FLY or DIE II: bird dogs of paradise

Branch lends her voice to the cause on this helping of trumpet-led avant-garde jazz, and she's not leaving any room for ambiguous interpretation: she calls out racist America (stylized "Amerikkka") in an 11-minute spiritual exploration of the country's rotten soul. And that trumpet tone? Almost like something out of a Spaghetti Western. I wonder if that's part of the commentary. Most of the album is instrumental--as jazz usually is--until we reach the final track, where Branch follows in the footsteps of Carly Simon by calling out the "assholes and clowns" without saying who they are... because they already know who they are. (Pssst... it's no secret. She told NPR that they're the ranting right-wingers who tried to control the political narrative of the 2018 U.S. Midterm elections.)