051 ALTER.NATION weekly favtraX 01-09-2019

ALTER.NATION #51

Eliane Elias, Lana Del Rey, Velvet Negroni, !!!, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Boy Scouts, Parsnip, Olivia Jean, The Silence, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Mikey Young, The S.L.P.

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"A Man and a Woman"

ALTER.NATION #51 on DEEZER

Versatile pianist and singer who has played straight-ahead jazz, fusion, and Brazilian jazz with equal skill. 
Eliane Elias - A Man and a Woman from Love Stories
Brazilian-born pianist/vocalist Eliane Elias continues her run of well-executed sessions for the Concord label with 2019's lush and sultry Love Stories. The album follows up Elias' Grammy-winning 2017 date Dance of Time... Once again, Elias is joined here by the same group that made Dance of Time, including her husband bassist Marc Johnson, drummer Ed Ribeiro, guitarist Marcus Teixeira, and others.. At the core of each arrangement is Elias' delicate, naturalistic vocals that recall such iconic Brazilian artists as Astrud Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Nara Leão. Helping set the album's romantic tone, Elias opens with a languid rendition of "A Man and a Woman," the classic theme to the 1966 French film of the same name...

Vocalist who makes atmospheric orchestral pop showcasing her torchy image and sensuously husky singing style. 
Lana Del Rey - Doin' Time from Norman Fucking Rockwell!
...This surreal mix of myth and reality, nostalgic visions of the past and grave warnings for the near future, total chaos and California coolness, defines the 14 songs on her fifth full-length. The album weaves love songs for self-destructive poets, psychedelic jam sessions, and even a cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time” through arrangements that harken back to the Laurel Canyon pop of the ’60s and ’70s. Throughout, Lana has never sounded more in tune to her own muse—or less interested in appealing to the masses...

With his kaleidoscopic jams and stark reveries, Velvet Negroni's Jeremy Nutzman explores the psychedelic side of R&B.
Velvet Negroni - One One from Neon Brown
Before the release of his official debut album, Velvet Negroni's Jeremy Nutzman had already toured with Bon Iver and scored a writing credit on Kanye West and Kid Cudi's collaboration Kids See Ghosts. On Neon Brown, Nutzman lives up to the high expectations generated by these accomplishments while building on R&B at its moodiest and most experimental. Joined by co-producers Psymun and Tickle Torture -- who's also worked with Young Thug and Juice WRLD -- Nutzman creates a sonic space that's connected to, but distinct from, the spectral futurism of Tri Angle's roster of artists as well as the chart-topping R&B and hip-hop of the late 2010s... Even on its most accessible songs, there's a haunting distance to Neon Brown, whether it's the way the layers of ethereal backing vocals and acoustic guitars hit home Nutzman's isolation on the spellbinding opener, "One One,"...

!!!, which can be pronounced by repeating any one-syllable percussive sound three times (e.g., "chk chk chk"), formed in 1996 after the demise of the Yah Mos; while on tour, members of that post-hardcore act envisioned forming a band oriented toward danceable music, and once they returned to their native Sacramento, California, they turned the concept into an actual group
!!! - Let It Change U from Wallop
The long-running dance punk group !!! were on a hot streak during the 2010s as they released one window-rattling, dancefloor-filling album after another. Records like As If and Shake the Shudder are loose limbed, hard edged, and full of the kind of passion that drives the best kind of dance music. The string of albums was so impressive it seemed like it might go on forever, but 2019's Wallop is the first stumble since forever ago. Despite utilizing a similar formula of disco, dance punk, and house, and the same basic cast of characters, the record feels like a dampened version of what the band usually do, as if the edges were filed off to make the songs more palatable to streaming services and their popular play lists...

