Melody on Music: Conscious

Melody on Music is Pop Heist's regular roundup of new releases from across the spectrum of recorded sound. Here, music critic Melody Esme singles out the most noteworthy drops, from major releases to hidden gems. Consider adding these to your rotation — and if you give them a spin, let us know what you think on Bluesky.

Backxwash: Only Dust Remains [Ugly Hag]

Depression simultaneously makes the horrors of the world more apparent and less transformable. So rather than go either fully socially conscious or fully self-conscious, Backxwash makes her most haunting album out of the struggle to reconcile the numbing horror of one's own existence with the desire to get out there and help repair the world at large. Our leaders would love nothing more than to force us all into a state of misery so palpable we can't leave our beds while they run this planet into the ground. What's there to be done, then? Using whatever platform you have to shout "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is a start. A

McKinley Dixon: Magic, Alive! [City Slang]

The third album from the rare contemporary rapper trying to usher in the jazz/gospel rap renaissance the mid-2010s promised us, this pushes Dixon's literary ambitions even further. "Ever since magic entered my life, I don't know what to believe/But I look up to the sky, realize I'm co-optin' all your themes," he states midway through, punctuating a rap opera with an elaborate yet fairly unassuming allegorical narrative, built around the sort of magical realism influence you'd expect from a man who named his previous album after three Toni Morrison novels. The ambition is admirable, undoubtedly. Yet, as with most story albums, you'll likely get the most out of this when you stop following it as fiction and focus on the truths; "He fell in love with exactly what's gon' keep him caged/Dead presidents with a promise that he's gon' be saved," for one. B+

Little Simz: Lotus [AWAL]

I've always been impressed by Simbi Ajikawo's work without necessarily clicking with it viscerally. Until now, that is, as a real-life betrayal — not romantic, but so deep and painful that you may not have noticed — extracts a palpable, directed intensity from her. It peaks early with the opening trio: the furious "Thief," eerie "Flood," and especially the bouncy, wobbly, and just-plain-fun "Young." But "Lion," "Enough," and "Blood" still deliver on the promise of those early tracks, while "Hollow" offers a finishing blow: "You're not for the culture, you're just for the cult"; "When you're gaslit, that's the work of a deeply insecure person/Emotionally insecure person/I don't expect you're not a flawed person/But I thought you was good at the core, person"; "I accept that life has its ways/But I don't have to forgive to finally be okay." A-

Billy Woods: GOLLIWOG [Backwoodz Studioz]

Generally, the best horrorcore, rather than looking to horror for lyrical inspiration, uses the aesthetics and iconography of the genre to highlight the everyday terror most people face. You probably won't get stabbed to death anytime soon (knock on wood), but you may have your Medicaid taken away, and the ghouls responsible are more despicable than any masked killer — at least Jason Voorhees has the integrity not to lie to you before he slams you against a tree. On his best album since 2019's Hiding Places, Woods brings this idea into the orbit of his literate, disillusioned, historically informed style of writing. On an opener entitled "Jumpscare," with an instrumental that evokes the industrial screech of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's score, he paints a horrifying picture of the rot we've built our lives upon: "One strip of tarmac lay through the wilderness to where the natives work the pits/And you don't eat the shit." Sampling both the When a Stranger Calls remake and Beloved, he refuses to humor the cultural dichotomy between garbage and art. On one called "BLK XMAS," Brusier Wolf raps, "Horror, drama, suspense/It's a thriller if you can pay the rent." The haunting "Waterproof Mascara" samples a woman crying while Woods details the effects a home-life rife with abuse has on a child. Horror is, by and large, a feeling of helplessness, an inability to slow down the unstoppable forces delivering pain and death unto us. And it doesn't get more gutting than "Twelve billion USD hovering over the Gaza Strip/You don't wanna know what it cost to live." Except, maybe, when circumstance forces you yourself to become that force — "It's easy for you, but it's hard for me/To forget the things we did 'cause we had to eat." Prestige horror, torture porn, whatever. Like Crazy Ralph said, we're all doomed. A-

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