As a founding member of Hot Chip, Joe Goddard has been producing on an international stage since his band’s dance pop became popular in the mid-2000s. Over the past decade, he’s also released high-energy disco and house as one half of the 2 Bears, co-founded Greco-Roman Records, and produced countless remixes (he was even nominated for a Grammy last year for his edit of the Chemical Brothers’ “Wide Open”). But many of those efforts seemed secondary to Hot Chip. More than any of his previous solo endeavors, Goddard’s latest solo album, Electric Lines, holds steadily on its own.
For Electric Lines, Goddard has adapted the tried and true DJ/producer album format — multiple vocal features, obscure samples, pop structures — to his particular sensibilities. But instead of…

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…stringing cookie-cutter dancefloor hits, Electric Lines is an electronic pop LP funneled through the intellectual lens Goddard honed during his many years in Hot Chip’s ranks. One of the best examples of this is the album’s opening track, “Ordinary Madness,” which sounds like a meditation on the Zara Larsson-style tropical house that has been tediously inescapable for the past five years or so. Amid warm, tinkling synths and breezy electric guitars, British singer Slo sweetly croons a catchy melody—if she sounded any more laid-back, she’d have had to record her takes on a chaise lounge. Instead of merely copying radio-friendly summertime songs, Goddard tries to deconstruct them, injecting an arsenal of tricks into tired production tropes, making something both familiar and instantly listenable.

Lead single “Home” is the album’s crown jewel, both an homage to the deep Detroit house of the ’80s and the UK big beat chart-toppers of the ’90s. Built around a jubilant sample of “We’re on Our Way Home” by 1970s Detroit funk group Brainstorm, “Home” couples that band’s star-reaching, soulful vocals with those of 26-year-old Daniel Wilson, an American singer and producer who has been one of this genre’s best kept secrets for the past few years. With its low R&B tones and splashy snares, “Home” is a perfect middle ground between an understated comedown and an all-out peaking-on-the-dancefloor banger. It illustrates the feeling of reluctantly leaving a party only because the sun has decided to come up.

Goddard’s odes to the history of dance music are charming, and Electric Lines convincingly showcases the sheer breadth of his encyclopedic knowledge of production. It’s also a little too reliant on it. Though solidly enjoyable, Electric Lines could have benefitted from some more concretely original ideas to propel it forward.

But when Goddard taps into his love for house, disco, and techno, his enthusiasm radiates through the speakers. Where the sample on “Home” is used in contrast to the song’s more low-key moments, “Lose Your Love” repurposes the Emotions’ “I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love” in a more traditional way, carving through a climbing piano loop punctuated with blasts of horns. Goddard gives us a taste of the familiar with the title track, featuring vocals by Hot Chip’s lead singer Alexis Taylor. It’s the quietest and most reflective song on the record, a slow-building web of handclaps, electropop keys, and Taylor’s unmistakably pensive voice. It’s difficult not to pit it against other Hot Chip songs, and realistically, it could fit on any one of their albums. Here, it’s a touching look at what Goddard has accomplished and a new place to stand.

After nearly a dozen years spent honing their meticulously-shambling psych folk, Woods’ reputation for consistency threatened to eclipse the Brooklyn band’s taste for adventure. 2016’s City Sun Eater in the River of Light at least broadened the sonic palette decorating well-worn High Americana grooves, but incorporating polyrhythmic textures and Spaghetti Western brass within such a firmly-defined blueprint felt less the fruit of bold reinvention than Afro-jazz course project. All things considered, it’s easy to imagine Woods continuing onward that pleasant, artful, none-too-exciting path another decade had events unfolded the slightest bit differently last November.
As with so many Americans, Woods’ vocalist/ guitarist/songwriter Jeremy Earl felt suddenly…

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…adrift following the presidential election, and, over the weeks that followed, he couldn’t help but pour all thoughts and feelings into relevant material. Though his band hadn’t intended another release until the next year, Earl’s restless muse so hastened the process that recording essentially finished around Inauguration Day, and, whatever else one might say about the Age of Trump, Love Is Love showcases an act bristling with newfound purpose.

Clocking in at a shade over 30 minutes, the six songs comprising Love Is Love may be best understood as de facto concept EP chronicling their creator’s trudge through very particular stages of grief: disbelief, bitterness, wordless morbidity and a sort of grudging rapture. Even though stylistic similarities to CSEitRoL predominate, the group (on this recording: bassist Jarvis Taveniere, pianist John Andrews, drummer Aaron Neveu, saxophonist Alec Spiegelman, trumpeter Cole Kamen-Green) eases into their ‘60s-steeped alt-country sweet spot with a magisterial timelessness that somehow also neatly frames lyrical commentary explicitly driven by current events. The damaged breathiness of Earl’s vocals has never been more ideally exploited for both literal and melodic resonance than on mordant DNC anthem “Bleeding Blue” or the differing title tracks that bookend the collection – divining that hazy, rootsy middle-distance between “California Dreamin’” and Radiohead’s “Reckoner.”

Throughout Love Is Love, we’re never quite out of the Woods. Despite all overt nods to genre inclusivity, there’s not a moment that would soon be confused with world music. For any longtime fans concerned the measured poppiness of early tracks might suggest newfound commercial ambitions, the nearly 10 minute instrumental mortuary jam of “Spring Is in the Air” should set the faithful at ease. This latest song cycle reflects the maturing work of an act determinedly young at heart yet gathering their powers nonetheless to confront encroaching terrors

There’s always been a bit of a political slant to Maxïmo Park’s songwriting. That said, you suspect that there’s a couple of presumptions that are going to be made about Risk to Exist that will need dispelling straight out of the gate. For a start, this is not an aggressively political record. There’s plenty of that kind of territory explored on this sixth full-length from the Geordie quartet – more so than ever before – but for the most part, it’s filtered through the kaleidoscope of the personal; the strength of relationships in oppressive times on “I’ll Be Around”, or the gulf between expectations and reality on “The Hero”. The latter’s a lively rebuke to compromise, and one that’s deceptively complex musically – burbles of synth and flashes of brass all contribute to the most infectious…

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…Maxïmo track in a while.

