Author: Nick Rubin

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Album reviews: Quarantunes

"Con Todo el Mundo," the 2018 album by Khruangbin, is one of our Tunes columnist's recommendations for quarantine listening. Publicity photo

More than ever, we’re treating pop music functionally—we choose and use tunes to get us going in the morning; to set the right vibes for cooking; to get amped for a night out. But creating a functional playlist for others can be perilous. Consider the wedding DJ, who takes responsibility for the entertainment of everyone at the reception, and whose success or failure is rooted not just in his judgments, but in his visible actions. At a reception with 10-year-olds, hippie uncles, and everyone in between, musical tastes can be comically divergent, but it doesn’t matter—if you’re the DJ and they’re not dancing, you’re blowing it.

Sometimes, particularly in tumultuous times, it seems that certain music becomes broadly functional for large swaths of society—it’s been said that Beatlemania was partially the response of a nation in search of joy following JFK’s assassination. Some attributed the sustained popularity of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack to a yearning for simpler times following the tumult of the 2000 election and the shock of 9/11. Now, in the midst of ominous news, upended routines, and multiplying demands, Spotify relaxation playlists have found their moment—NPR’s new “Isle of Calm” playlist picked up 20,000 followers in no time; Spotify’s “Ambient Relaxation” has nearly a million. 

What follows isn’t a playlist promising peace of mind, but a catalog of music to explore, and maybe in which to find a few moments’ relief. You could play it in the background, but it’s offered in the spirit of Brian Eno, whose ambient music aimed to “accommodate many levels of listening attention.” In any case, I hope you find something that works for you in this strange season. 

Brian Eno

“Discreet Music” (1975)

Starting with Eno himself, this half-hour process piece of overlapping, slowly morphing tape loops clearly marks out the territory he made explicit three years later with Ambient 1: Music for Airports.

 

Green-House

Six Songs for Invisible Gardens (2020)

As I wrote not so long ago, this album casts a lovely spell, as celestial tones bloom and withdraw through layers of plinking and pulsing synthesizers and various malletophones.

 

Hilliard Ensemble

Franco-Flemish Masterworks (2012)

Dead Prez? No, Des Prez! Eight hours of sublime polyphony from the 15th and 16th centuries, featuring masses, motets, and such. It isn’t just for Catholics anymore.

 

Fleetwood Mac

“Albatross” (1969)

You know how some old dude is always ranting about how the old Fleetwood Mac was the best, and how Peter Green is the most underrated guitarist ever? He coulda just played you this lightly breezy, patchouli-laced gem.

 

Khruangbin

Con Todo El Mundo (2018)

Take away “Maria También” and you’ve got nothing but understated, supremely chill funk that’s perfect for online cocktail hours after putting the kids to bed.

 

Friedrich Mosshammer

“Alphorn Solo” (1990)

Eleven minutes of long, echoing, guttural tones from a gigantic wooden horn might sound daunting. But there’s a transcendence to the elemental sonics and the deliberate unfolding of this piece; it sounds like the world exhaling.

Duke Ellington

“Melancholia” (1954)

The Duke’s compositions, orchestrated with Billy Strayhorn, rarely gave his piano a chance to shine, so the 1954 album The Duke Plays Ellington is a treasure, and this solo version of the sweetly sad “Melancholia” defines the word better than any dictionary.

David Kamm

Saudade (2013)

The little-known Kamm turned in a modest masterpiece with this solo acoustic guitar album—there’s nothing fancy in his compositions, nothing flashy in his technique—everything on Saudade just sounds like a kindly relative disclosing simple truths.

Ludwig van Beethoven

“Heiliger Dankgesang” (1825)

The slow movement of one of his visionary late quartets, Beethoven wrote this “holy song of Thanksgiving” while recovering from a long winter illness; it’s not the monumental 9th symphony, but it’s no less an ode to joy.

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Culture

Album reviews: corncob, The Chats, Frank & His Sisters, and more

Local experimental musician corncob has captured the ear of our Tunes columnist with her album "RANDY." Publicity photo

corncob

RANDY (Foil) 

From the holy-shit desk: Heather Mease found her way from Philadelphia to Charlottesville via UVA’s Ph.D. program in composition, and as corncob, has just released the riveting tour-de-force RANDY. Mease’s vocal performances—it seems inadequate to just call them vocals–bracingly meld coquettish seduction, dark comedy, fragility, and menace over synth/drum-machine/found-sound backing tracks that ooze, drift, and thump like crazy. Highlights include the macabre pillow talk “see you empty,” and “posting dumb shit on the internet,” which starts as a sepulchral chant before crossing a bridge of ’70s-spaceship computer sounds and erupting into an exhilarating albeit homicidal dance- pop anthem. RANDY is inspired, provocative capital-A Art. [9.0]

