September 2016 reviews

Highly recommended this month: Nels Cline

Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: A Tribe Called Red

Well worth your while: Nick Cave, Tami Nielson

As always, these reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Streaming is great for sample purposes, but please find a way to support your favourite artists financially.

In case you missed it, my piece about Kaytranada winning the Polaris Music Prize ran in Maclean's.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Skeleton Tree (Sony)

There is no greater anguish, no more unimaginable horror than losing a child. And so while many a man has made a career of writing about the dark side of humanity, about murder and loss and depravity in ways both chilling and cartoonish, what does it mean when that man suffers the loss of a child? Can the listener rectify reality with the artifice of art?

Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died after falling off a 60-foot cliff while on LSD in July 2015.

The songs on Skeleton Tree had already been written, and Cave had plans to go into the studio shortly. In part because he knew he didn’t want to face the press once the album came out, he invited a filmmaking friend to document the process. The result is the new film Once More With Feeling, in which Cave and his family and his band talk about their grief, and he says, “Everything is not OK, but it’s also OK. The records go on and the work goes on.” He’s certainly not the first person to use their work ethic and/or their creativity to process grief. We should perhaps expect nothing less from an artist who, in one of his most beloved songs, penned the chorus: “This is the weeping song / A song in which to weep.” That was 26 years ago.

As with the Tragically Hip’s Man Machine Poem—written and completed before Gord Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer—the songs here are not about the tragedy in question. Yet because they were recorded in the darkest of shadows, the tone is beyond sombre. It’s not unusual to hear Cave sing lyrics like, “If you want to bleed, just bleed,” or, “All the things we love, we lose.” He’s never been a cheery chap. But here he can be heard mourning, “Nothing really matters since you’ve gone / I need you / just breathe.” Or: “I used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world in a slumber until you crumbled, absorbed into the Earth. I don’t think that anymore.” Yet the mourning is really all in the music; Skeleton Tree is not, as some reviews claim, “a document of grief.”

The music is more of one long tone poem than a collection of songs. They’re all a similar tempo, all sad synths and strings and plaintive piano. Churning drones and slowly surging bass notes underscore the soundscapes above. Longtime backing band the Bad Seeds has rarely sounded so sparse and restrained—or more effective. Opening track “Jesus Alone” finds Cave crooning, “With my voice I am calling you” while a whistling synthesizer emulates the sound of a child’s cry. Hard to separate the art and artist here.

Reviewing the film, the Montreal Gazette noted that it “never approaches voyeurism or misery porn.” Having not seen the film, this is hard to believe. Skeleton Tree is haunted, in as literal a sense as possible. It’s also a beautiful piece of music that should be judged on its merits independent of context—though that’s highly unlikely for a long, long time. In the meantime, it’s hard to listen to Nick Cave as we once did. (Sept. 15)

Stream: “Jesus Alone,” “I Need You,” “Distant Sky”

Nels Cline - Lovers (Blue Note)

Best known as the lead guitarist in Wilco, Cline has a long and storied history in punk, experimental and jazz circles. Rarely, however, has his solo work ever sounded this pretty. It is his debut for legendary jazz label Blue Note, so it shouldn’t be surprising that squalls of noise didn’t really make the cut. Instead, this double album combines Cline originals with covers of Broadway (Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein and Kern, in their various permutations), Henry Mancini, peers like Sonic Youth and Arto Lindsay, jazz innovators like Jimmy Giuffre and Annette Peacock, and obvious influences like Gabor Szabo.

Cline’s guitar work is sublime; we would expect nothing less. What really elevates this record, however, are the arrangements by trumpet player Michael Leonhart, who not only leads a four-piece brass section, but also a six-piece woodwind section (including two people both credited with playing C, alto and bass flutes), a six-piece string section and more, mostly drawn from John Zorn’s circles in New York City’s avant-garde scene. For all that power, Lovers is deliberately an easy-listening record, albeit one that challenges as often as it caresses. (Sept. 1)

Stream: “Cry,Want,” “It Only Has to Happen Once,” “Snare, Girl”

De La Soul – And the Anonymous Nobody (Sony)

Full disclosure: I haven’t listened to a De La Soul album in 20 years, since 1996’s Stakes is High. I’m guessing that you haven’t either. But in a genre with a paucity of “legacy artists,” De La Soul never went away: the innovators continued to explore and evolve, their only brushes with the mainstream coming through their appearances on Gorillaz records. Their early records are out of print and not available on streaming services, due to licensing issues that inevitably plague the sample-heavy recordings.