Elsewhere, this very much feels like the cleanest-sounding album the band have made in years, and the punchy production makes up for shortfalls in the songwriting itself in places – particularly on the post-Brexit lament of “The Reason I Am Here”, which is carried off with just about enough gusto to disguise the lack of direction in its structure. There’s less of an exploratory bent to the record than there was last time out, on 2014’s Too Much Information, and when there is a touch of that ambition, the band often revert to their comfort zone too quickly – see the manner in which the staccato verses on the title track lapse back into an arms-in-the-air chorus, for instance.

The slinky “Respond to the Feeling”, as near as Maxïmo have ever come to dance-punk, is a stand-out. There’s an irony in the repeated line ‘you’ve got to take a risk before that feeling goes’ – sonically, the band probably haven’t taken enough of them on this album; the highlights come when they nudge themselves towards the leftfield.

Still, the album’s measured political message is carried off with assurance and poise, the on-the-nose misstep of “Work and Then Wait” excepted. That we still have a prominent indie rock outfit capable of pulling that off is reassuring in the current climate.

1. What Did We Do to You to Deserve This? (03:24)
2. Get High (No, I Don’t) (03:30)
3. What Equals Love? (03:45)
4. Risk to Exist (03:39)
5. I’ll Be Around (03:43)
6. Work and Then Wait (03:02)
7. The Hero (03:43)
8. The Reason I Am Here (03:40)
9. Make What You Can (03:49)
10. Respond to the Feeling (03:06)
11. Alchemy (04:03)
12. Sharp Tongue (Bonus Track) (04:44)
13. A Brief Dream (Bonus Track) (03:01)
14. All Been Done Before (Bonus Track) (03:09)
15. Work and Then Wait (Acoustic Version) (02:57)
16. Risk to Exist (Acoustic Version) (03:40)
17. Get High (No, I Don’t) [Acoustic Version] (03:39)
18. I’ll Be Around (Piano Version) (03:03)

The Legends have taken so many left turns in their long and sporadic career that it’s all but impossible in 2017 to recognize them as the same band that recorded the noise pop classic Up Against the Legends in 2003. Under the stewardship of Johan Angergård, the band has done ’80s new wave, slick synth pop, breezy indie pop, and, on 2015’s It’s Love, the kind of modern synth-led R&B that threatened to take over the indie world.
Now, on Nightshift, Angergård has gone full Moroder, suiting up and playing his keyboards like he was driving a car at night through rain-slicked streets. Not exactly the same way that bands like Chromatics and Electric Youth did for the Drive soundtrack, but it wouldn’t be a shock if he made a quick study of that influential artifact at some…

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… point along the way. Along with the squelchy synth tones, fat bass notes, robotic drums, and glossy washes of sound, he feeds his vocals through vocoders and processing to give it that nice alien feel. Guest vocalists Elin Berlin of Eternal Death, Red Sleeping Beauty’s Kristina Borg, and Maria Usbeck all show up to duet with Angergård and provide some sweetness to go along with his machine-driven vocals. It may not sound like the most original direction for the project — maybe even a little clichéd — but there are mitigating factors. First and foremost is Angergård’s knack for writing hooks. It doesn’t matter what style he tries out, the songs are always there and Nightshift is filled with memorable tunes, cute little chord changes, and lyrics that hint at the alienation the synths make clear. He’s also a master at absorbing sounds and influences and making them seem like his own ideas.

So when he jacks the Jonzun Crew (or is it Newcleus?) on “Space Jam,” he gives it a melodic twist that makes it pure Angergård. Even when he strays a little off course, like on “Cocaine,” which sounds like Lorde on downers, there’s enough of his own personality and skill to make it work. Only the cover of the Chainsmokers’ “Roses” doesn’t succeed, and that’s mostly because you can’t polish something that refuses to be polished. Remove that song and the album instantly improves. Cut the album’s running order a bit — at 16 songs and 44 minutes it does begin to drag a bit at the end — and it would be a very good record. As is it, it’s good and fun, and stands as yet another example of just how easy it is for Angergård to drop into a style and make it his.

…English Weather still homes in on a short, overlooked era in British pop history: what co-compiler Bob Stanley calls “the post-psychedelic, pre-progressive moment”. It’s the sound of British rock on the morning after the ’60s, head thick with hungover, pensive introspection; wistfully aware that something’s over but rattled and uncertain about what happens next, either for music or the planet in general: “We’re refugees, walking away from the life that we’ve all known and loved,” as Van Der Graaf Generator put it on Refugees, an impossibly beautiful song entirely at odds with their reputation as the prog band so fearsome even Johnny Rotten loved them.
The album corrals together a pretty eclectic cast. There are famous prog rockers caught before…

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…their sound had coalesced – not just Van Der Graaf Generator but Caravan and Camel – and singer-songwriters of varying degrees of celebrity, from John Cale in heavily-orchestrated Phil Spector mode on Big White Cloud to the recently rediscovered Bill Fay, and Belle Gonzales, a London-based Filipino jazz singer who recorded a solitary album in folky mode. There are forgotten “underground” bands whose career amounted to a lone album, a couple of plays on John Peel, then the kind of commercial oblivion that leads to WTF? prices on discogs.com: the Parlour Band, T2 and Aardvark. And there are obscurities that make Belle Gonzales and Aardvark look like household names with their own themed week on The X Factor and an ITV special revealing the nation’s favourite songs from their oeuvre. Fans of Saint Etienne’s longstanding obsession with rummaging in pop’s most arcane corners – they once made the Top 30 with a cover version of a song previously recorded by 1972 Opportunity Knocks winners Candlewick Green; Bob Stanley’s 700-page history of pop Yeah Yeah Yeah devotes more space to Lieutenant Pigeon than Led Zeppelin – should note that they appear to have excelled themselves here, with track four, Pamela by Scotch Mist. This turns out to be – wait for it – the B-side of a flop 1974 novelty single recorded under a pseudonym by soft rockers Pilot, of Magic and January fame. It’s a great track – eerie and spare, dominated by a really chilling, keening vocal – but the process by which it was rediscovered boggles the mind a bit.