 

The Chats

High Risk Behaviour (Bargain Bin)

Within two seconds of “Stinker,” you know what you’re getting here—classic, bratty punk right up in your effing face. The Chats channel the Sex Pistols and the Damned, gleefully dishing dirty slices of grubby lives (“The Clap,” “Dine & Dash,” etc.), all at relentless speed and filtered through their Aussie lifeworld (40s are “750s”—metric system and all). The Chats crash the Fillmore Silver Spring on May 3. [8.5]

 

Smokey Haangala

Aunka Ma Kwacha (Séance Centre) 

A Zambian poet and journalist who died at 38 in 1988, Smokey Haangala also turned his observations on economic inequality into songs, via minimal, homemade-sounding recordings. On Aunka Ma Kwacha, his 1976 debut, Haangala melodiously warbles in several languages (including occasional English) over simple acoustic and electric guitar riffs and a drum machine—it’s almost like an unplugged version of fellow Zambians Amanaz, and this overdue reissue is a consistent, intimate charmer. [8.0]

 

Verböten

Verböten (Split Single)

Suburban Chicago, 1982: Jason Narducy and his middle school buds have a punk band that rehearses in a basement and plays some shows (incidentally impressing the hell out of a kid named Dave who was visiting from D.C. and went on to play drums in a band called Nirvana). Narducy, who tours with Superchunk and GBV, also has a new musical about Verböten, which makes these early-’80s recordings—four studio, one live—potentially icky cross-promotion. Fortunately, they rip, totally and adorably—the songs are rudimentary punk done up fast and hooky, and the lyrics are kid-genius: “You gotta let it out / Right from your snout.” [8.4]

 

Khruangbin & Leon Bridges

Texas Sun (Dead Oceans) 

Khruangbin’s mostly-instrumental Con Todo El Mundo was a surprise crowd-pleaser in 2018; meantime, fellow Texan Leon Bridges had been burnishing a rep as a soul crooner reminiscent of Sam Cooke. While touring together, the artists recognized a creative kinship and started working on these songs. The results are what fans might expect—sun-baked, soulful psychedelia—and if the songs are a bit underdeveloped, they work as vibe, rightfully bound for “Heady BBQ” playlists. [7.2]

 

Frank & His Sisters

Frank & His Sisters (Mississippi Records)

Singer/guitarist/horticulturist (!) Frank Humplick wore life lightly and spread joy playing cafés and clubs across Tanzania and Kenya during his 1950s- ’60s heyday. His songs, translated from Kiswahili and Kichagga in the generous liner notes, are full of tenderness—and the trio, which indeed includes Frank’s actual sisters Maria and Thecla, harmonizes like the Carter Family, if the Carters were more cheerful and A.P. could actually sing melodies. Tying everything together is Frank’s versatile, elegant acoustic guitar picking, which includes flashes of Django, Joseph Spence, and Jimmie Rodgers. A delight. [8.9]

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Arts

Album reviews: MC Yallah X Debmaster, Various Artists

MC Yallah X Debmaster

Kubali (Hakuna Kulala)

The most frenetic moment of Kubali comes right at the top, like an intimidating bouncer. Once you get past the brief jabbery pattern of vocables, percussion, synthesizers, and unidentified sonic objects, Kubali just swaggers and bumps. Uganda’s MC Yallah spits in Kiswahili and Luganda, reveling in the stinkface beats of Berlin-located French producer Debmaster. Assured, somehow simultaneously brooding and playful, his settings recall Shabazz Palaces; meantime, Yallah is like the coolest girl you see in the hall between classes, nice to everyone but bad as hell, rolling her R’s while throwing down on the beat or skating around it like a lost Solesides relative. Nyege Nyege Tapes has been indispensably chronicling the African underground, and with Kubali, their imprint Hakuna Kulala has a statement release, including two of the best cuts of 2020, the title track and “Dunia.” [9.0]

Various Artists

Birds of Prey: The Album (Warner)

My hopes for Birds of Prey to be a smart, funny revenge flick were sunk by the trailer, full of self-reflexive “badass” gestures, empty bombast, and lame comedy. With precious few exceptions (Doja Cat, WHIPPED CREAM w/ Baby Goth, Sofi Tukker), the album’s a match. We’re dealt slab after horrendous slab of over-
blown hybrid rock-rap—if you accept meaningless bursts of ultra-processed aggro guitar as a definition of “rock”—before finishing with a trio of covers, ranging from the passable (Summer Walker’s “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Babe”) to the execrable (ADONA’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”). [4.1]