Black Belt Eagle Scout is the solo project of Portland-based artist Katherine Paul, whose music draws from alt-rock and Native American traditions. As a multi-instrumentalist, Paul quickly delved into the city's pervasive indie scen... Paul was raised in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, and from an early age she sang and danced at Pow Wows. Her entry into music came in the form of her family's native musical traditions and a few old Nirvana and Hole VHS tapes, from which she learned to play guitar and drums in her teenage years. 
Black Belt Eagle Scout - At the Party from At the Party with My Brown Friends
As Black Belt Eagle Scout, Katherine Paul often draws on her childhood growing up in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community—roots that hold deep meaning in the now Portland-based singer-songwriter’s music. Paul has said that her upbringing on a reservation has manifested into a sense of apprehension about society; her new single, “At the Party,” finds a slice of solace in navigating the human experience with similarly marginalized friends by her side... Waltzing drums propel the track, echoing like rolling thunder. “How is it you’ve suffered through this kind of love?/It puts you in a dark place, dark place,” Paul sings, her lyrics painting a corresponding cloudiness. Her hums sink into the mellow, winding instrumentation, creating a sonic palette that’s more funereal than festive...

Featuring the brittle, introspective songs of singer/songwriter Taylor Vick, Boy Scouts emerged in 2010 with the sparse mini-album garagebandaid. Accompanied mainly by acoustic guitar and the occasional drums or glockenspiel, her bedroom folk remained a solo pursuit until 2019's Free Company.
Boy Scouts - Get Well Soon from Free Company
Taylor Vick has been making dreamy, country-twinged songs as Boy Scouts for a bit now. In August, she’ll release a new album called Free Company, her first for Anti- Records... “It’s a hard thing to say,” Vick said of the title track’s phrase in a press release. You’re hoping somebody will eventually feel better, but there’s also this weird new distance between you. You can’t do anything else, but you still really hope that they’re OK.” The track is soft and lilting, Vick’s melodies blending in with the song’s sunny sway: “Got a thought of you/ Do you have one too?/ I hope you think of you/ Cause we all want you to.”...

With a sound that's equally influenced by garage rock and early post-punk bands and indie pop, while having a unique lyrical and vocal perspective that came across as childlike without being twee, the Australian quartet Parsnip recorded two promising singles before 2019's When the Tree Bears Fruit, an album that sounds like the audio equivalent of a vintage children's book about forests, wee tigers, and lots of giddy dancing.
Parsnip - Taking Me For A Ride from When the Tree Bears Fruit
When the Tree Bears Fruit is the debut album from Melbourne four-piece Parsnip. Following on from two 7-inches in the last two years, Parsnip’s first full-length is playful, poetic, propulsive punk. Today they share new single “Taking Me For A Ride”, an oddball pop gem laden with soft grooves, wide-eyed melodies and psychedelic hooks. They say of it: “The phrase ‘to take someone for a ride’ – to lie, deceive or cheat – is explored somewhat literally in this tune, where a driver misleads their passenger by steering them off course. Sometimes the journey may be full of long-winded drivel and at other times short cuts will be taken to avoid having to face the blaring traffic. If they do happen to go down a road that tests the driver’s patience, there is no hesitation in projecting some old-fashioned road rage onto anyone that crosses their path!”

The former Black Belles leader went solo in 2014 with an assist from Jack White. As the frontwoman of the Nashville-based, Jack White-endorsed the Black Belles, Olivia Jean cultivated something of a cult following. After the Black Belles went their separate ways, Olivia Jean maintained a connection with Third Man Records, playing on a variety of White-related projects, including his solo tour and a record by Karen Elson.
Olivia Jean - Garage Bat from Night Owl
Olivia Jean takes the production reigns on Night Owl, her second solo album. Arriving a full five years after her 2014 debut Bathtub Love Killings, a record where she played nearly every instrument but found herself produced by Third Man Records head Jack White, Night Owl maintains an allegiance to all the groovy sounds that powered her first album. It opens with the chime of a 12-string guitar that bends itself to fit a surf-twist riff, and soon descends into squalls of fuzz, thundering tom-toms, and nods to girl group and bubblegum, along with the occasional wink to campfire country. It's a sound that's firmly within the Third Man wheelhouse, but Olivia Jean doesn't quite follow a blueprint scrawled by Jack White. Jean cleverly draws connections between the American garage underground and the rest of the globe...

