ALTER.NATION #61
Broen, Carla dal Forno, Common Holly, Squirrel Flower, Kneebody feat. Becca Stevens, The Orielles, Vida Blue, Sorry, Mikal Cronin, Circles Around the Sun with Joe Russo, Desert Sessions, Leonard Cohen
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"Do You See the Falling Leaves?"
ALTER.NATION #61 on DEEZER
Broen - Do You See the Falling Leaves? from Do You See the Falling Leaves?
It's hard to express the creative leap Broen made between their international debut and its follow-up better than the albums' titles do. On 2017's I <3 Art, the Norwegian collective were above all creative, channeling their passion into breaking any remaining boundaries between pop, jazz, electronic music, R&B, and hip-hop. On Do You See the Falling Leaves?, they use their genre-fluid sound to explore the connections between the desire to make art and the desire to reach out to others... The title track's sensuous nine-minute sprawl is remarkably intimate, thanks to the husky warmth of Røe's voice -- which calls to mind Joan as Police Woman's Joan Wasser -- and the surprising, charming combination of tuba and a scorched electric guitar solo...
Carla dal Forno - Took a Long Time from Look Up Sharp
Breaking away from the dubby abstractions of her group F ingers, Australian singer/songwriter Carla dal Forno made her solo debut in 2016 with You Know What It's Like, a magnificent album of ambient pop tunes that prompted comparisons to obscure names like Kendra Smith and In Gowan Ring. Following two EPs, including a 2018 tour cassette that included covers of songs by the B-52s and Lana Del Rey, dal Forno's second album contains some of her most direct compositions, with clearer vocals and more upfront melodies. While still sparse and haunting, this album doesn't feel as detached, and dal Forno's sentiments aren't as ambiguous as they were before... The shivering, slowed-down post-punk of "Took a Long Time" is a bit murkier, but seems to imply uncertainty in a relationship...
Common Holly - Joshua Snakes from When I Say to You Black Lightning
The follow-up to 2017's Playing House, When I Say to You Black Lightning is the Barsuk label debut of Montreal-based musician Brigitte Naggar, who records as Common Holly. With assistance from returning co-producer Devon Bate, she continues to blur and fuse distinctions between catchy and experimental, and song and composition here, settling into a presentation that's entirely digestible, if persistently peculiar... Though the songs are quiet, they hold turbulent moments, such as in "Joshua Snakes," which opens with a few seconds of finely textured noise before settling into a whispery funk groove. The rhythmic, rhyming vocal lines are routinely accosted by samples, sound effects, and instrumental interjections that never throw off the singer or her spare accompaniment (bass, snare, intermittent guitar). Midway through, a simple, staccato distorted-guitar break sounds thunderous in comparison to what preceded it. The guitar hangs around for the rest of the song with the rhythm section, layered vocals, and...flute.
Squirrel Flower - Red Shoulder
Squirrel Flower is the musical project of Boston-based Ella O’Connor Williams. Polyvinyl has signed on to release her debut album I Was Born Swimming early next year... “Red Shoulder” is a melancholy indie-rock power ballad that bears a strong Mitski influence, but its tangled web of guitars evokes acts like American Football and Slaughter Beach, Dog too. “I’m still reeling from your last call,” Williams sings, before the song descends into a dramatic guitar breakdown. In a press release she says “Red Shoulder” is “a song about destabilization and dissociation,” continuing, “Something soft and tender becomes warped and sinister, turning into sensory overload and confusion. How can something so lovely turn painful and claustrophobic? The song ends with a heavy and visceral guitar solo, attempting to reground what went awry.”
Kneebody feat. Becca Stevens - Wounds Let in the Light from Chapters
Kneebody's tenth studio album, 2019's Chapters, is one of their most accessible albums to date, featuring a handful of guest vocalists on songs that ably straddle the line between hooky post-rock and exploratory jazz. It's an aesthetic the forward-thinking Los Angeles outfit featuring saxophonist Ben Wendel, trumpeter Shane Endsley, keyboardist Adam Benjamin, drummer/bassist Nate Wood, and bassist Kaveh Rastegar have been forging since the early 2000s, combining fusion-esque group arrangements with propulsive exploratory improvisation...
The Orielles - Come Down On Jupiter
The Orielles are a sleek and psychedelic indie-pop quartet from Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. They released their debut Silver Dollar Moment in early 2018 on the venerable UK label Heavenly... Disco Volador’s opening track and lead single, “Come Down On Jupiter,” begins as a languid shuffle, but before long it has exploded into guitar-pop bliss. And then suddenly it’s something like outer-space disco rock. As the five-minute runtime unfolds, the transformations continue to be as abundant as the hooks.