Various artists

Lévé Lévé: São Tome and Principe Sounds 70s-80s (Bongo Joe)

Props to French crate-digger DJ Tom B for pulling together this cohesive collection of dance music from the tiny island nation São Tomé and Principe. The characteristic rhythmic pattern puxa is an up-tempo blend of cross-Atlantic components, while instrumentation weaves together skittery electric guitar, minimal bass, tons of percussion, occasional keyboards, even mandolin—a total lack of horns is a bit curious, but no bother. Early singles by Os Úntués offer pronounced samba influences that contrast with the pan-African syncretism of later tracks like Africa Negra’s jubilant “Zimbabwe,” a wah-soaked ode from 1981 celebrating the country’s recent independence, five years after São Tomé and Principe’s own peaceful transition from Portuguese rule. It’s worth staying tuned as Bongo Joe promises more of Tom B’s finds. [8.1]

Various artists

We Were Living in Cincinnati (Hozac)

Ohio’s Devo, Electric Eels, and Pere Ubu almost invented postpunk before punk even happened, so what did Ohio postpunk actually sound like? With this wonderful document, Hozac answers the question for Cincinnati. As Chrome Cranks’ Peter Aaron recounts in his fantastic liner notes, these farmland-bound bands made things up based on a trickle of information coming from the outside, plus occasional forays to New York or Cleveland. The 33 tracks are snotty but guile-
less and often almost sweet, more than ragged and pretty damn right. A splendid, stunning connection to present-day Charlottesville is Dave Lewis, a central figure in We Were Living in Cincinnati (the title is actually a Lewis lyric). Today, Lewis runs a used record store in Luray while spinning motets and virelais on WTJU’s “Early Music Show.” How punk is that? [8.3]

https://hozacrecords.bandcamp.com/album/we-were-living-in-cincinnati

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Arts

Album reviews: Green-House, Myke Towers, Ben Krakauer, and Doja Cat

Green-House

Six Songs for Invisible Gardens (Leaving)

Beginning an album with pooling water sounds is a risky venture. But at the start of the instrumental Invisible Gardens, Green-House combines those liquidy murmurs with some malletophone, and for nearly 30 minutes, casts a spell that’s all the more remarkable for the attendant new age clichés (yes there are also birds, many birds). Likewise, the musical fabric, made up of tasteful, timeless ambient tropes, is superficially, uh, superficial. But this wallpaper is moving, man! Celestial tones bloom and withdraw through layers of plinking and pulsing synthesizers and marimbas and such, while vocalistic melodies reflect Green-House’s crunchy manifesto: Invisible Gardens isn’t designed as background, but as “communication with both plant life and the people who care for them.” Believe it. And believe it is lovely. [8.2]

https://green-house.bandcamp.com/album/six-songs-for-invisible-gardens

Myke Towers

Easy Money Baby
(One World)

I don’t have much of a yardstick for Puerto Rican hip-hop/reggaeton, but I dug this from the start, even before the Manu Chao sample on “Tú.” Even before the mischief on “Si Se Da,” as Towers and guest Farruko slip in and out of ironic Anglo accents while repping their orgs. Even before backtracking and listening to Towers’ feature on Bad Bunny’s infectious “Estamos Arriba” from last summer. The beats are there, and Towers charms as bad boy or family man—that’s him with his days-old newborn on the cover—and even though its 55 minutes are a lot to take at once, Easy Money Baby kinda sounds like summer came early. [7.7]

Ben Krakauer

Heart Lake (Ben Krakauer)

Former Charlottesville resident
Ben Krakauer is now a banjo prof
at Warren Wilson and, banjo jokes aside (but let’s be real, all you have to say is “banjo”), Heart Lake is a beautiful, rewarding piece of not-bluegrass chamber music, featuring the ol’ five-string. Skip to “Weller” and you’ll hear a classic train song, but the train takes
performatively whimsical detours—it deserves an animated video, as does the deconstructed Scruggs-
esque workout “Groundhog Speed” (a play on Earl’s “Ground Speed”). The compositions are inventive
and the playing is top-notch, as on the gleaming, roving solos by Krakauer and fiddler Duncan
Wickel on the title track. While
“The Prism” is moodier than you might expect if you ever saw Krakauer play the legendary Charlottesville venue, fans of “new acoustic” music will smile at the mirthful, Grisman-esque “Poodles,” and then get misty at the wistful, tender “Ruqiyyah and Andrew’s Waltz.” Catch Krakauer and his band at The Front Porch on February 15. [8.1]

https://benkrakauer.bandcamp.com/releases

Doja Cat

Hot Pink (RCA)

