent gothic classical CD. She states in the liner notes of the April 19-released CD, “We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which this album was written and recorded,” That is, “Sovereignty never ceded.” We can’t escape what we have done, the multi-instrumentalist froths on the opening track as she leaps from a whisper to a shriek. We have to accept who we’ve become. numb and emotionally desensitized. Slaves of the tools and the weapons… We are no longer able to exploit her. We can’t deface her anymore. She is irreplaceable. “Mother Earth.” Activists who took non-violent direct action for the environment were penalized a week before its publication. The Australian Labor Party, however, was described as “like negotiating with the fossil fuel industry” by the Green Party.