Vida Blue - Real Underground Soul Sound from Crossing Lines
The sprightly electro-funk jam band Vida Blue released a pair of studio albums and one live set in the front half of the 2000s before their helmsman, Page McConnell, retired the project and resumed his primary role as keyboardist for Phish. Formed in 2001 during a Phish hiatus, Vida Blue's original lineup was essentially a power trio with the fleet-fingered McConnell joined by bassist Oteil Burbridge (the Allman Brothers Band, Aquarium Rescue Unit) and drummer Russell Batiste (the Funky Meters)... Newcomer Adam Zimmon joins the core trio on guitar for 2019's Crossing Lines, adding new dimensions while respectfully adhering to the spaciousness of their original setup. Of the album's eight generally lengthy cuts, only two are instrumentals (the dubby "Weepa" and the Meters-esque "Real Underground Soul Sound"), marking a trend that favors McConnell's more structured, lyric-driven songwriting...
Sorry - Right Round The Clock
Sorry have been around for a while now, but they still haven’t put out their debut album, though they have been keeping us busy with a long string of singles. Next year, though, the UK band will release their debut album, which is called 925, in the spring... “Right Round The Clock.” It’s a brassy drunken stumble, an extended character study that plays out like a nightmare. “I’m feeling kind of crazy/ I’m feeling kind of mad/ The dreams in which we’re famous are the best I’ve ever had,” the band’s Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen duet together...
Mikal Cronin - Shelter from Seeker
...With the help of producer Jason Quiver of Papercuts, Segall and members of his band including guitrarist Emmett Kelly of Cairo Gang, Cronin set about putting them on tape. Much like the expansive, dense music on MCIII, Seeker isn't anything close to resembling his early power pop in the garage sound. This is huge, imposing music that's clothed in full arrangements of layered guitars, swelling background vocals, various keys and orchestral strings with Cronin singing with fierce passion and rueful regret. It builds on the sturdy frame of MCIII and delivers bigger emotions, trickier melodies and more sound...
An accomplished musician, Russo has played drums often with pop and rock groups. Among bands with which he has played are Danjaboots, Fat Mama, Tom Hamilton's American Babies, and Robert Walter's 20th Congress, but is best known for his duo performances with pianist Marco Benevento.
Circles Around the Sun with Joe Russo - Get It Right the First Time from Circles Around the Sun Meets Joe Russo
Meets Joe Russo is an informal jam that is startling for its sheer musicality. Cut live from the floor in a single day, it showcases just how intuitive the interplay was between Casal, keyboardist Adam MacDougall, bassist Dan Horne, and drummer Mark Levy. The addition of Russo'a drumming only adds to that depth of field... "Get It Right the First Time," is led by the rhythm section: The drummers converse with call-and-response snares and kick drums to a rocksteady reggae groove provided by MacDougall's punchy Wurlitzer fills, Horne's strolling bassline, and Casal's spacy slide playing.
Desert Sessions - Noses in Roses, Forever from Desert Sessions, Vols. 11 & 12
Josh Homme always meant to get back to the desert, it just took him nearly 16 years to do so. Homme never officially put his Desert Sessions project on ice, but Queens of the Stone Age kept him busy, as did domestic duties, so the call of the wild remained muted for year after year, until the collective finally returned in 2019 with Desert Sessions, Vols. 11 & 12. Time changes everything, including the tenor of the Desert Sessions. Where previous excursions into the arid netherworld relied on overpowering volume and nocturnal menace, Desert Sessions, Vols. 11 & 12 is concise and colorful, a blast of madness and mischief...
Leonard Cohen - Happens To The Heart
Leonard Cohen died three years ago, but we’re about to get a new Leonard Cohen album anyway. When he died, Cohen left behind sketches of nine unreleased songs. His son Adam Cohen fleshed those sketches out into complete songs, and he got help from people like Beck, Feist, Bryce Dessner, and Daniel Lanois, turning them into the new LP Thanks For The Dance... The song itself is pretty great. It’s a simple track, with Cohen intoning heavily in the deep, ravaged voice we heard on his goodbye album You Want It Darker. He gives us one of his inimitably evocative opening lines: “I was always working steady, but I never called it ‘art’ / I’ve got my shit together, meeting Christ and reading Marx.” The song uses fluttery flamenco guitars, and the music slowly wraps itself around Cohen’s voice.
Broen, Carla dal Forno, Common Holly, Squirrel Flower, Kneebody feat. Becca Stevens, The Orielles, Vida Blue, Sorry, Mikal Cronin, Circles Around the Sun with Joe Russo, Desert Sessions, Leonard Cohen
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