ALTER.NATION #82
Jehnny Beth, EOB, The Howling Hex, Fiona Apple, Shelby Lynne, Datura4, Leslie Mendelson, Alice Bag, RJD2, Louis Prince, Shabazz Palaces, Sir Richard Bishop
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Best known as the compelling vocalist for Savages, Jehnny Beth is the performing name of French musician Camille Berthomier.
Jehnny Beth - Innocence
Earlier this year, Savages leader Jehnny Beth announced that she would finally be releasing her debut solo album, To Love Is To Live. “Record stores are where I found myself as a teenager, digging through albums that ultimately shaped who I have become,” she said in a statement. “To release my first ever solo album in a way that would leave them out felt wrong to me; luckily, we were able to find a date that would allow us to release the physical and digital album at the same time.”... she’s putting out another track, “Innocence.” It’s a booming and dancey song about being packed-in with other people...
As guitarist and backing vocalist for pioneering British alt-rock band Radiohead, Ed O'Brien developed a distinctive and deeply textural style that served as a sonic cornerstone of influential albums like OK Computer and Kid A. Although several of his bandmates experimented with solo and side projects over the years, O'Brien's creative energy remained devoted solely to the band and it wasn't until 2020 -- over 30 years into their career -- that he made his first solo effort. Recorded under the name EOB, Earth fused together elements of folk, electronica, and indie rock with the atmospheric guitar work that has become one of his signatures.
EOB - Earth / Shangri-La
If there's one lesson I've taken from the last month or so of unprecedented change and self-isolation, it's that we human beings truly need each other. We have always known that we're social animals... You may know Ed O'Brien as a guitarist for the band Radiohead. He's been playing music with his Radiohead bandmates — Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood and Philip Selway — since their school days. Through the years, some of those members have tried their hands at solo projects, and now it's Ed's turn. For his new project, he goes by the name EOB. The album is called Earth, and we begin this session by listening to one of the singles from the album and one of my favorite songs of the year so far, "Shangri-La."
The prolific, shape-shifting project of former Pussy Galore and Royal Trux guitarist Neil Michael Hagerty. The project of Neil Hagerty, the Howling Hex is an outlet for some of the singer/songwriter/guitarist's most eclectic music -- which is saying something, considering that he fueled Pussy Galore's anti-rock cacophony in the '80s and blurred the boundaries between avant-noise and classic rock as one-half of Royal Trux in the '90s.
The Howling Hex - Knuckleball Express / City in the Country
From song to song and album to album, Neil Hagerty's post-Royal Trux music has thrived on tangents. On his Fat Possum debut, however, his music comes full circle as he revisits and refreshes some of the sounds from his past. Hagerty recorded Knuckleball Express in eight days, and in the best possible way, it sounds like it. Ropogós gitárjaival és Clay Jones producer szomorú, tágas hangzásával az album visszatér a Howling Hex 2000-es produkciójának megragadóbb oldalára...he's joined by vocalist/guitarist Nicole Lawrence. While having a female counterpoint has been a consistent part of Hagerty's music for decades, she follows his whims more ably than some of his previous collaborators. She shifts from gritty on the previously mentioned songs to honeyed and husky on "City in the Country," a sweetly scuffed duet that bids farewell to an addictive relationship...
Acclaimed performer whose angst-ridden, piano-based songs represented a new stage in the female singer/songwriter movement.
Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters / I Want You to Love Me
Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound. No music has ever sounded quite like it. Apple recorded Fetch the Bolt Cutters both in and with her Venice Beach home, banging on its walls, stomping on its ground. Self-reliance is its rule, curiosity is its key. Fetch the Bolt Cutters seems to almost completely turn the volume down on music history, while it cranks up raw, real life—handclaps, chants, and other makeshift percussion, in harmony with space, echoes, whispers, screams, breathing, jokes, so-called mistakes, and dog barks. (At least five dogs are credited: Mercy, Maddie, Leo, Little, and Alfie.) All of this debris orbits around the core of Apple’s music: her voice, her piano, and most of all her words, which have always been her primary instrument. It creates a wild symphony of the everyday... The opening song, “I Want You to Love Me” seems to offer a thesis for the meaning of life: to love, to connect, to get “back in the pulse.” She sings, scats, lightly raps—and proceeds to curl her voice into an extended-vocal contortion à la Yoko or Meredith Monk, over a Reichian piano loop, signaling an avant-garde inclination. Apple sings about time and meaninglessness, and how “while I’m in this body I want somebody to want.” She sings about knowing that one day she will die...