While they’re far from an “anonymous nobody,” De La Soul do face an uphill struggle to get attention: hence this crowdfunded ninth album, with a diverse guest list with some A-listers on it, almost all of them incongruous. One doesn’t associate Snoop Dogg or 2Chainz with the hip-hop lineage that descends from De La Soul, but they show up here and fit in seamlessly. Friend and collaborator Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, Blur), on the other hand, seems lost. Things get really weird when Justin Hawkins of the Darkness shows up on a song with huge, Queen-size choirs and raging guitar solos. I’d like to say that the collaboration with David Byrne makes a semblance of more sense—but it doesn’t. The one collaboration here that really clicks is with Usher, on a rarity in De La Soul’s catalogue: a straightforward narrative track.

Anonymous Nobody is sprawling and ambitious, but succeeds most when De La Soul push within (the loosely defined) boundaries of hip-hop rather than trying to prove they can be everything to everyone—a trait that can most likely be chalked up to Albarn’s bad influence. (Sept. 1)

Stream: “Pain” feat. Snoop D., “Greyhounds” feat. Usher, “Nosed Up”

DJ Shadow – The Mountain Will Fall (Universal)

Yes, it’s been 20 years since DJ Shadow’s debut and his masterpiece, Endtroducing. What better way to celebrate its longevity than to listen instead to what’s probably Shadow’s finest new album since then? (But of course, there is also yet another reissue of that album out shortly.) Being the musically curious person he is, Shadow has been confounding expectations for decades now: though he excels at experimental soundscapes rooted in sample-based, downtempo hip-hop, Shadow always wants to try a bit of everything. Why most of his albums have failed since Endtroducing—despite plenty of great tracks interspersed between them—is that he wants to do it all at the same time, and the effect can be jarring, especially when he toys unsuccessfully with rock music.

So yes, there’s still some old-school hip-hop on The Mountain Will Fall, including guest spots from Ernie Fresh and Run the Jewels, which jump out of this mix, for better and worse, respectively. But there is also plenty of evidence that Shadow is a man of his time, looking to modern electronic innovators for inspiration (shades of Arca, Haxan Cloak). At the same time, instead of sampling old David Axelrod records, he’s employing modern jazz figures like British trumpeter Matthew Halsall. He’s using drum machines not just for rigid rhythms, but as elastic, improvisatory tools (“Three Ralphs”).

If he keeps this up, maybe 20 years from now we won’t still be talking only about his debut album. (Sept. 8)

Stream: “Bergschrund” feat. Nils Frahm, “Pitter Patter” feat. G. Jones and Bleep Bloop, “Ashes to Oceans” feat. Matthew Halsall

The Frightnrs – Nothing More to Say (Daptone)

Canadians spent the summer watching a terminal cancer patient triumph on stage during a cross-country tour. The singer of this New York City roots reggae band didn’t have the option of performing with his ALS, but he was intent on finishing the album he started just before the diagnosis. He died three months before its release date this week, just after seeing a Sharon Jones show in Central Park. The album’s title is quite literal.

That knowledge informs our reading of many seize-the-day lyrics here, but the real appeal is Dan Klein’s voice itself, a falsetto that aspires to the otherworldly appeal of Horace Andy or the Congos; it’s hard to top those angelic aliens, but Klein certainly comes close. His backing band—like all other Daptone acts, whether they’re rooted in soul, gospel or Afrobeat—don’t bother with modernizing their sound in the least: this record sounds exactly like it was transferred from dusty master tapes that were rescued from a fire at Lee “Scratch” Perry’s studio. It sounds all the better for it. (Sept. 1)

Stream: “All My Tears,” “Gotta Find a Way,” “Trouble in Here”

Daniel Lanois – Goodbye to Language (Anti)

Goodbye to Language! It’s an instrumental album, get it? Yes, Daniel Lanois is now of the age where he can make punny grandpa jokes. Not that there’s anything amusing about his ninth solo release (depending on how you count them), which amounts to Lanois and recent collaborator Rocco DeLuca alone in the studio late at night, beaming themselves into space on sound waves emanating from heavily treated steel guitars. It’s haunting psychedelic ambient music, best appreciated loud and in headphones—befitting a man who is still better known as a producer (one who started under Brian Eno’s tutelage) than a solo artist. It’s impossible to discern how much of this is played live and run through effects versus what might be studio edits of jams, but Lanois and DeLuca definitely share a psychic connection of some sorts here. There’s zero sign of Lanois the songwriter here—sorry, Acadie fans. This is purely Laonis the interstellar sonic adventurer. (Sept. 8)