It’s a pretty motley collection of artists trying out ideas – epic, episodic, orchestral ballads; jazzy piano-led soul-searching with abrasive guitar; ascetic acoustic pop decorated with woodwind – in a brief, directionless period when all bets were off, and before it became clear that early 70s rock would be dominated by prog, glam, West Coast singer-songwriters, and cocaine cowboys advising us to take it easy. Sometimes, the music the compilation alights on feels like a period piece; sometimes, as in the case of Camel’s Never Let Go, it feels weirdly contemporary – perhaps because a mood of pensive uncertainty has very much proved 2017’s thing thus far.

But what’s really arresting about English Weather is how unified and coherent it sounds. How the disparate elements come together and paint a remarkably vivid picture of an era. Everything here is of a really high quality: you wonder how so much of it went unnoticed, and whether it’s because the bar was set high 40-odd years ago, or because the compilers are adept at finding the one great track on otherwise unremarkable albums. Everything is shot through with the same autumnal melancholy. Everything sounds incredibly British, up to and including a minor psych-pop band called Orange Bicycle attempting to stave off the inevitable by copying the contemporary sounds emanating from LA. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to still sound redolent of the London suburbs on a drizzly October day while singing about heading down the Oakland turnpike in the intricate harmony vocal style of Crosby, Stills and Nash, but somehow they managed it.

You hear detectable echoes of psychedelia everywhere: Strawberry Fields Forever mellotrons; the stinging guitar that punctuates Bill Fay’s ’Til the Christ Comes Back; the way Geordie-accented folk rockers Prelude’s Edge of the Sea declines into the kind of whimsical poetic interlude that decorated albums by Tyrannosaurus Rex or the Incredible String Band, albeit with a slightly darker hue: “Alas, said the cloud, what have we here? I believe it’s the world and it’s covered in fear.”

Maybe that’s linked to the fact that, in Britain, the 60s didn’t conclude with the same kind of violent, dramatic finality that they did in the States. The mood had clearly darkened since the Summer of Love, but there was no British Altamont, no British Kent State massacre to irrevocably shatter your faith in flower power’s utopian idealism.

1970 and 1971 were also the years of Ride a White Swan and T Rextasy, of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and Meddle by Pink Floyd, of Hunky Dory, Maggie May and Madman Across the Water. Not much in the way of morning-after-the-60s hangover or pensive uncertainty there: the music that would come to define British rock in the 70s was well underway, and its progenitors already had their gazes fixed firmly forward. But English Weather tells an alternative story, using the stuff that fell through the cracks to create something really compelling and immersive: it’s a pleasure to lose yourself in it.

Fifty years after “Whiter Shade of Pale” introduced the concept of progressive rock, Procol Harum roll on, even with singer and pianist Gary Brooker as the only remaining original member.
Novum is their first new studio album in 14 years. Their last, 2003’s The Well’s on Fire, marked the end of the decades-long writing partnership between Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid. Organist Matthew Fisher and drummer Mark Brzezicki left shortly thereafter. Brooker still had guitarist Geoff Whitehorn and bassist Matt Pegg. They recruited organist Josh Phillips and drummer Greg Dunn. This version has been together for a decade.
Novum is a worthy 50th anniversary offering (though it’s not, as Brooker claims, Procol’s finest). This is the sound of a working band, not…

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…a tired reunion project. Brooker enlisted lyricist Pete Brown — known for his work with Cream and Graham Bond — and in an unusual move, brought the entire band into the songwriting process. What’s on offer here is the most rocking sound Procol Harum have delivered since Broken Barricades. There is only one overtly “classical” moment here, and it’s a send up — there’s a direct quote from Pachelbel’s Canon as a brief intro to the wonderful “Sunday Morning.” Some truly perverse lyric moments are expertly crafted into well-composed songs (would we expect anything less?). Opener “I Told on You” is a forceful prog rocker about professional jealousy, bitterness, and retribution. Its bridge and chorus are classic Brooker (think Home and Grand Hotel). “Last Chance Motel” is a strange and ironic take on the murder ballad that recalls the musical structure of early Elton John and Bernie Taupin tunes. It’s among the many vehicles here for Brooker’s voice, which remains as resonant and expressive as ever — there’s the hint of graininess in it, but his power remains undiminished by time. There are also some atypical, straight-on political swipes at hyper-capitalism, too, as on the bluesy “Soldier” and the meld of mean rock and Baroque pop in “Businessman.” “Don’t Get Caught” commences as a ballad with Brooker’s trademark nearly sepulchral singing, but becomes an anthem offering sage advice for guilt-free living atop blazing guitars and swelling strings. One might hear traces of Queen’s extended sense of vocal harmony in the rowdy chorus of the loopy “Neighbor,” but Brian May himself would admit that Queen snagged it from Procol Harum in the first place. “Can’t Say That” is an angry number and it rocks hard: Brooker’s signature piano style runs up hard against Whitehorn’s electric blues guitar vamps (think the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues”) with a killer Pegg bassline. “The Only One” offers Brooker at his most confessional and melancholy, as he builds himself up and lets himself glide down the poignant lyric.

Novum is far better than anyone had any right to expect: It’s energetic, hungry, and swaggering. That said, it retains the trademark class and musical sophistication that makes Procol Harum iconic.

