If there's a latent hesitancy in the title of
What Will We Do
,
Lula Wiles
' debut for
Smithsonian Folkways
, there's nothing tentative about the trio on this 2019 album.
Isa Burke
Eleanor Buckland
, and
Mali Obomsawin
project a confidence throughout
, an attitude reflected in the casual swagger of their string band as well as their flinty tales of living in the murk of modern America. Sometimes, their songs are pointedly barbed, as on the skewering of anti-Native American prejudice on "Good Old American Values," sometimes the tunes are wildly funny, as on the rollicking "Nashville Man" where the narrator cops to her own naivete. What ties these two extremes togethers is how the trio sings with a deadpan clarity while playing with vigor: a combination that makes their tunes cut deep and the album resonate long after it's stopped spinning. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine