Highly recommended: Anchorsong,
Deerhoof, Anderson.Paak, Glauco Venier
Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: TUNS
Well worth your while: Sharon Jones, The
Julie Ruin, The Magic, Nao
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.
Anchorsong – Ceremonial
(Caroline)
Anchorsong is the name of the last
track on Bjork’s Debut album. Now
it’s also the name of a Japanese artist, Masaaki Yoshida,
whose eclectic palette would have been right at home on that 1993 record.
Call-and-response melodic percussion lines, Spaghetti Western guitar, bells and
gamelans that could have been lifted from Pantha du Prince, plaintive strings,
kalimbas—at times it sounds like a Moby remix of early Bjork, at others a more
worldly Tycho. But mostly it sounds like a curious traveller in search of
beauty, propelled forth by insistent rhythms that never let the listener drift
off, asleep at the wheel. (Aug. 4)
Stream: "Eve,"
"Mother," “Butterflies”
Bat for Lashes – The Bride
(Warner)
Ah! The Bride. It’s a concept album, no? A peek inside the narrative of
a marriage, either an epic love story of perseverance or a psychological
torture story, right? The first song is a lovely lullaby about, presumably,
engagement, called “I Do.” But from there we go right into “Joe’s Dream,” with
the opening line: “There's a tear in my lover's eyes /
He's at my window, it's a gloomy night.” Uh-oh! What are we in for? The next
track, “In God’s House,” makes it clear: she’s been stranded at the altar, her
fiancée dead, the bride-to-be denied even the status of widowhood. For the rest
of the album, she goes “Honeymooning Alone,” driving along the seaside,
mourning the life that could have been.
Natasha Khan spent two years working
on The Bride, both the album and what
will be an accompanying film. The British songwriter recorded in rural New York
state, and the resulting sound is a combination of the sea-swept gothica of PJ
Harvey and David Lynchian smalltown-U.S.A. weirdness. Yet Khan is more
conventional than many of her outré influences; there’s also a lot of Sarah
McLachlan in here—though the side of that songwriter that we haven’t seen in a
very, very long time.
Part of Khan’s charm is her ability
to sound so haunting and creepy and yet simultaneously alluring; it’s a lot
sexier than a record about a dead lover should probably be. (Aug. 4)
Stream: “Joe’s Dream,” “In God’s
House,” “Sunday Love”
Deerhoof – The Magic
(Polyvinyl)
It’s been a weird summer. And when
the going gets really weird, no other rock band makes more sense than Deerhoof.
The California quartet’s delightfully playful absurdism—executed with technical
precision, lyrical naivete, and a sonic mashup of Zappa, punk rock and the
weirdest parts of the Beatles—were a welcome tonic to soundtrack the Bush
years. Deerhoof is always at the very least interesting, but every so often
their oddball inventiveness coalesces into a top-to-bottom fantastic album.
This is one of those albums. Considering their discography now stretches back
almost 20 years, entry points can be hard to find for the uninitiated. So start
here. And don’t miss them when they swing back this way again. (Aug. 11)
Stream: “Kate Mania!” “Life is Suffering,”
“Plastic Thrills”
Hannah Georgas – For
Evelyn (Dine Alone)
Mining the same vibe as Bat for
Lashes is Vancouver/Toronto singer Hannah Georgas, whose third album is
dedicated to her 98-year-old grandmother—for once, it seems, an artist
celebrating someone still alive rather than writing an album-long obituary (see
also: The Acorn’s Glory Hope Mountain
or the Fiery Furnaces’ Rehearsing My
Choir—which they recorded with their grandmother). Georgas doesn’t do so
with a plunky ukulele or sad piano ballads (though there is one or two of
those): she dives right into the synths found in the studio of producer Graham
Walsh (Holy F--k, Operators) and comes out with a hot-blooded new wave record
that trumps anything in her promising discography so far. (Aug. 4)
Stream: “Don’t Go,” “Evelyn,”
“Naked Beaches”
Sharon Jones – Miss Sharon
Jones OST (Daptone)
Sharon Jones was 40 years old when
she first had her name listed as lead vocalist on a recording. That was in
1996. She’d sung live with plenty of bands and recorded backup vocals, but paid
her bills as a corrections officer and lived with her mother. In the recent
documentary Miss Sharon Jones, and in
the one new track on its soundtrack (“I’m Still Here”), she says she was always
told she was “too fat, too short, too black, too old,” to front her own band—an
assertion that is patently ridiculous on every imaginable level. This woman is
Otis Redding and Tina Turner reincarnate. If this woman is not a rock star,
then that term might as well not exist.