Stream: “Low Sudden,” “Deconstruction,” “Heavy Sun”

Tami Neilson – Don’t Be Afraid (Outside)

This Canadian is a star in her adopted nation of New Zealand, where she’s racked up plenty of country music awards and songwriting accolades. Don’t Be Afraid is only her second album to be released in her motherland, and we’d be fools to ignore this powerhouse voice any longer—a voice that could front an amplified band without the use of a microphone.

Her last album, Dynamite!, was cut from the Patsy Cline mould, very much rooted in country music from the late ’50s, early ’60s. This time out the vibe is still decidedly old school, but Neilson gets bluesier and bolder, touching on torch songs and rockabilly and soul. Informed by the death of her beloved father—with whom she was in a family band when she was a kid—Don’t Be Afraid is considerably darker in tone, which gives her vocals even more of a chance to dig in deep. On the title track, she goes for full-out gospel-style projection over a slow blues, sounding more like Aretha Franklin that one would ever expect from this country belter. (Sept. 22)

Tami Neilson plays the Starlight in Waterloo on Oct. 4, and the Rivoli in Toronto on Oct. 6.

Stream: “Holy Moses,” “Bury My Body,” “Don’t Be Afraid”

Dolly Parton – Pure and Simple (Sony)

Is it weird that a 70-year-0ld woman has written a new song called “I’m Sixteen”? It’s actually about feeling 16 again: which apparently she does, having renewed her vows this year to her husband of 50 years (who she met when she was 18, in 1964, but who’s counting?).

The country music legend has 42 albums behind her, and many of the last 20 years have been highly acclaimed. This one, on the other hand, is pleasant but hardly noteworthy. It feels rushed in order to promote her biggest tour in years, which was far more memorable than this collection. (Sept. 1)

Stream: “Pure and Simple,” “Can’t Be That Wrong”

Prophets of Rage – The Party's Over EP (Universal)

That’s a pretty funny title for a debut EP. It’s also entirely apt.

Prophets of Rage are the supergroup comprised of the former members of Rage Against the Machine fronted by Chuck D of Public Enemy and B-Real of Cypress Hill—all groundbreaking artists, revolutionary even (certainly true of PE; the others less so). For anyone who came of age in the ’90s and remembers the Public Enemy/Anthrax collaboration, or how explosive Rage Against the Machine was in 1992, expectations are considerably high.

For whatever reason, it doesn’t work at all. Like, not in the slightest. The band sounds the same, for better or worse; Chuck D is still a formidable force on the mic; B-Real, on the other hand, sounds a bit out of his depth. Nothing gels. Chuck can’t find his groove. What was once innovative about Rage has been diluted ever since Limp Bizkit hijacked the concept of rap-rock and flicked it to the frat crowd.

What’s worse is the fact that on this slight EP they’ve chosen to announce their arrival by, um, murdering their back catalogue. So we have infinitely inferior versions of the PE song from which they take their name and “Shut ’Em Down,” a completely unnecessary version of “Killing in the Name” that should stay on the stage; and a ridiculous mash-up of “Fight the Power” and the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Til Brooklyn”—mysteriously titled “No Sleep Til Cleveland,” apparently a reference to the recent Republican convention there, although they don’t bother changing the chorus until the final seconds. The one new song, the title track, doesn’t begin to approach the social critique that these artists once excelled at—which is downright shocking, considering the headlines of the last few years. Even worse, the track is a total dud.

The band’s merch cheekily appropriates Donald Trump’s campaign hats, with the slogan, “Make America rage again.” But the Prophets of Rage inspire rage of a different sort: rage that this is all that these giants could come up with. (Sept. 8)

Stream: Nah, don’t bother

Wilco – Schmilco (dpm/Anti)

“I always hated those normal American kids,” sings Jeff Tweedy, a man who has led Wilco through a series of left turns that confounded anyone who wanted them to be a classic rock band with an alt-country bent. So even here, on what is largely a quiet, acoustic record, Wilco doesn’t offer retreads of “California Stars” or “How to Fight Loneliness.” Instead, avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline bends notes and appears to crawl inside his instrument to extract soundscapes to colour the songs. Drummer Glenn Kotche, whose brilliance normally gets obscured when this band plays it straight, comes alive here in ways I haven’t heard him do for a while in Wilco. Everyone else takes cues from the third Velvet Underground record, where a band capable of fury and chaos distilled their energy into quiet, delicate material. Tweedy’s love of cult hero Bill Fay also shines through. As with all late-period Wilco, there are several clunkers here (“We Aren’t the World”), but this is their most satisfying record in years. (Sept. 22)

Stream: “Normal American Kids,” “Cry All Day,” “Someone to Lose”

Jenny Whiteley – The Original (Black Hen)

Jenny Whiteley was born into a family that is Ontario folk music royalty: father Chris, uncle Ken, brothers Dan and Jesse, and cousin Ben. She grew up at folk and bluegrass festivals, and her first professional gig was at age eight. Here, she revisits traditional songs she played with her elders and her peers earlier in her career, as well as three new songs and a cover of Toronto songwriter Chris Coole. That song, “$100,” is about the near-impossibility of being a working musician when “people don’t pay for music anymore.” It has all the hallmarks of a modern standard, and the more people who cover it the better—though it’s hard to imagine someone bettering Whiteley’s version. Sam Allison’s bare-bones production and arrangements are pitch perfect, particularly on the bass harmonica and whistling choir on “In the Pines.” Fans of Sarah Harmer’s acoustic recordings will find plenty to love here, as will anyone who didn’t get enough finger pickin’ on the festival circuit this year. Recorded at the home studio of Hugh Christopher Brown on Wolfe Island, outside Kingston, The Original sounds like the best front porch concert you never heard this summer. (Sept. 29)

Stream: “$100,” “Banjo Girl,” “Higher Learning”

May 2014 reviews, part one

Highly recommended: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Death Vessel

Worth your while: TuneYards, Chad Van Gaalen, Lykke Li, Dolly Parton

These reviews ran, as always, in the Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury.

Damon Albarn – Everyday Robots (Parlaphone/EMI)

It took me a long time to come around to Damon Albarn: never being a Blur fan, and being attracted more to the idea of Gorillaz—and that band’s undeniably great collection of collaborators—than any particular record. But I have to respect Albarn for the music he puts out on his Honest Jon’s label, everything from calypso to avant-garde eccentric Moondog to the Hypnotic Brass Band, as well as his role as a catalyst in records like soul legend Bobby Womack’s The Bravest Man in the Universe. He’s a man of impeccable taste. I even liked Monkey, his Chinese opera. No one else seemed to.

Most Blur fans—and there are still millions of them waiting for an album to accompany the reunion gigs of recent years—don’t really care about any of that. Which is why this Albarn solo album arrives with great anticipation—and proceeds to bum everyone out. That it’s a generally downcast record is not its downfall; it’s that it’s so dull, stuck in one programmed drum groove, and Albarn appears to be mumbling his way through it. The chipper ditty about an orphaned baby elephant, "Mr. Tembo," is out of place here—or anywhere, really. It's certainly not going to make anyone revisit their prejudices regarding songs about baby elephants.

Lyrically, Everyday Robots is partially a concept album about alienation in a society suffering from too much technology. Mostly it just makes me want to pull the plug. I suppose I like everything about Albarn’s taste in music… except his own music. (May 8)

Download: “Everyday Robots,” “Lonely Press Play,” “Hostiles”

Jeff Bird – Rhythm and Entertainment: Recordings 1983-2009 (independent)

If you’ve seen live music in Guelph, K-W or Elora in the past 35 years, you’ve most likely seen Jeff Bird. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have seen him with the Cowboy Junkies since 1988. Before that band’s success and whenever he’s had free time since, Bird has been a very, very busy man. He was a founder of Canadian folk group Tamarack, does regular jazz gigs and had a long-standing collaboration with fiddler Riki Gee, some of Bird’s many sides that appear on this career retrospective of sorts.

On his own, however, Bird gets up to all kinds of experimental weirdness: improv with shakuhachi and drums, cinematic ambience, some straight-up country shuffles, experimental dub reggae, francophone folklore, spoken-word dream recollections set to music, and gorgeous harmonica and harmonium duets. You know, the usual. The stunner is “Little Hooves,” a piano ballad from his 1997 album featuring vocalist Nick Craine, followed closely by a take on Hank Williams’s "Rambling Man," featuring Tony Quarrington on vocals.