Although primarily known as one of the main proponents of traditional New Orleans jazz since debuting in 1961, New Orleans’ own Preservation Hall Jazz Band has transformed over the past 20 years into an open-minded and stylistically adventurous ensemble. One of the main drivers of this creative metamorphosis is musical director and tuba player/bassist Ben Jaffe, son of Hall founders Allan and Sandra Jaffe. Since graduating Oberlin Conservatory and joining the band in the late ’90s, Jaffe has worked to broaden the band’s appeal and find ways to combine their joyous acoustic style with all sorts of artists and musical genres outside of traditional jazz. This was the approach they took on their 2011 bluegrass-steeped collaboration with the Del McCoury Band, American Legacies,…

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…and 2013’s Jim James-produced That’s It!, which featured their originals alongside covers by Paul Williams and Semisonic. It’s also the approach they take on 2017’s ebullient So It Is. Produced by Jaffe along with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, So It Is showcases a soulful, bluesy, groove-oriented set of songs heavily influenced by the roiling, kinetic sound of Afro-Latin and Cuban bands. However, rather than playing standards of the genre like “The Peanut Vendor” or “Oye Como Va,” here Jaffe and his bandmates deliver the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s first album of all-original compositions. Cuts like “Santiago” and “Innocence,” both co-written by Jaffe and saxophonist/clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, are ferociously bumping, dance-inducing anthems built around titanically rolling drumbeats, evocative keyboard lines, and bristling, puckered horn riffs. Similarly, the kinetic “La Malanga,” co-written by Jaffe and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger (the grandson of Pete Seeger), is a carnival-level, mambo-ready jam replete with searing trumpet lines from Branden Lewis and an angular, post-bop-accented solo from pianist Kyle Roussell. Elsewhere, they dive deep into New Orleans R&B traditions on the funky, organ-steeped, minor-key, Dan Wilson co-write “One Hundred Fires,” and borrow the brassy bombast of fellow New Orleans institution the Rebirth Brass Band on the vocal and handclap-heavy audience pleaser “Mad.”

Along with being a joyous and infectiously jubilant album, So It Is offers the one-two punch of letting the Preservation Hall Jazz Band play the kind of raw, no-holds-barred jazz and blues that they helped personally create a renaissance for, while surreptitiously luring their listeners into what often explodes into a full-on Afro-Latin dance party.

Lynne Hanson’s hardly a household name, but she boasts a catalog that makes her worthy of recognition. This latest effort finds her offering up her usual supply of supple ballads while also evoking emotions that suggest an edgier intent.
While Uneven Ground covers the usual terrain — heartache and heartbreak, life’s pitfalls and purpose — Hanson hammers the point home with lyrics that express innate emotions and deeply defined sentiment. “If I have to be broken, I want to be broken with you,” she sings on  “Broken with You,” affirming a connection that’s more than skin deep. Opening track “Carry Me Home” rings with the kind of longing and loneliness that only a tattered relationship can bring: “Sink to the bottom drop like a stone/You were my heart now…

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…I sleep alone.” The ache is palatable, not only in the song’s calmer caress, but in words that illuminate the true sound of sorrow.

That said, Hanson isn’t simply a forlorn folkie. “Dead Weight” and “Swallow Me Up” find her amplifying her energy and even adding some grit and resolve as well. That variation in tone and tenacity adds a new surge of urgency overall and proves a point. Even when the ground is uneven, the results can still be consistent and cohesive throughout.

The Choir of the Queen’s College, Oxford, has emerged in the top rank of England’s mixed-gender collegiate choirs with a distinctive rounded style, full of sentiment, in the women’s voices. Here they pair it with a novel program for an album that will be a winner among choral music enthusiasts.
The title comes from Edgar Bainton’s And I saw a new heaven, a motet setting text from the Book of Revelations. This lovely work, composed in 1928, is the earliest work on the program, which extends forward in time to music by composers in their twenties when the album appeared in 2017.
The overall idea is strong: an examination of the new British choral repertory from its roots in the middle 20th century, to its giants like John Rutter and, more lately, James MacMillan, to the youthful…

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…figures who show where the music may be going. These are especially intriguing. Sample Et vidi angelum of Marco Galvani, who was born in 1994. With its structure built on parallel harmonies, it fits with the overall moderate-tempo, tonal language of the album as a whole, but suggests something apart from the general atmosphere of nostalgia that surrounds that language. With a unique mixture of classics and new material, and strong engineering in a pair of Oxford venues, this is a good pick for lovers of the English choral repertory and sound. — AMG

From a certain angle, it might seem that Angaleena Presley has reigned in her ambition on her second album, Wrangled. Where her 2014 debut, American Middle Class, tackled precisely what its title promised, Wrangled seems like nothing more than a collection of songs. A closer listen reveals how Presley ties together stories and character portraits of women battling the currents of contemporary society. Presley doesn’t push the point, but as the tales of dashed dreams, teen pregnancy, outlaws, and good girls pile up, it’s clear she’s charting the many ways society throws up roadblocks at females of all ages. She’ll fight back — “Country,” with a head-spinning verse from rapper Yelawolf, pushes against the conservatism of country radio — but she can also twist the knife with a smile…

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…(“Bless My Heart”) and achieves an aching sincerity with her slower songs. Presley deliberately evokes older country rebels — she co-writes with both Guy Clark and Wanda Jackson and offers a salute to the late Merle Haggard with “Mama I Tried” — but she’s not a retro act, no matter what the record’s clever throwback cover may suggest.

She may emphasize her ties to the past but she’s intent on expanding the tradition, turning country music into a bolder, more inclusive place, and that desire is what makes Wrangled such a compelling album.

A lot plays into the success of an artist’s reach, with content and presentation obviously ranking high on the list. But above all, an artist has to be willing to extend a hand if they expect listeners to do the same. Many simply reach for the musical stars without really considering the need to reach out to potential audiences through the music. Pianist Christian Sands doesn’t fall into that trap. His reach — both up and out — is long and wide, exemplified on this aptly named date.
Despite any potential allusions in the previous paragraph or the titular ideal, Reach doesn’t pander to populist tastes or compromise in anyway. It simply has quality material performed at an extremely high level that can appeal to a wide variety of listeners, ranging from the jazz curious…

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…to the jazz cognoscenti. If you’ve found your way to this site and this review, chances are there’s something that appeals to you here, whether you fancy yourself a modernist, a traditionalist, a blues adherent, a neo-soul devotee, a post-bop fan, a Latin jazz lover, or something else entirely. Sands manages to craft unique statements that touch on all of the aforementioned topics, often blending or countervailing one with the other within a single song, and once your ear is hooked, that’s it.

Reach opens with “Armando’s Song,” a nod to the great Chick Corea that seems to be cut from the same cloth—or, perhaps, the same vocabulary—as Corea’s “Armando’s Rhumba.” Sands, however, isn’t one to plagiarize, and the propulsive swing roller coaster that follows the theme proves that point. A rush of optimism blotting out the face of hate follows that eye-opening number. “Song of the Rainbow People” speaks to the need for unity and togetherness, both in name and sound. There are hints of gray skies in the mix, but the sun burns the clouds away.

Those opening invitations expose listeners to the tightly-formed trio that’s the backbone of this album—Sands, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Marcus Baylor—and the three tracks that immediately follow demonstrate how that group reacts to new voices in the mix. Marcus Strickland first spurs the band on with his tenor saxophone on the driven “Pointing West.” Then he puts his tenor and bass clarinet to good use on an electro-dusted chill ride dubbed “Freefall.” Both numbers find the core band expanding its outlook and adapting to the presence of their guest. The same thing can be said to happen when percussionist Cristian Rivera drops in to add some Latin sizzle to the festive “¡Óyeme!.”

The second half of the album is just as inclusive in all respects. “Bud’s Tune” pares things back to a trio configuration as Sands salutes bebop pioneer Bud Powell; “Reaching for the Sun” walks on a pseudo-Brazilian groove, carries hints of Corea and Pat Metheny in its DNA, gives Sands a chance to dazzle with his glistening glances, and brings guitarist Gilad Hekselman into the picture for the first of his three consecutive appearances; a cover of “Use Me” retains its Bill Withers-born soulfulness while taking on a new skulking-turned-swinging-turned-skulking rhythmic shape and opening up some space for Christian McBride to bow the truth; and “Gangstalude” injects a hip-hop attitude and foundation into the program. Then Sands ends with what’s, perhaps, the biggest surprise of all: a heartfelt performance of “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail (1986). It opens lyrically and loyally before taking flight in reflective-cum-resounding fashion. It’s the last chapter in this tale of many tones, serving as the final indication of Sands’ willingness to embrace diversity in sound and scope. Everything and everyone seems to be within his reach.

Personnel: Christian Sands: piano; Marcus Baylor: drums; Yasushi Nakamura: bass; Gilad Hekselman: guitar (7-9); Christian McBride: bass (8); Cristian Rivera: percussion (5); Marcus Strickland: tenor saxophone (3, 4), bass clarinet (4).

Charlie Worsham seemed slightly over-polished on his 2013 debut Rubberband, so the clever, quirky Beginning of Things comes as a welcome surprise. Worsham still indulges in studio slickness — this is a major label through and through, a record driven by pro musicians and packaged as a gleaming object — but he shifts directions from song to song, moving from gentle fingerpicking folk to simmering soul, even cooking up a country-disco groove for “Birthday Suit.” This is one of several songs deliberately played for laughs, and Worsham’s way with a joke — which was buried on Rubberband — is one of the best things about Beginning of Things. With its bubbling hook and train-track rhythm, “Lawn Chair Don’t Care” is worthy of prime Roger Miller and “Take Me Drunk…

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…I’m Home” highlights his clever wordplay. But Worsham isn’t merely a jokester. He has a keen eye for detail and storytelling that gives his songs of love, nostalgia, and the South a sense of place and time; even when he follows convention, he puts his own spin on familiar material.

Worsham favors soul and breezy pop over rock and twang, and that means Beginning of Things burns slow and steady, providing a soundtrack for romantic evenings and lazy afternoons. Beginning of Things is cool, confident, and idiosyncratic and, coming after such a cautious debut, it feels like a minor triumph.

Young is the full-length debut of Overcoats, the singing and songwriting duo of Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell. The most striking trait of their sound is the rich, lullaby-friendly timbres of both of their voices, which usually appear together, weaving in and out of unison and harmony. That’s not their only attention-grabbing feature, though, as they surround those vocal harmonies with articulate arrangements that blend elements of glitchy indie electronica, pop, folk, and soul.
The album was co-produced by the band, Nicolas Vernhes (Dirty Projectors, Daughter), and Autre Ne Veut, names that to some degree predict the refined, intense, and somewhat offbeat nature of its production, for those familiar with them. Young opens with the under-two-minute “Father,…

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…a slow build of vocal layers and cavernous effects over a drone that, together, almost operates as a canticle (“My father understands the demons I wrestle with in my daydream”). A yearning, somewhat mystical tone is maintained throughout the album, in spite of fluctuating arrangements and rhythms. “Smaller Than My Mother,” for instance, has jazzy, scat-like vocal loops behind more lucid lead vocals. They’re accompanied by pulsing bass, handclaps, and occasional bursts of synths and saxophone. Later, “Hold Me Close” is a soulful ballad with more straightforward piano tones and simple, syncopated drums (though not devoid of its own production touches). It’s followed by the glitchier “The Fog,” which has distorted backing vocals and warped, pitch-bending synths. The elegant “Little Memory” is less rhythmic, instead floating along echoing guitar chords. The arrangements are simultaneously colorful and, with a few more atmospheric exceptions, razor-sharp in a way that would seem to lend themselves to transposing for, say, a cappella groups or the cooler marching bands around, especially on a lively clap-along entry like “Leave the Light On.” It’s also a collection that makes it hard to pick singles, full of big, plushy beats, a seductive tone, and melodies that haunt.