Jones got her break by falling in
with a group of sympathetic musicians in New York who would come to be the core
of Daptone records—members of Afrobeat revivalists Antibalas and ’70s jazz-funk
enthusiasts the Sugarman 3, among others. There were many excellent acts on
Daptone, but all of them were instrumental. Sharon Jones quickly became the
star of the show. As her profile rose, so did that of her band, the Dap-Kings,
who were hired to record with everyone from Amy Winehouse (that’s them on
“Rehab”) to David Byrne to Michael Bublé to Bruno Mars (that’s them on “Uptown
Funk”).
Just as Jones was about to release
her fifth and easily her best album, 2014’s Give
the People What They Want, Jones was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She
postponed the album while she underwent treatment, but came back to triumph and
tour—only to have the cancer reappear just as this documentary,
directed by Oscar winner Barbara Kopple (Harlan
County USA, Shut Up and Sing)
debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. Instead of
retreating during this round of treatment, she’s been on the road ever since,
fighting as strong as she can. If you thought Gord Downie was brave (which he
is), you should witness Sharon Jones in action (check out this April 2016
performance for KEXP in Seattle).
All of which is even more of a reason
to celebrate the soundtrack to that documentary, which compiles some of the
best tracks of Jones’s 14-year discography. The power of her voice and her band
often overshadowed the songs, but that’s not the case here: this is all
top-shelf material. The uber fan could quibble about omitting her covers of Janet Jackson
or Woody Guthrie
or Shuggie Otis,
but as a sampling of her five albums and more, this is hard to top—especially
with the addition of hard-hitting early singles like “Genuine.” (Aug. 18)
The Julie Ruin – Hit Reset
(Hardly Art)
Kathleen Hanna has a lot of
baggage. A principal architect of the riot grrrl movement of the ’90s with her
band Bikini Girl, a key member of political electropop band Le Tigre in the
2000s, Lyme
disease victim, subject of the acclaimed 2013 documentary The Punk Singer:
anytime she steps back into the public eye with new music, it’s a major
countercultural event.
Not that she lets that get to her.
After her reinvention with the new band The Julie Ruin, whose 2013 album Run
Fast was full of themes of perseverance, age and triumphing over
adversity, here she sounds more than happy to just make a fun rock’n’roll
record with her new pals—one steeped in the bubblegum melodies and enthusiastic
punk party music she loves (lots! of! handclaps!), with politics taking a
backseat or expressed in considerably more subtle fashion than she’s known for.
That said, she can still skewer like few others, like when she lambastes a
gushing yet shallow male fan in “Mr. So and So,” who boasts, “I’ll show your autograph to my women’s studies class!”
Is this one of Hanna’s better
records? Not really. But baggage be damned. The 47-year-old singer has nothing
to prove to anyone, and sounds like she’s having the time of her life. (Aug. 11)
Stream: "Hit Reset,"
"I Decide," “Rather Not”
The Magic – Night Falling
(Hailstone Entertainment)
What a Magical summer it is. There’s
the aforementioned Deerhoof album, a new album by the international Toronto
pop-reggae sensation Magic!, and now a new album from the Guelph band from whom
the “Rude” band stole a name: Evan and Geordie Gordon, who perform and record
as The Magic. This Magic makes blue-eyed synth soul
with an ’80s bent, with Evan serving as the studio wizard and Geordie the
cool-cucumber crooner who slips between his seductive lower range and a
falsetto that keeps getting better with age. (He’s now 30, but keen audiences
will remember him as a teenager in the Barmitzvah Brothers 15 years ago.) Night Falling was four years in the
making, scheduled during time off from the brother’s duties as touring members
of Islands. Once a full band, it’s now a duo, but they don’t sacrifice any side
of their lush sound, which has nods to Sade, Hall & Oates, Haim and Blood
Orange—and you’d never guess it’s a bedroom recording. (Aug. 11)
Stream: “If I Were You,” “Over and
Over,” “Season’s Crown”
Whole album here.