In the background of "Mu Blues," you can hear a dinner audience blithely ignoring Bird’s jazz combo, gabbing away despite the fiery fingerwork of pianist Witold Grabowiecki. The track is indicative of Bird: always around, politely ignored, inconspicuous, and indifferent as to how he might be blowing the minds of anyone who cares to listen. (May 8)

Download: “Souvenir Flutes,” “Six Legs,” “Little Hooves”

Death Vessel – Island Intervals (Sub Pop)

Joel Thibodeau, a eunuch-voiced singer/songwriter from New England, sums up the ever-elusive and mysterious creative process better than most: “I don’t know what to do when the universe is in my room.” Clearly, however, he figured it out on this, his third album, for which he travelled to Iceland. Sure enough, Jonsi from Sigur Ros—a man with an almost identical range and timbre as Thibodeau—shows up. Arrangements of Thibodeau’s wonderfully wistful, melodic folk songs are adorned with marimbas, glockenspiels, fuzzed-out bass, pump organs, accordions and other instruments that seem to be always lying around Icelandic studios (see also: Bjork, Mum, Nico Muhly). On first impression, Thibodeau is too fey by half, with lines like, “I have an unbridled ideation / jumping over every moon with indignation.” He also enjoys employing words like “derring-do” and “looky-loo” with a straight face. He’s nothing if not earnest, and it wouldn’t be surprising to discover that he spent the six years since his last album in a seaside cabin with a library of pre-Victorian literature. (He didn’t—to my knowledge, anyway.) No matter your take on the lyrics, however, the melodies and arrangements are consistently and almost undeniably gorgeous. (May 1)

Download: “Velvet Antlers,” “Mercury Dime,” “We Agreed”

Brian Eno and Karl Hyde – Someday World (Warp)

Brian Eno can work with anyone in the world. The legendary producer often does, whether it’s Coldplay or a totally obscure musician in Mali (see the excellent 2013 Africa Express album). Eno’s last pop album was a collaboration with David Byrne. Here, he joins Karl Hyde of ’90s electronica act Underworld, a man whose vocals aren’t that different from Eno’s, and who doesn’t appear to enhance any of the musical sketches Eno had kicking around since the ’90s—or earlier, as the tinny synth horns would suggest. (There are also, however, real horns to be found on the peppiest song here, “Daddy’s Car.”) Eno credits Hyde with bringing life to long-dormant material he’d had lying around; yet it’s the basic rhythm tracks here that are most fascinating, steeped in African polyrhythms. The more elements Eno and Hyde layer on top—particularly Hyde’s vocals—the less interesting it is. (May 8)

Download: “When I Built This World,” “Daddy’s Car,” “Witness”

Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott – What Have We Become (Universal)

The Beautiful South are a long-forgotten artifact of early ’90s British pop, one that arose from an only slightly better-remembered band, the Housemartins. Like most North Americans, I didn’t realize The Beautiful South lasted until 2007, when they finally parted ways, citing “musical similarities”—admitting that most of their albums sounded the same. (They were always witty lads.) Founder Paul Heaton has been largely in the musical wilderness ever since, but this album reuniting him with his old band’s female vocalist Abbott, perhaps the only two people on Earth who could create a peppy chorus out of the line: “The revolution won’t be televised, and neither will your death.” Abbott hadn’t sung for anyone but her own family in 14 years, but you’d never know it; Heaton is clearly—and quite understandably—inspired in her presence. (May 15)

Download: “Moulding of a Fool,” “D.I.Y.,” “If He Don’t”

Lykke Li – I Never Learn (Warner)

Swedish singer Lykke Li is about to enter the world of fashion this fall, releasing her own line of clothing through a subsidiary of H&M. According to London newspaper The Independent, one can “expect black, black and more black.”