A critically acclaimed soul-tinged country singer of the 1990s and 2000s with a deep, fluttering voice, she has also experimented with classic pop, rock, and soul.
Shelby Lynne - Shelby Lynne / Strange Things
Though she last released a record of her own with 2015's celebrated I Can't Imagine, singer/songwriter Shelby Lynne kept busy. She cut the sublime covers set Not Dark Yet with sister Allison Moorer. She also worked with producer, director, and screenwriter Cynthia Mort on an as-yet-unreleased film entitled When We Kill the Creators. Lynne stars as a world-weary singer trying to navigate the choices between commercial success and her own creativity. This self-titled album evolved out of that project. Half its lyrics were penned by Mort, and Lynne plays most of the instruments herself: guitar, bass, drums, synth... Despite the homegrown, intimate quality of the record, it's quite disciplined. As a songwriter, Lynne's knowledge and authoritative use of classic L.A. pop, sophisticated soul, the jazz song tradition, rhythm & blues, and roots rock, are formidable. "Strange Things" is a nocturnal, suffocatingly intimate jazzy blues with searing lyrics by Mort: "The clumsiness of it/The fumbling, crashing, fuck of it/The bandaged mess/The worn, torn angel scars … Love keeps us crawling…."
Combining equal parts vintage psychedelia, no-quarter boogie, rock-infused blues, and classic hard rock and running them all though a big bank of amps, Datura4 are a rock band living in the present while showing a true appreciation for the sounds of the past.
Datura4 - West Coast Highway Cosmic / Evil People, pt. 1
With 2019's Blessed Is the Boogie, Western Australia's Datura4 brought blues-rock keyboardist Bob Patient (Dave Hole, DM3) to replace departing guitarist Greg Hitchcock... Ezekben a tíz új dalban a gitáros / énekes / dalszerző, Dom Mariani alaposan alkalmazkodott a dinamikus, texturális és hangszerű lehetőségekhez, amelyekbe a Páciens hozzáadja a zenekar hangját... The set's biggest surprise is its final cut, "Evil People, Pt. 1." Though under six minutes it feels like a jam track with serpentine organ, throbbing bass, and martial tom-toms overlaid with distorted guitars in a three-chord vamp that creates a hypnotic, head-wagging pulse as Mariani sings with malevolence at the heart of the mix. His six-string duels with Patient's Hammond B-3 for dominance as the music melts together in a punishing swirl that brings West Coast Highway Cosmic to an overloaded boil of blasted psych blues. This aptly titled set is perfect for driving fast on long, lonely stretches of highway with the windows down and the wide-open night for company.
A 21st century New Yorker whose piano-based works evoke the 1970s singer/songwriter era, particularly Carole King.
Leslie Mendelson - If You Can't Say Anything Nice / If You Can't Say Anything Nice
For her fourth long-player, If You Can't Say Anything Nice, singer/songwriter Leslie Mendelson worked again with longtime co-writer Steve McEwan, who also produced alongside bassist/engineer Lorenzo Wolff. As the reunion may suggest, the album remains in Mendelson's wheelhouse, evoking classic '70s songwriter influences in the vein of Carole King and Carly Simon... A strong addition to Mendelson's catalog with both timely and timeless qualities, If You Can't Say Anything Nice doesn't try to push boundaries but instead offers consistently tuneful, efficient songs with substance.
Best known as an important figure on the early Los Angeles punk rock scene, Alice Bag is more than just another rock & roll diva. Bag is a singer, songwriter, bandleader, author, educator, and activist who has made her mark on underground art and culture in a career that's run close to four decades.
Alice Bag - Spark
Next week, Alice Bag is releasing a new album, Sister Dynamite, the follow-up to her 2018 sophomore solo album Blueprint. The Los Angeles punk put out another one, “Spark,” a rousing track about individuality and refusing to be beaten down. “Even when I tried to be normal, I always missed the mark/ Hell no, I’m not dimming my spark,” she sings on it.
Hip-hop collage artist who moved from underground hip-hop to electronic indie pop. RJD2's music is a collage of cut-and-paste hip-hop that combines disparate elements to make for soulful, moody portraits of the world.
