ALTER.NATION #123(19trx 1h 27m)
Noga Erez, tUnE-yArDs, Xiu Xiu, chelsea wolfe, Liz Harris, Special Friend, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Iggy Pop, New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers, El Michels Affair, The Shacks, Tim Cohen, Death from Above 1979, Jane Getter Premonition, The Writhing Squares
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"Y O U S O D O N E"
Noga Erez first attracted attention with her 2017 album Off the Radar, and its funky, mischievously defiant title track. She's even more confident on Kids, a sleek set of songs that is far from predictable... However, Erez's style is more distinctive than ever on "You So Done," where squealing strings and squalling trumpets are the equal and opposite reaction to her deadpan sneer. On songs like this and "End of the Road," where she puts the guarantee that we're all going to die in a surprisingly positive light... With Kids, Erez makes a significant leap forward from Off the Radar. Though she still sounds like an outsider, the skill she displays on these songs suggest she shouldn't be one for long.
...Garbus and Brenner reinforce these messages without rehashing them, and they spend as much time reconnecting with the primal force of their music as they do refining it... That goes double for "nowhere, man," which gives the impression that she turns over every rock and shines the light in every corner to root out injustice and hypocrisy... Imagining love as a healing bond, "hypnotized" instantly makes itself known as one of tUnE-yArDs' finest songs with its bear hug-sized harmonies... tUnE-yArDs haven't sounded this infectious since Nikki Nack, and Sketchy. captures the inflection point where frustration becomes positive action in funky, happy, angry, and inspiring ways.
Xiu Xiu - Oh No / One Hundred Years feat. chelsea wolfe (The Cure cover) / A Bottle of Rum feat Liz Harris
Formed in 2017, the duo of Erica Ashleson (American, drums, vocals) and Guillaume Siracusa (French, guitar, vocals) follow up their debut EP from September 2019, with an album unveiling a singular talent for minimalistic pop.
Virtuosic funk-jazz organist whose teaching career limited his recording output. In the mid-'60s, the Hammond hero earned recognition for his membership in George Benson's classic quartet before going on to play with Lou Donaldson (contributing some memorable solos to the alto saxman's hit 1967 album Alligator Bogaloo) and recording enjoyable dates of his own for Blue Note. 
A makeshift blues supergroup comprised of Jim, Luther, and Cody Dickinson, Charlie Musselwhite, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Jimbo Mathus.
Led by Leon Michels, a flexible R&B-rooted band mixing groove-oriented jazz, soul, funk, rocksteady, Afrobeat, and hip-hop.
A major figure in San Francisco's 2000s psychedelic/garage revival scene, best known for the Fresh & Onlys, Magic Trick, and solo material.
High-energy, high-volume duo influenced by punk, hard rock, and dance music.
New York-based guitarist, singer, composer, and bandleader whose sound weds fusion, metal, prog, funk, and post-bop.
Philly duo with a gnarled take on space rock that includes pulsing drum machines and galactic saxophone leads.
Nearly everyone, musicians included, longed for connection in 2020, but not many incorporated it into their work as purposefully as Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo... On Oh No, Seo and Stewart put a little bit of hope in companionship and humanity, and the results are more than merely therapeutic. These collaborations present a calmer, more introspective incarnation of Xiu Xiu than the one that appeared on Girl with a Basket of Fruit, but the band never sound complacent...The heartache from the separations that sparked the album reverberates throughout all of Oh No, but reaches a peak on the caustic version of the Cure's "One Hundred Years," which finds Stewart and Chelsea Wolfe magnifying the anguish of the original... All of Xiu Xiu's collaborators honor the bravery and vulnerability of their music, and as Oh No comes to a close, its feeling of hopefulness grows with "A Bottle of Rum," a radiant duet with Grouper's Liz Harris. Embodying hard times as well as the way friends lift each other out of them, Oh No also exemplifies the drama, mystery, and deeply felt emotions that have made Xiu Xiu a vital musical force for decades.
Special Friend - Ennemi Commun / Ennemi Commun / Hazard
...If you love Indie Music, especially the variety which includes fuzz-laden layers of guitar and glowing vocal harmonies, a road previously trodden by the likes of Lush and Ride with just a touch of The Sundays thrown in for good measure, you’ll love this. If you close your eyes when you listen (or even better listen through headphones) each songs takes you on an introspective trip. The recent single, for example, the title track, is ambient and hypnotic with looping guitars, layered airy vocals, and urgent drums that you lose yourself in. Then there is the track Hazard, with its almost Mogwaiesque quiet/loud/quiet/loud/quiet structure. It took me back to seeing the aforementioned in the mid 90’s at the Roadhouse in Manchester and being emotionally and physically moved by the performance...
Dr. Lonnie Smith - Breathe / Why Can't We Live Together feat. Iggy Pop / Sunshine Superman (Donovan cover) feat. Iggy Pop
Veteran Hammond B-3 master Dr. Lonnie Smith pairs with punk icon Iggy Pop on his inspired and deeply funky 2021 album Breathe. Smith initially came into his own in the 1960s, releasing a string of groove-based albums for Blue Note, including 1968's Think!, that helped define the sound of forward-thinking organ jazz... Breathe again finds him working with producer Don Was, and backed by an energetic ensemble of all-stars including guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and drummer Johnathan Blake, who make up his core trio. He also expands the group to a septet on several tracks, bringing trumpeter Sean Jones, tenor saxophonist John Ellis, baritone saxophonist Jason Marshall, and trombonist Robin Eubanks on board. Smith's work with Pop bookends that album as they offer a smoky, Doors-esque rendition of Timmy Thomas' 1972 soul anthem "Why Can't We Live Together" and a relaxed, boogaloo-style work-up of Donovan's '60s classic "Sunshine Superman." Both of these songs were recorded in studio and feature added percussion from Richard Bravo. They are wry, ebullient recordings that make a surprising case for Pop as a jazz crooner...