No wonder. Check the titles on this, her third album: “Sleeping Alone.” “Never Gonna Love Again.” “Heart of Steel.” It sounds like Li wrote this with a broken heart in a hamlet set atop a wet, wind-swept cliff. Despite the rich, full-band arrangements with choirs, this is the loneliest pop album you’re likely to hear this year. Gone are the synths and layers of percussion that defined her earlier work; in their place are 12-string acoustic guitars, pianos and barely any drums at all. This is all about Li’s voice, which has all the command of Stevie Nicks at her prime, and her songs, which are minor-key grandiose ballads worthy of, well, ABBA—and I’m not just saying that because of their shared nationality. “Heart of Steel” features a guitar riff lifted from Roxy Music’s “More Than This,” from Avalon: an album with an equally luxurious melancholy at its core. That said, Li excels when she strips everything right down: “Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone” could pass for an old Everly Brothers ballad. (May 15)

Download: “No Rest for the Wicked,” “Gunshot,” “Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone”

Dolly Parton – Blue Smoke (Sony)

Dolly Parton is 68. This is her 42^nd album. It proves, for the umpteenth time, that Dolly Parton can do whatever the heck she wants. The title track is blistering bluegrass. The duet with Kenny Rogers, “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” is ripe old cheese and better for it. A cover of the traditional murder ballad “Banks of the Ohio” is all the more disturbing because Parton delivers it so beautifully. A cover of Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands On Me” completely—and thankfully—obliterates any memory of the original. Speaking of originals, the woman whose songwriting talent has always been her most underrated asset shows that she’s still on top of her game and capable of writing modern classics. I had to double check to make sure “If I Had Wings” wasn’t a new take on an earlier Parton track—perhaps one suspected to date from a period I would naively consider her prime—because the fact is, Parton never left her prime. Her contemporaries might be more than willing to coast and cave in to low expectations; Parton’s still pumping out new material with the same pride and purpose she’s had her entire career. (May 15)

Download: “Blue Smoke,” “Don’t Think Twice,” “If I Had Wings”

Pixies - Indie Cindy (Pias)

There is no way the Pixies could have won this round. The legendary alt-rock game-changers broke up acrimoniously in 1993; they reformed in 2002 and have been touring large venues, playing all their classic non-hits, ever since. In 2013, beloved bassist Kim Deal announced she was finally quitting days before new material was to be recorded. For many fans, expectations were low—and most reviews of the two EPs questioned why this material even had to exist other than to sabotage a near-perfect discography.

But come on: if you’ve been touring for the last decade cashing in on your rep, wouldn’t you want to make new music? Bandleader Frank Black has probably put out at least 20 non-Pixies albums in the last 20 years; why wouldn’t he employ the musicians who helped make some of his best work?

Of course (the admittedly terribly titled) Indie Cindy is nowhere near as powerful as Surfer Rosa or Doolittle. Whatever could be? But it hardly defecates on the band’s reputation; most of this material wouldn’t have been out of place on the 1991 swan song Trompe le Monde. Guitarist Joey Santiago has a distinct style that, when paired with Black’s absurdist lyrics (“I’m the burgermeister of burgatory!”) and unhinged howl (which is in fine form here, despite the passing of time), sounds undeniably like the Pixies. Returning producer Gil Norton no doubt helps as well.

Indie Cindy could easily shed a few of the more ham-fisted rockers (“Blue-Eyed Hexe”) that sound like third-generation copies of vintage Pixies, but it’s nowhere near the disaster Pixie purists expect it to be. (May 1)

Download: “Greens and Blues,” “Andro Queen,” “Magdelena 318”

Rodrigo y Gabriela - 9 Dead Alive (ATO)

This Mexican duo, who were discovered while busking on the streets of Dublin, made a name for themselves for playing traditional Spanish and Roma guitar music, having come from a background of heavy metal: they’ve covered Metallica and Led Zeppelin, and their last album, 2009’s breakthrough 11:11, featured a guest spot from Testament’s Alex Skolnick.

Here, however, on their fourth album, the novelty has worn off. Not that Rodrigo y Gabriela were ever just a novelty: they are serious shredders and songwriters, possessed with an ability to amaze any music fan. They’re not attempting to fit into flamenco mode, nor cater to rock or jazz or “world music” audiences or anything else. You can still hear the metal influence in the riffing and chord progressions on songs like “Torito” and “Somnium,” but that’s only for trainspotters. Such is the power of the playing and the songwriting that there isn’t much time while listening to ponder much else.

