MUSIC REVIEWS

Childish Gambino, “3.15.20” (RCA)

Considering that Donald Glover has said “3.15.20” is his final album — and that it’s his first in four years — you’d think he could have come up with a proper title.

Instead, the rapper-actor-writer-Renaissance man who calls himself Childish Gambino as a musician decided to name it for the date it first appeared on the internet. (It then disappeared briefly before its official release March 22, but that’s another story.)

Most of the songs are also identified by their time stamps, such as “24.19” and “47.48,” but that’s the only thing even slightly undercooked about this 12-track collection.

The new album is the follow-up to 2016’s “Awaken, My Love!” and combines that album’s deliciously deep George Clinton-style psychedelic funk with the aggressive, experimental edge of Gambino’s 2018 track “This Is America,” his interrogation of racial violence.

Glover as Gambino raps and sings, compares himself to Afrobeat founder Fela Kuti (on “53.49”), and even goes a little bit country, on “35.31.” “Algorhythm” takes a page out of “Yeezus”-era Kanye West as it builds martial, mechanical momentum, then effortlessly slides into a chorus that finds the soul in the machine.

Elsewhere, the entirely impressive “3.15.20” nods to Prince without being merely imitative. “Time” features Ariana Grande on a guest vocal, conveying end-of-theworld paranoia that speaks to the moment.

At the album’s core are two songs about fathers and sons. On “19.10” Glover remembers his father instilling black pride in his 6-yearold self. And “47.48” ends with a cautiously optimistic conversation between Glover and his own son. “Are you scared of the world? Is it hard to live?” he sings. “Just take care of your soul/ Let the beauty unfold.” — Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

Sufjan Stevens, Lowell Brams “Aporia” (Asthmatic Kitty)

Sufjan Stevens’ last song-oriented album was 2015’s “Carrie & Lowell,” an understated, heartwrenching response to his mother’s death and to her relationship with his stepfather, Lowell Brams. The new “Aporia,” in part, commemorates Brams’ retirement from running Asthmatic Kitty Records, the label Stevens and Brams started in 1999.

It’s billed as a New Age album, inspired by Brian Eno, Boards of Canada, Vangelis and Enya, and it grew out of improvisational jam sessions. It’s nearly wordless and mostly vocal-less, with brief tracks built on ambient keyboard drones and oscillating textures.

The word “aporia” can mean a puzzle or an impasse, and many of the album’s song titles are also Greek philosophical terms that will probably send you to a dictionary: “Misology,” “Ataraxia,” “Eudaimonia.”

Over the course of its 42 minutes and 21 tracks, sounds gradually burble to the surface and then fade, leaving placid keyboard tones.

While there are fascinating moments — the percussion that propels “What It Takes,” the voices that rise out of the ether in “Climb That Mountain” — the tracks feel fragmentary and disconnected. They’re not long enough to allow a listener to sink into a mood, and most are not structured or layered enough to lead to a climax.

On albums such as 2005’s brilliant “Illinois,” Stevens crafted thrillingly complex arrangements. “Aporia” is about tone and atmosphere rather than narrative and melody. It’s a set of glimpses. — Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer

Clem Snide, “Forever Just Beyond” (Ramseur/Thirty Tigers)

There have been many iterations of Clem Snide over the years but by now it’s turned into a personal alias for Eef Barzelay. “Forever Just Beyond” shows him and his current ensemble at their most quietly devastating.

Produced by Scott Avett, who also performs and helped write some of the material, the predominantly acoustic album contains soothing melodies and gentle interpretations tackling weighty subjects like life, death and transcendence.

Barzelay and Avett are a great creative match with the help of an ace backing group, and the songs’ philosophical musings make for keenly melodic observations on the circumstances of our fleeting lives.

Like Steely Dan, the Clem Snide moniker is also taken from the William S. Burroughs oeuvre and refers to a recurring character who also stars as a private eye. It’s an apt analogy for Barzelay’s own inquisitiveness.

Album opener “Roger Ebert” centers on some of the movie critic’s final words — “It’s all an elaborate hoax” — and the passage from this life into whatever comes next. The title track, one of the album’s most meticulous, attempts to define the divine as something outside the confines of faith and reason: “God is simply that which lies forever just beyond the limit of what we already seem to know.”

“The True Shape Your Heart” is beautifully but heartbrokenly romantic and here Barzelay sounds halfway between Ron Sexsmith and Nick Cave. “Ballad of Eef Barzelay” reinforces the wastefulness and futility of suicide, while “Emily” provides a tough recipe for changing the world — start with yourself and “be more kind and brave in the face of it all.”

Closer “Some Ghost,” one of the Avett co-writes, is another atmospheric musical gem with lyrics trying to make sense of the voices trapped in our head and point to a way out.

The Israeli-born, Nashvillebased Barzelay describes his past decade as a “rollercoaster of deep despair and amazing opportunities,” including divorce, bankruptcy and a fan’s generous donation. With “Forever Just Beyond,” Barzelay shows that he’s made the most of this chance he got. — Pablo Gorondi, The Associated Press