Doja Cat’s viral, slinky R&B hit “Mooo!” was so pointlessly, hilariously awesome it was no shock that her debut full-length Amala didn’t match up. Hot Pink showcases a more confident, distinct, and versatile Doja. The coy “Won’t Bite” sounds like a profane Victorian-era children’s song, while “Bottom Bitch” is a nuanced friend anthem riding a slowed-down Blink-182 sample. Meantime, “Say So” and the Gucci Mane-abetted “Like That” are pure dance floor catnip. The back end of Hot Pink turns perplexingly somber before finishing with “Juicy,” an ode to tush featuring Tyga. Hot Pink is strong enough to rid Doja Cat of the “meme star” label, and we’re better for it, too. [7.8]

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Arts

Album reviews: Reissue roundup part 2

Here’s another set of worthwhile reissues I missed along the way in 2019. (Not included: The Beatles’ brilliant valedictory Abbey Road and Aretha Franklin’s sublimely beautiful and awesomely powerful Amazing Grace.)

Akofa Akoussah

Akofa Akoussah (Mr. Bongo)

Togolese singer Akofa Akoussah is known to aficionados of vintage African pop, but her lone album has been out of print since 1976, so props to Mr. Bongo for this reissue. The songs cover a lot of ground in under half an hour, from psychedelic funk (“Tango”) to highlife (“G Blem Di”) to haunting chanson (“Ramer sans Rame”) to the Miriam Makeba tribute “Mitso Aseye.” The recording is raw and live-sounding, with splatty, echoey drums, buzzy peals of guitar, and rumbling congas huddled close in the mix. Meantime, Akoussah’s angelic voice soars overhead, at once majestic and intimate. [9.1]

John Renbourn

Unpentangled (Cherry Red)

This six-CD collection should really be called Pre-Pentangled, as the run of records that comprises the set ends in 1968, the year of Pentangle’s debut. There are Renbourn’s first three solo albums; the Bert and John album with fellow Pentangle guitarist Bert Jansch; plus two albums with somewhat strident singer Dorris Henderson, an American folkie who had moved from Greenwich Village to the U.K. in the mid-’60s. Cherry Red hasn’t provided anything new (even the bonus tracks have shown up elsewhere), but they’ve pulled together a handsome showcase for Renbourn’s remarkable mélange of British folk, blues, Appalachian music, jazz, and homey psychedelia. [9.0]

Ernest Hood

Neighborhoods (RVNG Intl)

Portland’s Ernest Hood was a post-
WWII jazz guitarist before a case of polio left him unable to play. He began collecting the sounds of his world—people talking at stores, insects chirping at dusk, kids playing night games. Eventually, he added tracks of keyboards and zither—wistful childlike snippets that function mostly as curtains, parting and closing on either side of the ambient recordings. With the 1975 private pressing of Neighborhoods, Hood intended to spark a sense of recog-
nition for whomever was listening, to “bring joy in reminiscence” and a sense of respite from “plastic novelty music.” The prosaic results are a wonder to contemplate, precisely because they’re so prosaic; they subtly urge us to tend to our own sonic and social worlds. [8.3]

Fernando Falcao

Memória das Águas (Selva)

During Brazil’s student uprising of 1968, Fernando Falcao planted a bomb at a school associated with the military regime, and wisely bolted. Landing in France, he ran with the bohemian avant-garde, including the experimental theater troupe Grand Magic Circus, and in 1979, he released this fearless, visionary musical debut. Each song is a meticulous construction partaking of varied combinations of found sounds; homemade berimbaus; tender string passages; barked vocables; rubbery fretless bass; virtuosic whistling;
new age piano; uptown soul horn charts; tubular bells; rumbling percussion; etc. Unearthed after 40 years, Memória das Águas still
stuns, full of vitality and moments of
heart-rending beauty. [9.2]

Everything But the Girl

Walking Wounded (Chrysalis)

This first-ever vinyl reissue is a welcome reason to revisit Walking Wounded, a landmark of British dance pop and the 1996 breakout album for Everything But the Girl. Tracey Thorn was charmingly impish in the wonderfully lo-fi Marine Girls, but in EBTG her voice bloomed into something simultaneously grand and, well, wounded. Here, she stretches her gorgeous melodies over Ben Watt’s bumping, trip-hop-to-jungle frameworks. It’s a surprising but effective combination, and the album is of a piece, an urbane nightscape journey where the kids feel like grownups, and vice-versa. [8.8]

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Album reviews: Reissue roundup part 1

Throughout the year, I reviewed some reissues (notably Gene Clark’s magisterial No Other and Prince’s colossal 1999). Here’s a few I missed along the way—more to come next time.

James Brown

Live at Home With His Bad Self (UMG)

James Brown returned to play his hometown of Augusta, GA, in 1969, planning to release the show on an album. A few tracks showed up on 1970’s Sex Machine, but Brown shelved the live release, possibly because his band quit shortly after the show (and what a band, including Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker, with Clyde Stubblefield and Jabo Starks on drums). Through old hits like “Try Me” and contemporary singles like “Mother Popcorn,” they take every corner blazingly and flawlessly. Live at Home is indispensable, relentless James Brown. [9.3]

39 Clocks

Next Dimension Transfer (Tapete)

The first two albums by Germany’s unjustly obscure 39 Clocks—the rudimentary and completely cool Pain it Dark (1981) and Subnarcotic (1982)—sound like a missing link between The Troggs and early Jesus and Mary Chain. Here, Tapete collects those releases plus two more ’80s albums and a brief live set—the Clocks’ whimsy is cloaked in surliness but betrayed by titles like “Stupid Art,” “Beat Your Brain Out,” and “Your Prick Makes Me Sick.” [8.5]

R.E.M.

Monster (Craft)

I’ve always had a soft spot for the oft-maligned Monster, so this was a welcome chance to revisit the season when Michael Stipe got steamy in a dozen different ways between sheets of reverberating, fuzzed-out guitar. Scott Litt’s gauzy production matched Stipe’s sensual mood, and the drier remix included here sounds half-baked next to the spacious remaster. The best moments on Monster are the funkier ones—and even the straight rockers are a little funky—but R.E.M.’s signature weird folkie magic had vanished, and a disc of mostly-instrumental demos shows how conventional its songwriting had become. Meantime, a live show from the massive Monster arena tour likewise underscores that R.E.M. had crossed the Rubicon into unnatural habitats, soon to stumble. [7.3]

Ana Mazzotti

Ninguem Vai Me Segurar, Ana Mazzotti (Far Out)

Azymuth

Demos 1973-1975 (Far Out)

Here’s a trio of ’70s Brazilian recordings from the insanely talented, tragically short-lived Ana Mazzotti along with Azymuth, a pioneering quartet that also backed legends like Jorge Ben, Marcos Valle, and Mazzotti, on these, her only two albums. Caveat: they comprise basically the same tracks, tweaked slightly. But either way, it’s all marvelous bossa-jazz-pop, and it’s crazy Ana Mazzotti isn’t mentioned more often alongside Elis Regina et. al. Meantime, the Azymuth demos, recorded at keyboardist José Roberto Bertrami’s home studio, capture a frisky unit building momentum towards its classic 1975 debut. The songs are barely there, but Azymuth’s vibe—somewhere between Bitches Brew and Katy Lied—is fully-formed, and the jamming is furious. [8.5/8.1/8.5]

https://anamazzotti.bandcamp.com/album/ninguem-vai-me-segurar-1974-ana-mazzotti-1977

https://azymuth.bandcamp.com/album/demos-1973-75-volumes-1-2

Stereolab

Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Warp)

On Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996), Stereolab rounded the edges on its experimental impulses while accentuating melody, heavenly vocal harmonies, and groove; the result remains a favorite among the band’s hardcore and casual fans alike. On this reissue, there’s also the billowing, unreleased “Old Lungs”; the honking rarity “Freestyle Dumpling”; and a bunch of demos, which include album tracks plus future releases like the spellbinding diptych “Brigitte,” and which are fascinating. They show both how fetching Stereolab’s basic ideas were—“Les Yper Sound” and “Anonymous Collective” suggest a Gallic Young Marble Giants—and how surefooted the band was in fleshing them out. [9.5]

https://stereolab.bandcamp.com/album/emperor-tomato-ketchup-expanded-edition

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Album reviews: Best-and-rest of 2019

Not sure why, but in 2019 I spent a lot of time with a relatively few new albums, so apologies to the stuff I didn’t listen to enough. Here’s an idiosyncratic best-of, the albums I listened to all year (in more or less chronological order), with a “rest-of”—albums I liked almost as much, or loved for a couple of weeks but left behind for whatever reason.

Best of

Park Hye Jin (above)

If U Want It (clipp.art)

In January I wrote that If U Want It “sounds like something I’ll be coming back to all winter.” South Korean DJ Park Hye Jin’s five pithy songs cover dub, tropical house, industrial electronica, and wistful minimalism. She’s a canny com-
poser and a charismatic vocalist, and hey, I’m still coming back.

Jessica Pratt

Quiet Signs (Kemado)

Jessica Pratt weaves another web of dusky psych-folk. The spirit of Arthur Lee pervades the modal chords and underlying spookiness, but Pratt’s got a voice of her own—a restrained but expressive sigh that floats above her songs like a halo of insects over a pond, and mesmerizes in the same way.