A film director once said that you can’t make a great film with a weak script. The same goes for bands of any kind be it jazz or rock or any kind.
You can’t have a great band without a great drummer. A band can get by with an average bassist or guitarist, but not with an average drummer. It’s the heartbeat of any band.
One of the things that has made the band Rolling Stones what they are is drummer Charlie Watts and his exceptional and unusual drumming skills. For more than 50 years, Watts has been the propulsive engine that has driven this juggernaut. Few other drummers were as integral to the development of rock and roll music by creating rollicking grooves that were executed with an unhurried elan.

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Watts is a player you can listen to for his sound alone as he balances the smooth and the jagged with great ease. Contemporary musicians don’t come much more graceful in sound or execution than that.

Apart from his long stint as the drummer of one of the most successful and certainly the longest running rock and roll band in the world, it’s not a secret Watts’s true love has always been jazz and that he has always had a deep appreciation and admiration for this music which hasn’t been that much exploited by the press. During the ’50s and ’60s, Watts fell in love with jazz music through 78 rpm vinyls and the music of musicians like saxophonists Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Gerry Mulligan, trumpeter Miles Davis, to name but a few as well as the drummers they employed. Since then, he has been a passionate jazz aficionado whose knowledge about this music sits between the reverential and encyclopedic. During his sojourn with a marketing agency, he even penned an illustrated book about Charlie Parker as a tribute to him and has been collecting old drum sets used by drumming legends. During the day he would work at the agency and during the night he would play local gigs. And as many of his generation, he has learnt his trade both by listening to record and by observing jazz drummers in the London’s London’s jazz circles.

As a result, his drumming style has always been unorthodox and original. When he joined the Rolling Stones he used his jazz chops in order to invent his style of playing rock and blues rock that the Stones became known for and is the reason why he is so revered these days. When the Stones played in New York for the first time during their first American tour, he went to Birdland to see performances by his bassist Charles Mingus and saxophonist Sonny Rollins, and the latter would play years later with the Stones on a song named “Waiting on a Friend.”

So it wasn’t until the ’80s and the ’90s that Watts began fronting his own jazz bands whenever the demanding tours and work with the Stones would let him. Since then he has formed a number of jazz, boogie-woogie and big band outfits, including Rocket 88, the Charlie Watts Quintet and the Charlie Watts Tentet. Probably that is best portrayed in the thriller movie “Blue Ice” with actor Michael Caine playing a jazz club owner and Watts’ band was the house jazz combo that brilliantly rocked the house. Charlie Watts meets the Danish Radio Big Band was instigated in 2009 by English trumpeter Gerard Presencer, who is also a member of the band. The Band had four days of rehearsals and then had a performance at the then newly opened Danish Radio Concert Hall in Copenhagen. All but two of the pieces here are rewrites of earlier, previously recorded selections either with the Rolling Stones or a selection of suits from his duet record with another drumming legend Jim Keltner. But to make a big band work has really very little to do with “star power” and has really everything to do with hard work. If it is played too conservative then everything will sound predictable and everyone will get bored. For a start, this record doesn’t break any new ground. The emphasis is more on moods, harmonies and at moments the arrangements do nod at Gil Evans’ or Mingus’ styled approaches.

The date opens with two parts of “Elvin Suites” which as an original tune from the project with Kelter is a single composition. The original is an African styled piece with African harmonic voices meshed with piano flashes and cymbals. All of that is beautifully arranged here with dry hissing of Watts’ brushes that drives the first part. It is indeed difficult to discern between what’s arranged and what is spontaneous. The band’s rapport is impressive and everything it plays sounds right. The second part emphasizes the drums and there are polyrhythmic runs that drive this piece with saxophonist Uffe Markussen taking the lead and soon the band steps on the gas and ups the game loud.

The Rolling Stones classics are beautifully rearranged and reharmonized. Nothing in these arrangements would hint at the original songs but a solo instrument would take a lead and directly reference the original melody. Even though named as “Faction” as soon as one hears the melody on the flugelhorn it becomes clear that this is “Satisfaction.” Watt’s subtle and non-flashy rhythm playing is utterly flawless and galvanizes the band. The same goes for the other two Stones classics “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Paint it Black.” By no means is this a tribute of faithful recreations of these songs. The arranger shows a daring flair for reimagining these songs. Each of them is rethought and remodeled in order to come out with a vibrant new music. With its imaginative blend of melodies and grooves and colorful textures and timbres, these songs are a launchpad for the big band and its soloists to shine.

“I Should Care” is one of the hidden gems in this collection. There is a certain easiness and flow in this composition, but no blandness at all. The various soloists are stimulating and attentive conversationalists, always listening and often picking up on each other’s quips. The album closes on a high note with a beautiful stomp “Molasses.” Everything here is filled with movement. It’s rich and sticky in rhythm and harmony and is exciting and boiling with energy. — AllAboutJazz

Personnel: Charlie Watts: drums; Per Gade: guitar,Anders Gustafsson: trumpet; Vincent Nilsson: trombone; David Green: acoustic bass; Peter Jensen: trombone; Steen Rasmussen: fender rhodes, piano; Uffe Markussen: tenor sax; Gerard Presencer: flugelhorn; Lars Møller: tenor sax; Steen Nikolaj Hansen: trombone; Nicolai Schultz: flute

Castro Coleman has an extensive and impressive resume as a guitarist and producer in the gospel genre, having appeared, in a variety of guises, on over fifty records. In 2013, he reinvented himself as Mr. Sipp, diving headfirst into the blues scene, producing It’s My Guitar, the following year, as a result of his own efforts. He was already associated with Malaco Records through his gospel work, and in 2015, released Mississippi Blues Child, for that label, to wide acclaim, and he returns with a vengeance on Knock a Hole In It. This is a solid set of high powered electric blues that not only exhibits his guitar prowess and songwriting skills, but the range of his vocal capabilities as well.
The records title, as well as the opening track, are a reference to the shout Coleman gives as he…

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…takes off on a guitar solo. He plays all the guitars, and at times there is a lot going on, but there is no doubting he plays a mean blues guitar. “Bad Feeling,” is a fast lane burner, where the organ fills of Carrol McLaughlin, and driving bass of Jeffrey Flanagan, allow Coleman plenty of room for soloing, as he does throughout the record. There is a novelty approach on “Stalking Me,” as the song describes the unwanted persistent approach of female fans, but done with lighthearted humor.

