ALTER.NATION #55
Reid Anderson, Dave King, Craig Taborn, Brittany Howard, Robbie Robertson, Liam Gallagher, David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights, Giant Sand, Chastity Belt, Vivian Girls, One True Pairing, Andrew Combs, Marco Benevento, The Juan MacLean
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"Sparklers and Snakes"
ALTER.NATION #55 on DEEZER
David King is an American drummer and composer from Minneapolis. He is known for being a founding member of the jazz groups The Bad Plus (with Reid Anderson and Ethan Iverson) and Happy Apple (with Michael Lewis and Erik Fratzke) although he is active in many other projects
Craig Taborn is an award-winning, in-demand pianist as a soloist, bandleader, and a sideman. His technical skills, combined with intellectual curiosity and stylistic versatility, have earned him numerous opportunities to collaborate with a range of recognized masters in diverse styles of contemporary jazz.
Reid Anderson, Dave King, Craig Taborn - Sparklers and Snakes from Golden Valley Is Now
...Their fixed focus was on song forms. The notion of "soloists" was thrown out the window. The music is tightly scripted and pays careful attention to texture, color, dynamic and, to a lesser extent, hooks. Taborn's place on synths and electric and acoustic pianos is central as the most recognizable center of melody, but his bandmates stick very close. Elements of indie electronica meld with lighthearted prog, easy flowing indie rock, and D.I.Y. electro-pop... This date isn't about showing musical muscle; it's about composing, playing, and arranging songs -- simple instrumental ones -- with creativity and panache. This trio accomplish that with rawness, immediacy, collective good will, and a wacky kind of elegance.
Brittany Howard - History Repeats from Jaime
Jaime is the name of Brittany Howard's sister, a sibling who died from a rare cancer when she was 13 years old. Howard began reckoning with the enduring ramifications of her loss when she started writing a memoir, an exercise that eventually led to her 2019 solo debut Jaime. Running a tight 35 minutes but containing a lifetime's worth of drama and insight, Jaime is bracing in its adventure and generosity. Trace elements of Americana can be heard -- there's nary a trace of the rockabilly roar of her ferocious Thunderbitch side project -- but Jaime could never be mistaken for an Alabama Shakes album... It's slippery, elusive, and sober in its intent, even when its sound is decidedly woozy. Jaime plays the way memories do: specific facts get lost to a truth that gets larger as years pass, where the familiarity can be reassuring yet melancholy. Howard's embrace of all the mess of life gives Jaime its sustenance. Her audacity is apparent upon the first listen, but subsequent spins are profound and nourishing.
Robbie Robertson - Beautiful Madness from Sinematic
...Throughout the album, Robertson relies on atmosphere, a vibe he builds with swathes of synthesizers, half-spoken, half-sung vocals, in the pocket rhythms, and plenty of tasty licks. Such studio precision has been a hallmark of Robertson's solo work, but Sinematic largely dispenses with darkness, at least sonically speaking... The clean funk and gleaming blues are performed with the expert panache of old pros who enjoy adding grace notes to shopworn chord changes, and that can be almost enough to compensate Robertson singing like he's an actor trying on roles...
Liam Gallagher - Meadow from Why Me? Why Not.
Give Liam Gallagher considerable credit for a streak of wry self-awareness. The shrug lying within the title Why Me? Why Not. doesn't read as arrogance, it plays as a joke. Coming from a singer who once sneered at any emotion that came his way, this is a sign of maturity. The album -- his second as a solo artist -- sounds mature, too. Working once again with a bevy of producers headlined by Greg Kurstin and Andrew Wyatt, Gallagher essentially expands upon 2017's cleanly polished As You Were, relying on the same blend of comforting psychedelia and controlled six-string roar. Every song here could trace its musical roots back to Oasis -- there's a cheerful reliance on classically constructed pop tunes and heavy-booted stomps -- but Why Me? Why Not. consciously lacks the abandon that was present in even the band's last records... Granted, Gallagher isn't as potent a personality as he was a quarter-century earlier, but his middle-aged control has its charms, too. He sounds relaxed on Why Me? Why Not., maybe for the first time ever.
David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights - Ngapara from Bobbie's a girl
Both on his own and with his band the Heavy Eights, David Kilgour built up a strong CV of chiming, noisy, and sometimes thickly psychedelic indie rock since the Clean stopped recording (for a while) in the early '90s. On records like 1994's Sugar Mouth or 2004's Frozen Orange, right up to 2014's End Times Undone, he's made thoughtful, tuneful albums that chime warmly as his understated vocals deliver a big, soft punch. It's a formula that has served him well for a long time, but on 2019's Bobbie's a Girl, Kilgour and his band change things up. For one thing, it's mostly an instrumental album, with Tony De Raad and Kilgour's acoustic and electric guitars carrying the main melodic weight, Thomas Bell's bass and Taane Tokona's drums subtly shading the background, and an array of carefully placed keyboards coloring in spaces here and there...