Shafiq Husayn

The Loop (Nature Sounds)

A secret weapon of L.A.’s hip-hop scene busts out this 75-minute monster that channels P-Funk and trots out a battalion of A-listers: Erykah Badu, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, Anderson .Paak, Robert Glasper—and Bilal, whose showcase “Between Us” is a louche charmer. The Loop is a giddy ramble, an all-day party.

Crumb

Jinx (Crumb)

Crumb’s bedroom indie comes off like a weird dream, slightly unsettling but ultimately unthreatening. Lila Ramani’s sad-ghost vocals manage to be dark and whimsical at the same time, and the Tufts grads find a variety of grooves, from the elongated “M.R.” to the funky, almost krauty “Nina.”

Tomeka Reid Quartet

Old New (Cuneiform)

Avant-jazz cellist Tomeka Reid has played with experimental pop duo Ohmme and folky guitar wizard James Elkington, so it shouldn’t surprise that melody cuts through on Old New. Her meticulous yet loose compositions are punctuated by the gnarly solos of mindbending guitarist Mary Halvorson, and the quartet’s interplay is wondrous.

Rest of

Yola

Walk Through Fire
(Nonesuch)

Stately soul with enough grace to counteract the potentially distracting retro flourishes of producer Dan Auerbach. Yola can belt, but it’s her sense of dynamics that leads to goosebumps, as on “Faraway Look,” rightly nominated for multiple Grammys.

Elephant9

Psychedelic Backfire I & II
(Rune Grammofon)

A pair of insane prog-jazz albums from this Norwegian trio, recorded live. Dungen guitarist Reine Fisk shows up on volume II, as the band fearlessly shifts from Eno to Mahavishnu to Deep Purple—and that’s just on “You Are the Sunshine Of My Life.”

Brittany Howard

Jaime (ATO)

This tour-de-force finds Howard an assured voice in settings from avant soul to country rock. She’s also a compelling songwriter and inventive guitarist, and has a knack for making big statements sound down-to-earth. Coming to the Pavilion on April 17.

Solange

When I Get Home (Columbia)

Prismatic soft-soul featuring “Stay Flo,” one of 2019’s best tracks. Classic Stevie vibes hang over the whole thing, but Solange rises to the pretension.

Ghost Funk
Orchestra

A Song for Paul (Colemine)

Blunted ’70s-ish soul-jazz that just wants to hang out, and earns its keep.

Homeboy Sandman, Dusty (Mello)
and Chali 2Na & Krafty Kutz

Adventures of a Reluctant Superhero (Manphibian)

A pair of vets from Queens and L.A. turn in joyous albums that are reminiscent of rap’s “golden age” but feel fresh and inspired.

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Arts

Album reviews: Leonard Cohen, Prince, Ghostigital, and Los Lobos

A mix of styles on Los Lobos' Llegó Navidad usher in the holiday season with humor and joy. Publicity image.

Leonard Cohen

Thanks for the Dance (Sony)

Recorded during the same sessions as You Want It Darker, which was released three weeks before Cohen’s death in 2016, Thanks For the Dance continues Cohen’s meditations on decay and mortality, though the first half is also deliciously carnal—the Lorca homage “Night of Santiago” smolders even as Cohen’s recitation recalls William Shatner doing “Lucy in the Sky.” Some clunker lines and one shoddy song (the lazily political “Puppets”) are worth it for the moments when Cohen expresses genuine wonderment and, in the same instant, brutally analyzes it. As producer, his son Adam places everything in a tasteful, dusky frame; he also recruited Beck, Feist, and quintessential Cohen collaborator Jennifer Warnes to flesh out the tracks—but don’t expect The Last Waltz; the guests stay in the foyer, barely taking off their boots, and after a half hour, the dance is over. [8.0]

Prince

1999 Super Deluxe Edition (Warner)

Prince didn’t intend for 1999 to be a double album, explaining “I just kept writing”—and this five-disc motherlode shows how restrained he was, after all. The remaster on 1999 sounds a smidge less tinny and trashy than the original, which may or may not be to your taste—but the real attractions lie on the other four discs anyway. There’s a passel of 7-inch edits and B-sides on disc two, plus an extended version of “Little Red Corvette.” On discs three and four, the goodies really flow—there’s a delicious demo of future B-side “Feel U Up” along with the new-wavey “Turn It Up”; the no-wavey instrumental “Colleen”; and “Vagina,” drumless punk funk with a Joni Mitchell- esque middle eight. Wonderfully intimate demos of “International Lover” and “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” more than balance out a few mediocre sketches. And the cherry on top is a November 1982 show in Detroit—the newly-crowned Revolution blazes through material from the just-released 1999 along with highlights from Dirty Mind and Controversy, and for the 75- minute set, life really is just a party. [9.7]

Ghostigital

Aero (Smekkleysa SM ehf)

Icelandic ambient duo Ghostigital have reissued their minimalistic 2008 album Aero, and the title isn’t trivial; the album was partially recorded on Iceland Air’s flight 615 (which the liner notes helpfully specify and which, incidentally, you can still take from Reykjavik to JFK). On half-hour leadoff track “Landscape,” undulating, droning passages alternate with burbly tones from guest bassist Skúli Sverrisson. There’s a foreboding tension throughout Aero, but through the trancey guitar figures of “30,000 Feet” and the muted drum machines of “Transatlantic,” the dam never bursts. More than an inventive stunt, Aero is a low-key coup. [7.1]

Los Lobos

Llegó Navidad (Rhino)

If Los Lobos continue to get snubbed by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, maybe they should just skip it and get the National Medal of Arts. After a rich career of over four decades, spanning corridos and roots rock, norteños and swampy psychedelia, they’ve gone and given us a first-rate holiday album, effortlessly covering a typically rangy catalog of styles. There’s ’70s salsa (the Willie Colón cover “La Murga”), a summery take on the late-’50s novelty hit “¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?” and the sock-hop slow dance original “Christmas and You.” The production is clear and warm, the effortlessly perfect performances pulse with humor and joy, and from the first notes of “La Rama,” Llegó Navidad is a treasure. Play it, dance to it, learn to sing with it, celebrate it. [9.0]

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Album reviews: Miranda Lambert, Andy Aylward, Gene Clark, and Homeboy Sandman

Queens rapper Homeboy Sandman. Publicity photo

Miranda Lambert

Wildcard (Sony)

Glowing with sanitized professionalism, performed hot messiness, and branded shout outs from Patron to Tide sticks, Wildcard is textbook pop country. And after “divorce album” The Weight of These Wings, it’s party time, as Jay Joyce’s production insists–Wildcard is engineered for loudness, and even the acoustic passages are compressed to 11. Meantime, Lambert serves the songs well, holding back her twang on the ‘00s alternative-sounding “Mess With My Head” before unleashing it for the trainwreck slideshow “It All Comes Out in the Wash.” She stripmines country lyric tropes to the point of parody, but remember, she’s a pro, so “I got a track record, a past that’s checkered / As the floor at the diner on Main Street” is merely one of a hundred quotables. If Wildcard stumbles in spots—the bland “Bluebird,” the cheeseball “How Do You Love?”—it slots a couple gems on the back end: “Pretty Bitchin,’” which rewrites The Beatles’ “I’ve Got a Feeling” for suburban cool moms; and closer “Dark Bars,” a waltz which finds Lambert suddenly subdued and sincere, and ends with an instrumental fade that’s the prettiest minute on the record. [7.6]

Andy Aylward

Sometimes Rain (Andy Aylward)

Opener “Long Goodbye” sets the tone for Sometimes Rain, the debut full-length of NYC-based UVA alum Andy Aylward. Clear, dry guitars, spacious production, strolling tempos, and undeniable ’70s vibes hold sway throughout, and Aylward’s unprepossessing voice combines a mellow melancholy with a faint underlying tension that mirrors the way his melodies feel familiar even as they take unexpected turns. Befitting its title, Sometimes Rain carries muted echoes of the Velvets, Silver Jews, and early John Cale, and the house band adds stylish details, none tastier than the pedal steel by Dan Lead (Cass McCombs, Vetiver) on “Mockingbird.” [7.2]

Sometimes Rain by Andy Aylward

 

Gene Clark

No Other (4AD)

What kind of country-rock flop from 1974 would experimental pop label 4AD treat to a deluxe reissue? The same country-rock flop boasting a track that 4AD house band This Mortal Coil covered in 1986. Which is to say, a majestically gothic country-rock flop. The failure of No Other hung over ex-Byrd Gene Clark’s career until his death at 46, whereupon, in an instance of supremely rueful timing, rock crits upgraded No Other to a consensus masterpiece. It still sounds masterful, and prescient—sure, there are Byrds echoes, but Clark’s untethered, psychically damaged songs provide more than a foretaste of “Hotel California” and Tusk. Paradoxically, the gloom happens under the canopy of Tommy Kaye’s sumptuous produc-
tion. Lambasted at the time, Clark and Kaye’s instincts were sound—the celestial production beautifully heightens and refracts the hanging sense of dread. No Other isn’t just a psychedelic country-rock classic (and major props to the sparkling musicianship of studio aces Danny Kortchmar, Lee Sklar, and Russ Kunkel)—it’s an L.A. classic, and an indelible post- ’60s American lament. [9.5]

 

Homeboy Sandman

Dusty (Mello)

Queens rapper Homeboy Sandman has long been identified as one of underground hip-hop’s superstars, and Dusty deserves to change the “underground” part. Sandman’s rhymes are exuberant, adroit, and hilarious—he’s like Kool Keith, but without the abject depravity. Or maybe he just makes depravity sound wholesome, like on the no-really-it’s-a-love-song “Picture on the Wall.” Producer Mono En Stereo aptly undergirds Sandman with playful tracks of ’70s jazz and space funk, even some soft rock. Here’s hoping Homeboy Sandman will be name-checking Atreyu (from The Neverending Story) and cosmetics-magnate-turned-PBS-sponsor Helena Rubenstein when he brings his joyful prolixity to Richmond’s Wonderland on November 20. [8.5]

Dusty by Homeboy Sandman

Categories
Arts

Album reviews: Velveteen Rabbit, Shana Falana, Wished Bone, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Grace Potter

Grace Potter has a new album, "Daylight." Publicity photo

Velveteen Rabbit

Velveteen Rabbit (Hozac)

Rising from the ashes of NYC power poppers The Jeanies, Velveteen Rabbit do up the ’70s glory days of glitter rock in a stripped-down way. They don’t try to match the theatrical majesty of Bowie and Roxy Music—especially vocally—but still they deliver plenty of exhilarating boogie via deliciously sleazy guitar solos and songcraft that holds up even on the mellowest tracks such as the Chris Bell-like “Guitar.” Velveteen Rabbit’s DIY glam is well worth a spin. [7.5]

 

Shana Falana

Darkest Light (Arrowhawk)

Shana Falana is a veteran of the ’90s San Francisco rock underground and the early-’00s Brooklyn nü-garage moment, and Darkest Light, with its churning guitars and dreamy melodies, sounds like it could have dropped at any point in the last 25 years. The album bursts out of the box with the buoyant shoegaze opener “Go Higher” and the Galaxie 500-meets-Sonic Youth rocker “Everyone Is Gonna Be Okay,” but then goth and stoner rock come to the fore, and it’s almost like watching Falana switch cafeteria tables midyear, ditching the smart arty kids for the brooding, ineffectual rebels. [6.5]

 

Wished Bone

Sap Season (Wished Bone)

Currently based in Los Angeles, Ohio’s Ashley Rhodus records as Wished Bone, and second album Sap Season is a deceptively simple collection of low-fi songs that flit from the country-ish “Saucer Eyes” to the Mazzy Star-lite “Cops” to the Velvets-y “Pink Room.” Rhodus’ twee voice is apt as she ascribes stoned significance to life’s banalities (“Who put the butter in the fridge? / You know I don’t like it cold”). The musical dressing often saves the day—when slide guitars and horns show up, they’re like those friends in the room who smile, listening, and then drop perfect remarks. Which, unfortunately, makes Rhodus the one whose faux-naif observations threaten to tip from charming to nattering. [7.0]

 

Yukihiro Takahashi

Saravah! (Wewantsounds)

When Roxy Music played Wembley Arena in 1975, the unlikely opener was Osaka’s Sadistic Mika Band, whose drummer Yukihiro Takahashi would co-found legendary electronic progenitors Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978. Recorded just before YMO’s debut and featuring YMO bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takahashi’s Saravah! is a fascinating document— disco, bossa nova, and lounge rock filtered through Japanese whimsy (Exhibit A: the leadoff cover of “Volare”). Takahashi’s vocals are a bit sober to be sexy, but they’re easygoing, and the musicianship on Saravah! transcends irony and camp (Exhibit B: the nasty Skunk Baxterish guitar solos on “La Rosa” and “Elastic Dummy”). [7.8]

 

Grace Potter

Daylight (Fantasy)

With her 2004 debut, Grace Potter was heralded as Vermont’s answer to everyone from Norah Jones to Bonnie Raitt to Janis Joplin, which implies more versatility than she delivers on Daylight, her third album. Possessor of an undeniably potent voice, Potter can’t resist opening the throttle on the back end of each song, and the vocal peaks start to feel predictable and superficial—it’s singing as pressure-washing. Potter’s lyrics are more nuanced, as she nicely unpacks her messy nest of feelings in the wake of her recent divorce and subsequent betrothal and motherhood. And there are rare respites, like the Patsy Cline-ish “Repossession” and Potter’s gorgeous B-3 coda on “Please.” But a little more daylight would have been nice. [6.0]