Reviews: New releases from The Late Ones, Men in Grey Suits, Kimo Kahoano and Kamuela ­Kahoano

“Lately,” The Late Ones (Easy Star)

“Babylon exists, I see her every day. In the eyes of my brothers. She leads them astray. Anything a man desire, she grants I. Confusing I and I with wicked lie.”

That’s the refrain as The Late Ones — expatriate Hawaii residents Tui Avei and Tau Avei, and their cousin, Josh Brunson — take another step closer to releasing a full-length album with the release of this four-song EP. The lead song, titled “Babylon Exists,” combines Afro-Caribbean rhythms and Rastafari social perspectives with mainstream American hip-hop vocabulary to deliver a smooth-flowing indictment of the seductive Babylon system. (“Babylon” is the Rastafari term for governments and other “downpressor” institutions that seek to hold “Jah people” in bondage.) The trio’s call for a better world in which to “prosper off the gifts that Jah gives” and “make His word spread” is as timeless as the tenets of the Rastafari faith they’re claiming.

The songs that follow present variations of that message. “Brother’s Keeper” calls on the listener to “be thy brother’s keeper, give him some ‘ope” and calls on everyone to have each other’s back. “The Noose” takes a harsh look back at the history of racial oppression in America and the continuing struggle for racial equality.

These four songs are an enticing preview of the CD that is scheduled for release later this year.

Visit thelateones.com.

“Village Eater,” Men in Grey Suits (Men in Grey Suits)

The Men in Grey Suits have been playing what they call “volcanic surf rock” — a stirring blend of early 1960s surf guitar rock and the variants that evolved out of it — since 2012. One of their consistent strengths is their success in creating songs that bring those old hits to mind without copying or cloning them.

The band shows its sense of humor with song titles — “Marianas Trenchcoat” and “Something Ate My Plate Lunch.” The group also shows its command of the genre with an intriguing spectrum of moods, tempos and intensities.

Island filmmakers should be looking here for soundtrack material.

The group reveals in the liner notes that the cover art is a painting by Yves Klein titled “Cosmic Elephant;” that the person heard talking on a song titled “Aquapede” is Commodore Ben H. Wyatt addressing the residents of Bikini Atoll in 1946, and that “Alvin Fejarang lives on through this music in the form of various supplemental cymbal ­recordings made during the ‘Return of the ­Cnidarians’ sessions.” (Fejarang, who is also remembered as a member of Kalapana in the 1970s, died in 2017.) This is all good information to learn.

For more, go to meningreysuits.com.

“Where the Sand Meets the Sea,” Kimo Kahoano and Kamuela ­Kahoano (Green Light Go HI Productions)

Kimo Kahoano is known primarily as a Waikiki showroom entertainer and television show host, but his 1982 hit single “Aloha Friday,” gave him a major credit as a Hawaii recording artist. His sons — Ikaika, Haku and Kamuela — recorded together as a trio, Ano, in 1999.

Kamuela Kahoano continued to write and record with other musicians in the groups Green Light Go and Analog/Analogic, and then as a solo artist. He won a Na Hoku Hanohano Award (best rock album) for his first solo album “Stream Dreams” in 2011, and a second, for his EP, “Higher,” last year.

This four-song project is the first time that Kimo ­Kahoano has recorded with one of his sons.

The title song — a catchy contemporary hapa haole song with a calypso flavor — is the one that they wrote together. Kimo is the voice on “My Love Is True,” a mournful tale of missing a departed love and promising to wait forever.

Kamuela delivers a much brighter view on the ups and downs of relationships with “Love You Anyway,” and closes the project with a second solo number, “See You Soon,” an ukulele instrumental.

Visit facebook.com/KamuelaMusic.