Giant Sand - Recounting The Ballads Of Thin Line Men from Recounting The Ballads Of Thin Line Men
...A bit less than a year later, Gelb and Giant Sand issued another studio set, Recounting the Ballads of Thin Line Men, and this time they re-cut most of the tunes from the second Giant Sand LP, 1986's Ballad of a Thin Line Man. Even by Gelb's inscrutable standards, re-recording two albums in a row seems like a truly strange move, but Recounting the Ballads of Thin Line Men at least does a better job with this concept than Returns to Valley of Rain. This lineup of Giant Sand -- Gelb on guitar, keys, and vocals, Annie Dolan and Gabriel Sullivan on guitars, Scott Garber and Thøger T. Lund on bass, and Winston Watson on drums -- sounds more broken in and the members more in tune with one another on their second trip to the recording studio...
Chastity Belt - Split from Chastity Belt
Chastity Belt haven't really changed that much since they released their first album, No Regerts, in 2013, but the changes they have made mean a great deal. Where they previously sounded at once rough and languid, they've grown into a band whose instrumental interplay is artful without seeming pretentious, and the dry snarky wit that was a large part of their early work has faded into the middle distance as their lyrics explore more personal and introspective themes. 2019's Chastity Belt, the group's self-titled fourth album, is still clearly the work of the same band, but this music doesn't shout, it insinuates, and the tone of the conversation is intelligent and unguarded... Chastity Belt's musical evolution has been a fascinating and rewarding thing to witness, and this may be their smartest and most compelling music to date.
Vivian Girls - All Your Promises from Memory
The return of the Vivian Girls in 2019 seemingly came out of nowhere. Since they broke up, each member of the group had struck out on her own and forged a path free and clear of the band and their reputation. Their friendship brought them back together to record Memory, and fans of the band and their brand of spooky, hooky noise pop should be glad. The three bandmembers apply the musical growth they experienced in other projects -- Cassie Ramone in the Babies, Katy Goodman in La Sera, and Ali Koehler in Upset -- to this record, and working with producer Rob Barbato, they deliver plenty of songs that add the noise of punk to the sweetness of pop, sounding tough and more focused than ever...
One True Pairing - Blank Walls from One True Pairing
More than many artists, One True Pairing's Tom Fleming is well prepared to explore the complexities of the late 2010s. After all, he already tackled many of these subjects with Wild Beasts, a band who, over the course of five albums, eloquently explored the intersection of the personal and the political. Fleming continues to examine that fraught, inescapable relationship as One True Pairing, and though the name of his solo project comes from Internet fan fiction, his self-titled debut album couldn't be more genuine. In Wild Beasts, Fleming's resounding baritone was the perfect complement to Hayden Thorpe's falsetto as they played with different aspects of sexuality and masculinity. On his own, he sounds rougher, wearier, and more direct as he digs into the ways class and gender shaped the political climate that created Brexit, as well as more timeless conflicts. To express them, he looks back, but not fondly: One True Pairing's anti-nostalgic combination of Reagan and Thatcher-era sounds -- Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Depeche Mode -- helps him tie together nearly four decades' worth of struggle...
Andrew Combs - Stars of Longing from Ideal Man
2017's Canyons of the Mind saw Andrew Combs hewing closely to the sepia-toned '70s singer/songwriter architecture of his previous works. Part outlaw and part coffeehouse crooner, Combs' efficacy as a modern countrypolitan torchbearer is on full display with the arrival of Ideal Man, a compelling 11-track set that looks to the cosmic country stylings of Lee Hazlewood for inspiration. Recorded live in the studio in Brooklyn with producer Sam Cohen (Kevin Morby, Benjamin Booker), Ideal Man commences with the fuzzed-out "Stars of Longing," which sees longtime collaborators Dom Billet (drums) and Jerry Bernhardt (guitarist/keyboardist/bassist) laying down a propulsive net of sound that helps elevate Combs' Walt Whitman-esque declaration of self into the upper reaches of the atmosphere...
Marco Benevento - Nature's Change from Let It Slide
Coming off his 2016 concept album The Story of Fred Short, Marco Benevento offers a slightly more straightforward if no less inventive pop effort, Let It Slide. Produced with Leon Fields & the Expressions' bandmember Leon Michels (who has also worked on such disparate recording projects as Norah Jones, Lady Wray, and his own El Michels Affair), Let It Slide finds Benevento offering songs that straddle the lines between arty indie pop, '70s soft rock, and psychedelic soul. A Berklee College of Music grad with a jazz and creative music background, Benevento has a knack for balancing memorable chorus hooks with a tactile, deeply textured, and analog-brand of instrumentation...
The Juan MacLean - The Brighter the Light from The Brighter the Light
...The Brighter the Light collects the majority of these tracks (barring a pair of non-DFA releases), and it easily stands up to the act's three strong full-lengths. As expected from a collection of singles by a dance group, this focuses squarely on club burners -- no synth pop ballads or interstitial experiments here... The collection concludes with its title track, a dreamy blend of starry arpeggios and reflective yet buoyant pianos. A magnificent release from an act who have remained DFA's most reliable signing without ever sticking to a tried-and-true formula.