A heavy five-piece neo-psych unit founded by former Ghost guitarist Masaki Batoh and drummer/percussionist Okano Futoshi. 
The Silence - Okoku from Metaphysical Feedback
After a three-year break from recording, guitarist Masaki Batoh reassembled his psych-prog-acid folk ensemble the Silence. Their time away was productive yet fraught with change: Organist (and former Ghost bandmate) Kazuo Ogino is no longer a member; he appears selectively as a guest. Bassist Jan Shotaro Stigter also left to pursue his various solo projects and has been replaced by Taiga Yamazaki. Drummer Futoshi Okano and flutist/baritone sax man Ryuichi Yoshida remain. While earlier recordings used song forms as a gateway to improvisation, for Metaphysical Feedback, the Silence brought finished, tightly arranged compositions into the studio in order to rehearse and record quickly, and everybody wrote this time out. Interestingly, these more formal strictures have succeeded in expanding the boundaries of the Silence's musical universe. The result is a more progressive outing, with Yoshida's saxophones and flutes playing a far greater role in shaping the proceedings... Batoh's "Okoku" crisscrosses psych, prog, and jazz with a nearly Baroque lyric line, underscored by wiry lead guitar and overdubbed, multi-tracked flutes trading fours against a funky backbeat...

Bay Area producer Lindsay Olsen went from working as a climate scientist to pursuing music full time with her warped and magical project Salami Rose Joe Louis. After issuing two albums more independently, she signed on with Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label for the release of 2019's Zdenka 2080, a collection of short bursts of experimental pop, abstract beats, and bedroom R&B songs connected by a dystopian sci-fi narrative.
Salami Rose Joe Louis - Earth Creature from  Zdenka 2080
With her new album, the Californian musician, composer and planetary scientist has constructed a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story that takes aim at the one percent... Her sound, cosmic and otherworldly, eventually put her on the radar of Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label, who snapped her up at the beginning of 2019. In August, she’ll release her first album with them: Zdenka 2080. Set in a dystopian near-future, it tells the story of a greedy elite who leave a dying Earth, taking the sun’s power with them. After that, things only serve to get stranger...

Prolific Australian engineer and multi-instrumentalist went solo with a more electronic side of his multifaceted musical personality. Melbourne, Australia-based musician/producer Mikey Young worked tirelessly on various post-punk projects, acting as a founding member in both high-energy garage punk group Eddy Current Suppression Ring and the more synth punk-informed Total Control.
Mikey Young - Freedom 13 from You Feelin' Me?
...This album is the armored nucleus of sound and vision; it carries you along on its lumbering back, it tosses you through space and pulls you down a hole…a trip indeed! Listen up, the higher power music hour has cracked their mighty knuckles and laid down some deep trips for you to view the city swaying and swarming like a field of grass flecked with insect transport...

Kasabian have never solely been the tub-thumping lad rockers some detractors have painted them as. For every ‘Underdog’ there’s been a cartoonish, outrageous alt-pop song like ‘Vlad The Impaler’ that draws on guitarist Serge Pizzorno’s art-school aspirations as much as it does the band’s talent for a rabble-rousing, lager-chucking refrain. So it’s no surprise that Serge has branched out into The S.L.P, a trippy solo project that combines spaghetti Western-style themes with kaleidoscope pop and standout appearances from rappers Little Simz and Slowthai.
The S.L.P. - Meanwhile... In Genova from The S.L.P.
The Kasabian guitarist and songwriter spreads his wings on a kaleidoscopic album that, featuring Slowthai and Little Simz, takes its time to explore a patchwork of genres... Opener ‘Meanwhile In Genova’ sees us in with the chilling Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western cinematics as we heard on ‘48:13’s instrumental moments, before a little bit of a Guy Ritchie gangster shoot-out vibe really adds some muscle and bravado...  This album is the stylish and streetwise mash-up of genres that you’d hear on an UNKLE or Gorillaz record. It never really blasts off, but this time it’s more about the journey than how fast you get there.

Eliane Elias, Lana Del Rey, Velvet Negroni, !!!, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Boy Scouts, Parsnip, Olivia Jean, The Silence, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Mikey Young, The S.L.P.