While rolling through the vast American night on a ramshackle tour bus, legendary blues harmonica boss Charlie Musselwhite and North Mississippi Allstars' guitarist Luther Dickinson were engaged in a deep conversation. At one point, the sage elder bluesman nodded at his companion, looked out the window, and pointed at the rising moon. "New Moon Freedom Rockers" was all he said. Back in Mississippi, Cody & Luther Dickinson joined Musselwhite and their dad -- roots legend Jim Dickinson, who added "Jelly Roll" to their name -- at the Zebra Ranch recording studio, with old friends Alvin Hart, Jimbo Mathus, NMA bassist Chris Chew, and washtub bassist Paul Taylor. They pulled their chairs into a circle, arranged microphones, and hit "record." The completed tapes were archived after the elder Dickinson's passing. Years later, Stony Plain's Holger Peterson, who had heard about these apocryphal tapes, contacted Dickinson's sons about releasing them...
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| Luther Dickinson |
El Michels Affair - Yeti Season / Sha Na Na feat. The Shacks / Silver Lining
And now they’re back, after rumours swirled like the cryptozoological being of the title, with Yeti Season; everything great about the band’s aesthetic – and more. Whereas Adult Themes played out as the soundtrack to the best Cinemascope release made on the Continent in 1970 still yet to be filmed, Yeti Season casts its gaze further east, to the minarets and the cradle of civilisation, to Persia, India and points more exotic, following in the cutting edge of crate-diggers who’ve uncovered astonishing nuggets of Turkish funk, Bollywood psych and more in recent years. It’s also a deep, beautiful eternal music, and one ripe for new recording life...
Tim Cohen - You Are Still Here / Almost Enemies
The sixth solo album from West Coast psychedelic/garage pop stylist Tim Cohen (the Fresh & Onlys, Magic Trick), You Are Still Here is notably his first to be recorded in a proper studio. It was produced by James Barone (Beach House, Tennis), who fans will be glad to hear not only honored but has augmented Cohen's unpolished, spontaneous-sounding, often kitchen-sink approach to recording and arranging. Barone also played drums on the album. A particularly varied set that barhops through sub-styles of mid- to late-'60s psychedelia... He dives into surf as well as Rawhide-era Western vibes on "Almost Enemies," one of the album's more urgent entries. Its trippy lyrics include lines like "You know how ghosts can be" and "One road wasn't even paved/Led me to a grave/Where my old soul couldn't shed a tear/For I had no memories."... Despite its capricious quality and production upgrade, You Are Still Here remains distinctly Tim Cohen, and should be a welcome installment for followers.
Death from Above 1979 - Is 4 Lovers / Modern Guy
Death from Above 1979's fourth full-length, 2021's Is 4 Lovers, is a sonically vibrant production that finds the Toronto duo further pushing their riff-heavy sound. Once again, the album features the combined talents of singer/drummer Jesse F. Keeler and guitarist Sebastien Grainger. While it's still only the two of them on each track, there's a dynamically textured and widescreen aesthetic to the album that feels bigger and more robust than you might expect... The opening "Modern Guy" kicks off with a hot pink drill-bit guitar arpeggio that gives way to a galloping glitter rock number, perfectly setting the tone for all that follows...
Jane Getter Premonition - Anomalia / Still Here / Kryptone
Anomalia, their second studio outing, was six long years in the making. The core band consists of Getter as composer, co-producer, guitarist, and vocalist; husband Adam Holzman (Miles Davis, Steven Wilson) on keyboards and co-production; and Testament's Alex Skolnick on guitar. Getter employs two rhythm sections: former Frank Zappa/Allan Holdsworth drummer Chad Wackerman and fusion and prog bassist Stu Hamm in one; jazz bassist Mark Egan and drummer Gene Lake in the other... "Still Here" commences as a ballad, but Lake's jazzy drumming offers a left turn that opens the frame for instrumental interplay. Getter's arpeggiated chords weave a mysterious backdrop which she and Skolnick populate with punchy, alternating solos appended by a boisterous Holzman organ break that would not have been out of place on a Tony Williams Lifetime record... The knotty architecture in opener "Kryptone" offers an unmistakable tribute to King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Pt. 2." Holzman's keys juxtapose jagged chordal vamps amid passages of pure lyricism. Skolnick and Getter intersect mathy prog and overdriven metal atop the syncopation engine of Hamm and Wackerman...
The Writhing Squares - Chart for the Solution / Geisterwaltz / Epilogue
Armed with little more than bass, saxophone, a few synths, and spartan drum machine rhythms, Kevin Nickles and Daniel Provenzano made uncontainable and enormous psychedelic punk songs that breathed, gasped, and grumbled. Third proper album Chart for the Solution finds Writhing Squares reaching new dimensions of chaos and excitement... The band continue their approach of shouty vocals doused in Suicide-esque delay, angular bass riffing, and primitive drum machine rhythms meeting with blasts of noise from sax, synths, and sources unrecognizable... Grimy rocker "Geisterwaltz" is tough and nervy, but doesn't rush, as the band move casually from growling verses to interludes of saxophone freak-out... "Epilogue," an unhinged, jammy finale featuring guests John Schoemaker on live drums and Alex Ward on organ. It's a fitting end to Writhing Squares' most ambitious output to date, one that pushes every angle of their already interdimensional sound even further out.
Noga Erez, tUnE-yArDs, Xiu Xiu, chelsea wolfe, Liz Harris, Special Friend, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Iggy Pop, New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers, El Michels Affair, The Shacks, Tim Cohen, Death from Above 1979, Jane Getter Premonition, The Writhing Squares
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