ALTER.NATION #88
Brigid Dawson and The Mothers Network, Eve Owen, Woods, The Sonic Dawn, Badly Drawn Boy, Kidbug, Jetstream Pony, Blake Mills, Khruangbin, L’Eclair, Damu the Fudgemunk / Raw Poetic / Archie Shepp, Deradoorian
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"B a l l e t o f A p e s"
Brigid Dawson and The Mothers Network - Ballet of Apes / Ballet of Apes
...On her first solo album, Ballet of Apes, Dawson (joined by a plethora of indie guest stars collected under the banner "the Mothers Network"), brings a similar energy to that of the acid-damaged songwriting of Memory of a Cut Off Head. Instead of that album's chamber folk leanings, however, Ballet of Apes puts Dawson's vocal presence front and center on seven tunes that range from witchy psychedelia to mutant jazz-rock grooves. The album was the result of several recording sessions in different locales. Dawson collaborated with Mikey Young in Australia, the Sunwatchers in Brooklyn, and members of Sic Alps, Peacers, and Fresh & Onlys in San Francisco. All of Dawson's collaborators wisely play in the background, however, and the seven songs flow cohesively through shadowy moods that all center around her powerful vocals...
Eve Owen - Don't Let the Ink Dry / Lover Not Today
... It's a warm, textured indie folk that seamlessly incorporates electronics as part of its consistently brooding, sepia-toned temper. Also lending their talents to the record were such high-caliber guests as Thomas Bartlett and Rob Moose, both accomplished indie producers in their own right... It's an album anchored in unsettled rumination, with compellingly grainy surfaces that reveal either the expertise of its accomplished collaborators or a sophistication beyond Owen's years -- likely both.
Woods - Strange to Explain / Where Do You Go When You Dream?
...Their 11th proper studio album, Strange to Explain, reflects all of this life in progress, standing as the most restrained, thoughtful, and varied record in a massive discography already well-stocked with thoughtful songwriting and wildly varied arrangement choices... Much of Strange to Explain isn't about Woods breaking new ground, but perfecting the strengths they've spent years developing. Driven by warbly synth melodies and clean rhythms, "Where Do You Go When You Dream?" is one of their strongest songs to date. It patiently moves from slinky verses into a chorus built on wistful acoustic guitar chords and the kind of dreamy melodies Earl excels at...
The Sonic Dawn - Enter the Mirage / Young Love, Old Hate
Arriving just under a year after the release of the Danish psych-rockers third studio effort, 2019's liquid light show-ready Eclipse, Enter the Mirage delivers another tie-dyed blast from the past; a lo-fi, acid-soaked transmission from a mirror dimension where the Summer of Love never ended. Commencing with "Young Love, Old Hate," the hirsute trio goes all-in on the '60s fetishizing, administering copious amounts of noodly guitars and shimmery maracas drenched in analog reverb and delay, and a melodic through-line that echoes Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower."...
Badly Drawn Boy - Banana Skin Shoes / Banana Skin Shoes
"It's time to break this plaster cast and leave your past behind," Badly Drawn Boy's Damon Gough sings on Banana Skin Shoes. That's no easy feat, especially for an artist who hasn't made an album in a decade. Yet, on his eighth album, Gough manages to move on by trying lots of different, new-to-him sounds and forgiving those who made mistakes in the past -- especially himself. It's been longer than ten years since he's sounded this confident; not coincidentally, he begins Banana Skin Shoes with his boldest statements of purpose. The title track, with its flashy keyboards and funky brass hits, shakes off the hesitancy that shadowed much of his work before his hiatus and lets listeners know right away that this is a new era.
Kidbug - Kidbug / Lovesick
The sound of Kidbug will be familiar to anyone who was alive during the great Grunge deluge of the late '80s/early '90s as well as anyone who might have discovered Nirvana in the years that followed. Adam Harding of Dumb Numbers and Marina Tadic of Eerie Wanda are certainly card carrying members of the former camp, Harding has even made records featuring members of the Melvins and Dinosaur Jr. Kidbug's debut album doesn't delve too much into the harsh or heavy nature of grunge, instead the duo lean more towards the sweet and melodic side... The band (which includes Bobb Bruno of Best Coast on bass and Thor Harris of Swans on drums) doesn't just stick to recreating grunge... Harding and Tadic's vocals blend together perfectly, the guitars mesh together like giant, gnarly gears, the production (unlike a great many of the bands they so clearly admire) is down to earth and clear, and the songs are hookily memorable. In every way, Kidbug comes across like the labor of love that it clearly is, both to a sound and an era and to each other...
