ALTER.NATION #53
Mike Patton, Jean-Claude Vannier, Robbie Robertson, Glen Hansard, Pixies, Corb Lund, Belle and Sebastian, Charles Rumback, Ryley Walker, (Sandy) Alex G, Gruff Rhys, Sequoyah Murray, Luke Temple, Perfume Genius, Kim Gordon
Mike Patton, Jean-Claude Vannier, Robbie Robertson, Glen Hansard, Pixies, Corb Lund, Belle and Sebastian, Charles Rumback, Ryley Walker, (Sandy) Alex G, Gruff Rhys, Sequoyah Murray, Luke Temple, Perfume Genius, Kim Gordon
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"B r o w n i n g"
ALTER.NATION #53 on DEEZER
The influence of Jean Claude Vannier on French popular and film music cannot be overstated. A composer, arranger, conductor, and producer, he is best known for work he's done for other artists, but his own recordings and scores have gained critical notice too.
Mike Patton / Jean-Claude Vannier - Browning from Corpse Flower
Though few would have conceived of it beforehand, a collaboration between French composer and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier and American singer, lyricist, songwriter, and producer Mike Patton finds them a perfectly matched pair of musical reprobates... Musically, this set crisscrosses many genres, it is ultimately rooted in exploration and adventure yet grounded in sleazy chanson, lounge tropes, blues, cinema music, and sound library tropes... "Browning" sounds like a mutant outtake from the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue if it were arranged by Vannier, Keith Richards, and Gainsbourg... Corpse Flower is a dark jewel from two remarkable musical iconoclasts. It offers surprise, humor, revelation, tenderness, and excess, with flair and a certain tarnished elegance. It's a high-water mark for both men, albeit one born from the belly of hell itself.
Robbie Robertson feat. Glen Hansard – Dead End Kid
“They said you’ll never be nothing/ You’re just a dead end kid/ Probably end up in prison/ Or maybe down on the skids,” Robertson rasps over a smoky, sinuous groove, Hansard’s voice soaring above his in a ghostly echo. But then the song takes a defiant turn: “I’m gonna play my song/ Out across this lake/ From Scarborough Bluffs/ Over to New York State/ I want to show the world/ Something they ain’t never seen/ I want to take you somewhere/ You ain’t never been.”
Robertson wrote “Dead End Kid” while he was working on the second volume of his autobiography. “When I was growing up in Toronto, I was telling people, ‘One of these days I’m going to make some music and go all over the world,'” he explains in a statement. “Everyone was like, that’s never going to happen. You’re a dead end kid. Because my relatives were First Nation people and Jewish gangsters, it was assumed my dreams were going to explode. I found strength in overcoming that disbelief.”
Pixies - On Graveyard Hill from Beneath the Eyrie
On their third post-reunion album, Pixies do what they failed to on Indie Cindy and Head Carrier: suggest a way forward for their music. Too often on those albums, it felt like the band was trying to live up to someone else's expectations of what they should sound like. On Beneath the Eyrie, however, it sounds like they weren't trying to please anyone but themselves; paradoxically, the results are their most engaging set of songs since they reunited. Instead of caricaturing the best-known (and most copied) elements of their sound, they build on different, more versatile sides of their legacy. In particular, they take inspiration from some of the darker pages of Doolittle's and Bossanova's songbooks... "Graveyard Hill" is the latest incarnation of the dark feminine that's inhabited Pixies' world since "Is She Weird." While its tale of a witch who brews a deadly love potion might be almost too on the nose, it's got more bite and energy than many of their other previous attempts to re-create their magic...
Corb Lund - These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ from Cover Your Tracks
Since releasing 2015's Dave Cobb-produced Things That Can’t Be Undone, Alberta's Corb Lund has been touring relentlessly and doing charity work. Preparing to write and record a new set of originals, the singer/songwriter, with his Hurtin' Albertans in tow, issued the eight-track Cover Your Tracks EP, co-produced with John Evans. It's a divergence for Lund, whose Americana recordings have made him one of North America's most acclaimed roots artists. He chose these tunes from his band's live set and/or their honored places in his life. While most are readily recognizable by their original artists, Lund infuses most of them with fresh energy; he also enlists of a couple of guests to assist... Lee Hazelwood's Nancy Sinatra vehicle "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" has been covered far too often. It may be important to Lund, but it doesn't add much here...