The pace comes way down on “Sea of Love,” a ballad where Coleman benefits from all those years listening to hymns, and the emotions that the gospel singers invoke. “Gotta Let Her Go,” is a tough barroom blues, and “Going Down,” crosses over the hard rock line, as the effect driven guitars take center stage. But Coleman can also play as clean and soft as the song necessitates, “Baby Your Mine,” presented as a wholehearted love song, the guitar curtailed to simple stinging accents.

Profound Mississippi roots come to light on the shuffling “Juke Joint,” a good time number where Coleman’s knowledge of accurate southern blues is evident. Deeper into the slow grinding blues he goes on “Strings Attached,” this time his sincere vocals revealing a man pleading for love amidst personal confusion and doubt. He keeps this heartbroken persona going on “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” reaching into the innate soul singer that is inside him.

The dance oriented, contemporary rhythm and blues beat of “Turn Up,” and “Love Yourself,” indicate that Coleman is adept in the groove style of playing which is distinctive of the Malaco Records catalog of blues/soul artists. This style entails the dynamic horn section featured here, and is a throwback to the golden age of soul revues, where the band, as well as the singer, had to deliver the goods for a tough demanding audience.

That Coleman is influenced by Jimi Hendrix, is evident from his ferocity on the guitar, and the way he sets up his solos. It is high volume blues taken over the edge, yet controlled and tempered to fit the mood of the song, while never playing the same lick twice. It is then appropriate that he goes out with a tribute to Hendrix, covering the immortal “Little Wing.” He stays true to the original, and steps up to the task on the solo, though the ending is blurred by going into the Star Spangled Banner, which which should have been reconsidered.

Castro Coleman as Mr.Sipp proves that he is the real deal when it comes to interpreting modern blues and soul, both as a vocalist, and guitarist, having an inherent sensitivity for the music. Aside from his recordings, his available videos display versatility as a performer in an intimate acoustic setting, as well as with a small blues ensemble, so he can do it all. His prodigious ability to navigate all the intricacies of the blues, in all its forms and styles, sets him apart, and there will certainly be more to come from Mr. Sipp.

Personnel: Castro Coleman/Mr. Sipp: lead vocals, guitars, bass, strings, horn arrangements, percussion; Jeffrey Flanagan: bass, backing vocals; Carrol McLaughlin: piano, organ; Kimble Funches: trumpet; Jessie Primer III: tenor sax; Robert Lamkin: trombone; Stanley Dixon: drums; Murph Caicedo: drums.

Nightlands, the project of Philadelphia-based Dave Hartley (best known as a core member and longtime bassist of The War On Drugs), release his third album, I Can Feel the Night Around Me, on May 5th via Western Vinyl. Continuing the tradition of previous Nightlands releases Forget the Mantra (2010) and Oak Island (2013), I Can Feel the Night Around Me showcases Hartley’s ability to layer his voice and conjure some of the most beautiful virtual choirs in modern music.
If his first two records were vocal layering experiments, his third stands as Hartley’s thesis statement: “I was determined to use vocal stacking to enable my songwriting, not shroud or obscure it.” He recorded most of the album alone in a cold warehouse basement, which he affectionately…

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…calls The Space — it’s where The War on Drugs formerly rehearsed and stored their equipment. “The dissonance between the sound of the album and the atmosphere in which it was recorded is pretty striking,” Hartley says. Indeed the music seems more geographically inspired by the microclimates of the Lost Coast and the moonrises of Big Sur than the post-industrial cityscape of North Philadelphia. Perhaps his periodic westward sojourns and healthy obsessions with mid-career Beach Boys albums and Denis Johnson’s Already Dead: A California Gothic were influencing him more than he was aware.

The order of tracks on this CD does not match up with the official track listing on the front of the CD or in online stores.

Deutsche Grammophon, the classical label founded in 1898, has a history with electronic music dating back to the ’50s, but club music artists have appeared on their sleeve notes only since the early 2000’s. 2001’s Moñdäñ Volume 1, a mixed compilation of downtempo jams featuring cuts by MJ Cole and LTJ Bukem, was an early example. Since then, Carl Craig, Moritz Von Oswald and Matthew Herbert have all helmed the label’s Recomposed series, in which producers known for making house and techno reinterpreted music by the likes of Gustav Mahler and Maurice Ravel. Tale of Us’s first album, Endless, marks a new stage in the label’s relationship with electronic music: it’s the first full-length of original material ever released on Deutsche Grammophon by a club music act.

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As respected as the duo of Carmine Conte and Matteo Milleri are in house and techno circles, Endless—an album on a label that’s home to classically trained artists like Francesco Tristano, Max Richter and Jóhann Jóhannsson—feels like an audacious move. It was R&S boss Renaat Vandepapeliere who first planted the idea in their heads, Conte and Milleri told XLR8R in 2015. After hearing “Distante,” a beatless track the duo released for free as part of Nils Frahm’s Piano Day in 2015, Vandepapeliere expressed interest in signing an album of similar material. R&S never got to release the record, but the Belgian’s advice stayed with them. “Distante,” which appears on Endless, has inspired an entire LP of sombre, meandering music that tries desperately to tug at your heartstrings, but never quite gets a good enough grip.