Jetstream Pony - Jetstream Pony / It's Fine
...After a handful of well-received short-form releases that took on a bouncier demeanor, an expanded four-piece version of Jetstream Pony lean into lusher, dreamier textures and a more reflective energy level on their eponymous full-length debut. It's an approach that places active drums and ringing guitar hooks in a cloudy, harmonic haze surrounding Arzy's still sweet, wistful melodies. The opening track, "It's Fine," is an album highlight and prime example that dives right into layered, sustained guitar atmospheres replete with delay, as lyrics both confront and reassure. The album's frayed nerves and rocky relationships continue on songs...
Blake Mills - Mutable Set / Vanishing Twin
...The strange pace of modern life that races while seeming to stand still; individual and societal isolation, climate change, the exterior state of the world and its people, as well as Mills' interior universe. Assisting Mills is a cast of longtime friends and collaborators including Rob Moose, Cass McCombs, Pino Palladino, Patrick Warren, Sam Gendel, and Gabriel Kahane. The album posits Mills as an artist who stands in the no man's land between the singer/songwriter and the sound designer... "Vanishing Twin" is introduced by Moose's digitally delayed cello atop a rumbling snare and rounded single-string guitar lines creating a loopy vamp. Mills' delivery is clipped, pained, yet fully integrated: "The walls are thin, I hear a pin drop/Somewhere my kin sits on a hilltop/Don’t cry my star, I won’t be far…" as layered guitars, percussion, strings, and keys carry his voice, allowing him deeper entry into the lyric. The mix gradually fills with overdubbed strings, layered drums, mangled electric guitar notes, feedback, and distortion...
Khruangbin - Time (You And I)
...the band are announcing a new album called Mordechai, named after one of Laura Lee Ochoa’s friends who encouraged her to jump from a waterfall. That moment stuck with her, as did the feeling of weightlessness that comes with taking a big leap. The album’s lead single, “Time (You And I),” is groovy and hypnotic, one of the most immediately likable things that the band has put out, with an insistent disco beat and some motivational, nostalgic mantras worming their way throughout. The track, like most of the rest of the songs on Mordechai, feature vocals, a change for the band.
L’Eclair - Noshtta / Cebando
Swiss six-piece L’Eclair have shared a new EP Noshtta (via Allah Lahs-run label Calico Discos) following 2019’s Sauropoda and their collaborative seven-inch single with The Mauskovic Dance Band. The EP is full of groovy instrumental jams that fuse mind-numbing psych-funk with echoing, synth-laden dub. Here, impressionistic soundscapes run wild—the inescapable grooves contain infinite grains of wisdom and boundless possibility.
MC Raw Poetic is from Philadelphia. Raw Poetic is a rapper with a smooth, clean delivery that moves from quick-paced syncopation into hooks fluidly.
Saxophonist, composer, playwright, and educator Archie Shepp has been regarded at various times uin his long jazz career, a musical firebrand and cultural radical, a soulful throwback to the jazz tradition, and contemplative veteran explorer and a global jazz statesman.
Damu the Fudgemunk / Raw Poetic / Archie Shepp - Ocean Bridges / Moving Maps
Since beginning his jazz career with the Cecil Taylor Quartet in 1960, saxophonist Archie Shepp has sought to illuminate the influence and evolution of the African Diaspora in modern culture in music, literature (as a poet and playwright), and education (he taught university for 30 years). Ocean Bridges is a collaboration with nephew Jason Moore (rapper/children's author Raw Poetic) and DJ/producer Earl Davis (aka Damu the Fudgemunk). It marks Shepp's first recorded foray into hip-hop... "Moving Maps" weds turntablism, guitar, and Wurlitzer in an airy, spacious mix that showcases Raw Poetic at his smoothest as Shepp blows soul-jazz underneath...
Deradoorian - It Was Me
Titled “It Was Me,” it might be the darkest, spaciest song of the bunch so far. Over tumbling percussion and quietly droning guitar churns, Deradoorian sings in a ghostly echo coming in from the distance. “What do you want to know about meditation?/ What do you want to know about the brain?/ I only went looking for these things/ When I knew I was going insane,” Deradoorian sings in the first verse. Find The Sun was inspired by a Vipassana meditation retreat through which Deradoorian started to come to a different sense of herself after suffering through a traumatic period of her life. “It Was Me” taps right into that experience and that transformation.
Brigid Dawson and The Mothers Network, Eve Owen, Woods, The Sonic Dawn, Badly Drawn Boy, Kidbug, Jetstream Pony, Blake Mills, Khruangbin, L’Eclair, Damu the Fudgemunk / Raw Poetic / Archie Shepp, Deradoorian
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