The title references the idea that each of these nine songs was inspired by a historical figure: psychiatrists, luthiers, poets, nuns, slave liberators, Nobel laureates and Russian novelists. This duo is not dense. They’re not just hot-shot showoffs; they’re clearly inspired by much more than Malmsteenian fretwork. And the music they make here could easily bring the dead back to life. (May 1)

Download: “The Soundmaker,” “Misty Moses,” “Megalopolis”

TuneYards – Nikki Nack (4AD)

TuneYards is currently opening some dates on Arcade Fire’s Reflektor tour. It makes a lot of sense. Both travelled to Haiti for inspiration recently. Both started making music in Montreal in the first half of the 2000s. Both take great care to make every corner of their career part of a larger art project. And sadly, the most recent albums by both are bisected into moments of thrilling brilliance and head-scratching bewilderment.

One thing is obvious: lead single “Water in the Fountain” is a lip-smacking, finger-popping good time that’s been compared more than once to a digital take on the Dixie Cups’ “Iko Iko.” It illustrates Merrill Garbus’s exuberant vocals, love of percussion and melodic hooks thrown into a dense sonic delicacy. She mines similar territory in “Sink-O” and “Real Thing,” diving deep into hip-hop influences like never before; her 2011 masterpiece, Whokill, was largely infused with West African rhythms. The gorgeous “Wait For a Minute,” a comparatively low-key R&B track, provides a welcome respite from the general hustle and bustle.

As captivating as Garbus usually is, Nikki Nack is the first time she sounds adrift. She tapped into a certain energy on Whokill and is clearly trying to move beyond it and expand her range; more than admirable, but Nikki Nack sinks as often as it soars. Not unlike, say, Reflektor. (May 8)

Download: “Water in the Fountain,” “Wait for a Minute,” “Sink-O”

Chad Van Gaalen - Shrink Dust (Flemish Eye/Sub Pop)

Plenty of artists in the last 50 years have claimed to make psychedelic country music. They’re all posers. (Okay, not the Sadies.) Chad Van Gaalen qualifies to be a truly interstellar cowboy, a “cosmic destroyer”—his term. For this Calgary singer/songwriter, the phrase “high lonesome sound” works on several levels.

The country signposts are certainly here: pedal steel guitar, country rhythms, rich harmony, as well as the fact that Van Gaalen has never sounded more like Neil Young than he does here. But this is the perpetually unconventional landscape that Van Gaalen has always inhabited, one as bizarre and unsettling as it is glorious in its fractured beauty.

His voice is drenched in ghostly reverb, his drums sound like they were recorded in a bedroom (they most likely were), the guitars sound like they’re falling apart, and in between the spaces are evocative sounds of indeterminate origin—never more so than when Van Gaalen sings a song called “Where Are You,” seemingly from the middle of a tornado, as droning synths and Echoplex guitars swirl around him. As always, Van Gaalen’s lyrics find him keeping it surreal: “All the blues and greens rise up and out of us now”; “Last night I weighed my sins”; “Come on, let’s get high on other people’s dreams.”

The prolific Van Gaalen can sometimes come off as too carefree and ramshackle; certainly, much of Shrink Dust seems held together by a thread. Though it’s often beautiful, it’s not a pretty album—most of it will scare CBC to death. (Good.)  But it’s as weird and wild as Van Gaalen has ever been, without diving right off the deep end. (May 1)

Download: “Cut Off My Hands,” “Frozen Paradise,” “Weighed Sin”

Wye Oak - Shriek (Merge)

Chances are good that you’ve never heard of this Baltimore duo, so you probably don’t care that singer Jenn Wasner has abdicated her crown as a roaring guitar hero, in order to take up bass and surround herself in synths. In more ways than one, Wye Oak is a brand new band for most people—including the band themselves. Drummer Andy Stack was already accustomed to juggling drums and keyboards; now the division of labour between both musicians is harder to decipher.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this new material also lacks some of the tension at which Wye Oak always excelled; without the roaring guitar, and with a now-necessary dependence on consistent tempos, much of this material explores a trippy weightlessness that is both the best and worst thing about it. Wasner’s vocals occasionally drift into the stratosphere, recalling ’80s 4AD acts like the Cocteau Twins; speaking of that decade, “Despicable Animal” nods to Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” There’s no known precedent, however, to the inverted reggae of “The Tower.”

As one of the more creative American rock bands of the last five years, Wye Oak’s makeover doesn’t entirely suit them—yet. That doesn’t make it a mistake. It just sets them up for even greater adventures. (May 15)

Download: “Shriek,” “Glory,” “Sick Talk”