Nao – For All We Know
(Sony)
Last year, this British R&B
singer dropped an EP with the slinky summer bass line on “Inhale Exhale,”
announcing yet another bright new light in what is turning out to be a golden
era in R&B. That track reappears on her major label debut, as it should,
but Nao proves she’s certainly no one-trick pony. Her voice might be girlish in
pitch, but there is a command and confidence here that sounds anything but
naïve. There are many times here, notably “Bad Blood” (no, not a Taylor Swift
cover) she feels like the missing link between Prince and Kate Bush (who, of
course, were mutual fans and collaborators). Or, in modern terms, she sits
somewhere between FKA Twigs and Miguel. Nao herself calls her music “wonky
funk.” Either way, she’s staked out a claim in a competitive field this year. (Aug. 25)
Stream: “Inhale Exhale,” “Adore You,”
“Fool to Love”
Anderson.Paak – Malibu
(O.B.E.)
While R&B fans spent the first
half of 2016 fretting about the arrival of a new Frank Ocean album, this
California artist quietly dropped this minor masterpiece in the dead of
January. He was the talk of the SXSW festival in March, appeared on one of the best tracks on
Kaytranada’s Polaris Music Prize-shortlisted 99.9% in May, and sold out the Phoenix in Toronto in June. Why?
Because Malibu is second only to Beyoncé’s Lemonade
as a high-water mark for R&B in the last year.
Paak is no spring chicken. He’s 30
years old, with experience as a professional drummer (for an American Idol contestant) and a Dr. Dre
protégé (with several guest appearances on Dre’s comeback, Compton). He was raised on old soul music and California G-funk and
his world was turned upside down by Outkast. His first gigs were in a Baptist
congregation. He sings with a delicious rasp not dissimilar to Kendrick Lamar’s
timbre as a rapper, with layered harmonies akin to D’Angelo and a psychedelic
palette worthy of Miguel; on the straight-up funk of “Come
Down,” he channels “Payback”-era James Brown. He’s a father and husband who
was raised in a violent household and is determined to find the positivity in
life. You can hear all of that life experience in Malibu, which announces the arrival of a fully formed artist ready
to seize the crown. As an independent artist, he doesn’t have marketing hype
behind him, but an album this good doesn’t need it. The music does all the
talking. (Aug. 11)
Anderson.Paak is playing the Manifesto festival in Toronto on Sept. 17,
on a dream bill with Kaytranada and Daniel Caesar, at Echo Beach.
Stream: “Come Down,” “Heart Don’t
Stand a Chance,” “Am I Wrong” feat. Schoolboy Q
Fatima al Qadiri – Brute
(Hyperdub)
"You are no longer peacefully
assembled," are the first words you hear on Qadiri’s second album. They’re
sampled from a police officer at the 2015 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, which
helped kick off the Black Lives Matter movement in the States. Qadiri’s
electronic soundscapes are meant to evoke a dystopia—not a fantastical one, but
one very much rooted in current realities. As an instrumental artist, she works
to evoke these themes with groaning synths that sound like
sorrowful choirs, with beats that sound disorienting and dazzling, with eerie
melodies that are just waiting for the right sci-fi director to use them in
film—though it would be Qadiri doing that director a favour, not the other way
around. The cover art, by Josh Kline, depicts a Teletubby-like humanoid
in riot gear, looking like it just woke up to this strange new world with no
idea what role it might play. Qadiri doesn’t have answers, just questions,
colours, hues. That’s all she needs. (Aug. 4)
Stream: “Blood Moon,” “Oubliette,”
“Power”
Glauco Venier – Miniatures:
Music for Piano and Percussion (ECM)
Pianists like Nils Frahm, 33, and
Chilly Gonzales, 44, get a lot of attention for reinvigorating the art of neo-classical
solo piano, in part because of their age and associated record labels and
artists. More power to them, especially if they help open ears to this solo
recording by 53-year-old Italian pianist Glauco Venier. Venier is a
Berklee-trained jazz player who has primarily performed in a trio format. Here,
he was hired to score a documentary about an Italian sculptor, with the
intention of grafting on the sounds of “sonorous sculptures” to his minimalist
piano compositions. That he’s doing so on the ECM label, home to Keith
Jarrett’s legendary ’70s recordings, carries a certain weight among jazz fans.
Venier is more than up to the task. Miniatures
is meditative and lovely, melodic and gentle, the resonant gongs and bells and
other metallic sounds employed tastefully and effectively. If, like me, you’ve
had a hectic summer of visits and excess and joy and mourning and too much
rock’n’roll and sweaty R&B, here’s your antidote and a perfect comedown. (Aug. 25)
Stream: “Byzantine Icon,” “Prayer,”
“Asian Songs and Rhythms No. 40)