RJD2 - The Fun Ones / Indoor S'mores
While he's known for his masterful blend of sounds from all eras, on The Fun Ones RJD2 digs deeper into the '70s vibe of 2016's Dame Fortune. Considering how easily he evokes the heyday of the Meters and James Brown with the down-and-dirty grooves and tumbling breakdowns of "No Helmet Up Indianola" or the slinky guitars and brass hits of "Indoor S'mores," the album could've just as easily been called The Funky Ones. However, plenty of RJD2's personality and range shines through the album's concept...
Inspired by impressionistic film-making, the surrealistic language of Beat Generation authors, and the flowing nature of classic '50s jazz, Nashville musician Jake McMullen used the Louis Prince moniker as a new chapter in his musical development. He melded those inspirations with falsetto vocals, indie songwriting, and drifting synth lines to create the bright environments of his 2020 debut album Thirteen.
Louis Prince - Thirteen / The Number Thirteen
Nashville singer/songwriter Jake McMullen's music always had a somewhat atmospheric quality, even when the instrumentation was standard twangy indie Americana. At some point while releasing songs under his own name, McMullen started to feel a shift within, moved to take his music in a new direction. There were hints of this new approach on his 2016 cover of Robyn's "Dancing on My Own," where his falsetto vocals coasted over a minimal synth pad and laid-back organic rhythms. With the Louis Prince moniker, McMullen pushes this symbiosis of electronic and organic sounds while completely abandoning the country leanings of his earlier solo work. McMullen has cited a heavy influence on the project from both Ethiopian jazz and the flowing, piano-led American jazz of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. Instead of manifesting as traditional jazz arrangements, however, McMullen folds those airy, flowing styles into the overall atmosphere that runs through debut album Thirteen... At nearly an hour, Thirteen is a relaxed journey through slowly rising and falling waves of texture and song. Its more fully formed moments work nicely with its stretches of lengthy formlessness, guiding us on a carefully routed walk through McMullen's imagination.
Shabazz Palaces is the cerebral and enigmatic art-rap duo of Palaceer Lazaro, aka rapper/producer Ishmael Butler, and percussionist Tendai "Baba" Maraire.
Shabazz Palaces - The Don of Diamond Dreams / Chocolate Souffle
...The live-sounding retro-futuristic fusion accompanying him -- humming low end, simmering snares, and fleshy handclaps, seemingly guided by early-'70s Miles Davis sessions -- is a greater indication of what follows. Compared to SP's conceptual third and fourth LPs, which arrived together in 2017, The Don of Diamond Dreams is unified by its funkier and humanized sonics more than its lyrics. Slithering from track to track with verses chock-full of elevated non sequiturs, Butler still tends to come across as a sage, somewhat alien wordsmith, but he projects more warmth than before... A couple of the lengthier tracks communicate more with their titles than their music. They're at least counteracted with some of the wittiest, weirdest, and somehow most direct songs in the Shabazz Palaces catalog. Most dizzying is the John Carpenter/Junie Morrison horror-funk fantasy "Chocolate Souffle," in which Butler enumerates his self-acquired advantages, references Morris Day and Maurice Chevalier, and ices his rival with "You a data rat, I'm a black slang acrobat."
Sir Richard Bishop is one of the world's most adventurous guitarists, incorporating styles and techniques from across the globe into his ambitious, ever-evolving style. A founding member of avant-rock legends Sun City Girls, he has been an icon of experimental music since the '80s. Global sound explorer whose unique blend of ethno-folk, raga droning, and gypsy-inspired picking has placed him at the vanguard of guitar experimentation.
Sir Richard Bishop - Oneiric Formulary / Mit's Linctus Codeine Co.
2020's Oneiric Formulary is a little short of surprising given the breadth and depth of Bishop's past repertoire, but as a sampling of his musical interests and a reminder of his skill as an instrumentalist, it's challenging and engaging music that thankfully refuses to repeat itself... Oneiric Formulary finds room for plenty of themes and variations that still feel like differing expressions of the same creative mindset. "Mit's Linctus Codeine Co." is a breezy number that splits the difference between jazz and surf... Sir Richard Bishop is an artist who has shown he can point his music in any number of directions, and the ten tracks on Oneiric Formulary each lead the listener to someplace worth visiting.
Jehnny Beth, EOB, The Howling Hex, Fiona Apple, Shelby Lynne, Datura4, Leslie Mendelson, Alice Bag, RJD2, Louis Prince, Shabazz Palaces, Sir Richard Bishop