Belle and Sebastian - The Colour's Gonna Run from Days of the Bagnold Summer
Days Of The Bagold Summer is Belle & Sebastian's soundtrack for Simon Bird's 2019 cinematic adaptation of Joff Winterhart's 2012 graphic novel. The band was hired by the director during a period where leader Stuart Murdoch was revisiting some of his older songs, so these tunes anchor the soundtrack album... "The Colour's Gonna Run" is a shimmering piece of folk-pop. The individual parts fit together elegantly, even if it flirts with the ephemeral; the music deliberately floats by, leaving trace elements of melodies and vibe behind...
Charles Rumback, Ryley Walker - Half Joking
Ryley Walker is reuniting with drummer Charles Rumback for a new album called Little Common Twist, their second release together as a duo after 2016’s Cannots. Little Common Twist compiles eight instrumental pieces recorded with producer John Hughes over several improvised sessions throughout 2017 and 2018.
(Sandy) Alex G - Crime from House of Sugar
For his third Domino Records release and ninth album in total, lo-fi pop experimenter (Sandy) Alex G (Alex Giannascoli) presents House of Sugar. The multifaceted title is, for one, a reference to the SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia... While 2017's Rocket saw the songwriter/GarageBand recordist working with an expanded guest list including touring bandmembers for the first time, House of Sugar involved recording collaborations on some songs with his mixer, Jacob Portrait, at Portrait's Brooklyn studio -- Giannascoli's first excursion to an outside studio. In addition to splurging on a new microphone and recording-software upgrade at home, Giannascoli has said that he worked more deliberately on this album, spending more time on fewer songs than ever before...
Gruff Rhys - Pang! from Pang!
Consider Pang! the aperitif to the luxurious meal that was Babelsberg, the 2018 concept album recorded with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Gliding by on elegant electronic rhythms, sung in Welsh and buoyed by breezy chord changes reminiscent of bossa nova and finger-picked folk, Pang! finds Rhys collaborating with Muzi, an electronic artist from South Africa. It's not the only 2019 album to find Rhys delving into modern African music. Earlier this year, he contributed to EGOLI, the 2019 album by Damon Albarn's Africa Express, but where that record proudly rooted itself in rhythm, Pang! is so light, it almost seems weightless...
Sequoyah Murray - Blue Jays from Before You Begin
Straight from its Satie-lilting introductory track, Sequoyah Murray's first full-length instantly sounds fresh and unique. The Atlanta native, all of 22 years old at the time of the album's release, takes an adventurous approach to songwriting, stitching together dreamy yet cohesive pop songs out of exploratory brainstorming sessions, and blurring genres with ease. At the center is Murray's rich, versatile baritone, which is both sensuous and commanding, and ethereal enough to make you wonder if he permanently resides in an echo chamber... Murray experiments with more complex rhythms on the cyber-Afropop of "Blue Jays"... An eye-opening debut from a boundlessly creative talent.
Luke Temple - 200,000 Years of Fucking from Both-And
By the arrival of Both-And, his debut for Native Cat Recordings, Luke Temple had released music varying from pastoral folk to experimental pop to cosmic jams and spaces in between under his own name, under the alias Art Feynman, and with Here We Go Magic. Always unpredictable from album to album, particularly in terms of palette and adherence to song structures, any attempt to lay out a coherent sound trajectory for Temple's catalog should probably be tossed out the window. Having said that, Both-And feels a bit like a consummation of prior works, at least in that it offers varied electronic-acoustic textures and examples of improvisational atmospheres, free-form song, and stricter verse-and-chorus tunes.
Perfume Genius - Eye In The Wall
...“Eye In The Wall” was clearly written with dance in mind, and it’s easy to close your eyes and picture bodies moving to it. The song is a rich, atmospheric head-trip that owes a clear debt to Amnesiac-era Radiohead. But it’s also built around swirling Afro-Latin percussion, something that goes shockingly well with the sound. Here’s the song:
Kim Gordon - Air BnB
...“Air BnB” is a great song, a scratchy and anthemic rocker that calls back to Sonic Youth’s early-’90s noise-pop period while still sounding fully of-the-moment. The track is full of discordant guitar sounds, but those sounds work in service of the song, which has a grimy punk intensity and a huge chorus. “Air BnB / It’ll set me free,” Gordon yells, effectively satirizing the kind of consumerism that could really stand to be satirized nowadays...