Tale of Us have never been ones for subtlety. They’ve built a glittering career from overtly emotional music that demands a certain kind of emotional response. Like the gloomy, dramatic tech house of their DJ sets and EPs, Endless‘s musical tropes are designed to engender introspection or feelings of sadness. Heavy delay, sweeping strings and minor-key melodies crop up repeatedly, sometimes to stirring effect (“Dilemma”) but mostly as a way of heightening atmosphere and filling the space. “Ricordi,” which loops a bed of crackle and hiss beneath a lilting piano line, wouldn’t be vaguely dramatic were the whole thing not soaked in reverb. Similarly, no amount of delay will hide the aimless plod of the piano on “Oltre La Vita,” the album’s weakest cut. Too often, it feels like the FX have been deployed to mask a lack of ideas.

It’s not all so middling. Tale of Us’s strengths lie in their otherworldly sound design. They’re experts at mood and texture. Not much happens in opening track “Definizione Dell’Impossibile”—some piercing keys here, a foggy synth there—but you could cut the tension with a knife. At the other end of the record, on “Quello Che Resta,” the atmosphere is almost upbeat, as boomy puffs of percussion cradle deft twinkles and a hauntingly beautiful piano line. The elements hang together in a gentle sway, backed by the patter of rain on a window. It’s easily the album’s standout.

Jason Eady is one of those middle-aged musicians who already has an old soul. Or at least that’s the impression he conveys on this self-titled sixth album. He’s been around for awhile, a fact reflected in the weary narratives and the tattered observations he shares on several of its songs. Eady takes a weathered and worldly approach, one that relies on the usual Americana additives — softly strummed acoustic guitars, weeping pedal steel, brushed percussion — but it’s his mournful vocals, flush with reflection and remorse, that creates the most emphatic impression. Clearly, Eady has an experienced a lifetime of trials and tribulations, and these touching tales express those sobering sentiments through his unflinching observations.
The most affecting thing about Eady is the way…

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…in which he conveys his tender tales, adding a spiritual sensibility to affirm the overall emotion. His recollection of an old army buddy in “Black Jesus” veers towards the metaphysical, but the lesson it conveys about the bonds of brotherhood creates a deep and lasting impression. The rugged autobiographical narratives, “Drive” and “Why I Left Atlanta,” reflect a degree of disillusionment and discontent that should hit home for anyone looking to find that special place where opportunity may await. Likewise, the soft sheen and comforting embrace of “Not Too Loud” expresses that sense of separation that enters mind and heart when a child grows up way too quickly, leaving the parent to yearn for the bonds that are forever broken. Indeed, it’s hard to hear it without welling up with tears.

Granted, Eades doesn’t try to break any formulas here. His earnest, down-home laments find him in familiar terrain, those places inhabited by any number of other Nashville troubadours that share observations about life, love, and longing. Yet, there’s something special in his melancholic motif and its abject authenticity. Clearly, one to watch, Eady has easily established his credence.

An ethnomusicological study, an extensive sound poem, or a fantasy field recording collage – whichever perspective you take on Amazonia 6891 everyone is sure to arrive at a similar conclusion; this record is the key to whole other dimensions of sound-colour imagery and electro-acoustic interzones.
It was conceived and finalised in 1985 as a joint project, combining ethnographer Pit Piccinelli’s collection of natural objects with electronic input and reworking by ethnomusicologist Walter Maioli (Aktuala, Futuro Antico) and anthropologist Fred Gales, who, together, committed their fascination for the mystery of native Amazonian tribes and the sounds of the jungle into a lush transcultural collage on the first disc, whilst their second disc…

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…presents a library of the component sounds and samples used in the collage.

Both sides are completely transfixing in their own right. With side A/B we’re placed at the centre of a thick, heaving mass of humid jungle atmospheres and distant tribal song almost imperceptibly blended with electronic sources. The fidelity of the recordings isn’t crystal, but that only lends to the timbral chaos, making it harder to pick out what’s what and thereby smudging your consciousness into a deeper, hypnotic state when used either as low set ambient backing or for eyes-shut headphone immersion. Do so, and after 10 minutes or so you’ll be looking in cupboards or checking the train for stray monkeys.

As some kind of proof of the preceding side’s construction, the C/D sides spell out a library of individual sounds, from rattling monkey skulls to scraped coconut, the voices of the Yanoama, and slivers of synthesised electronics segued with readings of various texts.

It’s all far rawer, layered and textured than anything we’d be inclined to call 4th world, although it obviously shares many of that genre’s hallmarks. It’s maybe better thought of as a fantasy chronicle of adventures in the endlessly evocative Amazon, or a deeply trippy post club escape hatch.

…The producer Neil McDonald, AKA Lord of the Isles, hails from Firecracker’s home base of Edinburgh. He learned to DJ alongside Firecracker Recordings boss Lindsay Todd at a long-running bar residency over ten years ago, and has released two records with Firecracker’s family of labels. His latest, Parabolas of Neon, is one of the best in an impressive catalog, alternating between lush ambience and rhythms aimed at the lonelier side of the dance floor.
The concept behind the opening track, “Sunrise 89,” is easy to ascertain. An ecstatic diva wails wordlessly as McDonald’s acid house patterns are placed against his signature glacial pads. The stunning breakdown features nostalgic chords that seem ripped from McDonald’s memories of…

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…partying out in the fields. That he can evoke the era without leaning on basic synth stabs, breakbeats or ham-fisted 303 lines speaks to his 20-odd years spent around synthesizers.

“Sunrise 89” is followed by a suite of short, lush ambient tunes. “Beatha” (Gaelic for “water of life,” or more commonly, “whisky”) uses a technoid line to set the stage for soaring strings and a big bassline. “An Stuc,” a church-like organ piece delicately swathed in reverb and subtle synth buzz, hits on that Scottish melancholy. Like “Bryte” and “Tocpe 28,” it’s majestic and deeply emotional music full of pulsing synths and cascading piano. The title track ends the EP with another acid memory. A funky 303 figure and low-slung house drums coast in on clouds of sad-but-hopeful chords, reflecting on the good times with some quiet moments.