ALTER.NATION #114 (10 trax, 45m)
The Second Hand Orchestra and James Yorkston, Still Corners, Palberta, Jordana, Yung, Rhye, Kiwi Jr., M. Caye Castagnetto, Brian Eno, Jeremiah Fraites
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Scottish singer/songwriter who blends dark Leonard Cohen musings with Stuart Murdoch airs. The Second Hand Orchestra and James Yorkston - The Wide Wide River / StruggleMulti-faceted troubadour James Yorkston has explored many dimensions during his two decades of work... While its successor, The Wide Wide River, is collaborative to its core, it nonetheless feels like a continuation of his recent style, albeit pleasantly shaded by a new cast of players. Credited to James Yorkston & the Secondhand Orchestra, the project stems from the singer's longtime friendship with Swedish musician Karl-Jonas Winqvist, who, over a smattering of sessions in Stockholm, paired Yorkston with his own stable of musicians. Spontaneity has always been an element of Yorkston's style, but the loose group-mind feel captured here yields appealingly fresh and intimate results... The buoyant "Struggle" is a clear highlight with its airy harmonies and warming refrain...
English-American duo combining spacy psych experiments, glamorous '80s synth pop, and more. More than a decade after they formed, Still Corners and their music remain in constant motion. Over the years, Greg Hughes and Tessa Murray have relocated from London to the English seaside to Texas' Hill Country, and their sound has shifted with every move. On The Last Exit, however, there's a slightly shorter distance between where they've been and where they are. They embellish on the sunbaked dream pop they introduced on Slow Air... In Murray, Still Corners are blessed with a vocalist who sounds great in just about any setting... While moments like these won't dispel comparisons to Mazzy Star and Julee Cruise, the gentle otherworldliness that has been vital to the duo's music since Creatures of an Hour is still distinctive...
Eccentric lo-fi trio whose unpredictable songs recall post-punk, no wave, and the vocal harmonies of the Roches. New York-based abstract punks Palberta (Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg, and Nina Ryser) went into the recording of their fifth album with the intention to create songs which were catchier and less abrasive than their previous material... Palberta5000 still has plenty of tracks that only last a minute or two, but the songs seem more planned out, with much more natural-sounding transitions between parts. They still come up with unconventional riffs and twitchy rhythms, but it's all executed with a bit more finesse this time around, and the trio's vocal harmonies have never sounded stronger... Palberta5000 is more mature than anything they've done before but just as playful, and more accessible while impossible to mistake for the work of any other band.
Kansas-born, Maryland-based singer/songwriter with a hooky bedroom pop sound. Classical Notions of HappinessSinger/songwriter Jordana Nye, aka Jordana, is known for her intimate and emotive electro-acoustic bedroom pop sound. Kansas-born/Maryland-based singer/songwriter Jordana Nye (aka Jordana) makes deeply intimate, handcrafted bedroom pop that brings to mind a wry combination of Cat Power and Beck. It's a potent, '90s-inspired vibe she first displayed on 2019's Classical Notions of Happiness and one which she further develops on 2020's engaging Something to Say to You. The album again finds her recording on her own with some production assistance from electronic artist Melvv. Though she primarily utilizes a guitar, bass, and drum set-up, there's also a kaleidoscope of instruments and effects on display here, including what sound like toy pianos, African kalimbas, reversed electric guitar riffs, and tape loops; all of which add to the homemade quality of the album... It's that alchemic sense that Jordana is conjuring pop magic out of the mundane details of everyday life that makes Something to Say to You a kind of revelatory experience.
Danish indie rock quartet who merge driving dance-rock with lush, brooding post-punk proclivities, Yung is led by singer and songwriter Mikkel Holm Silkjær. ...The quartet spent the next nearly five years preparing the follow-up, with bandleader and main songwriter Mikkel Holm Silkjær citing members' varied musical tastes as a challenge in finding the right balance of noise and tunefulness. The resulting Ongoing Dispute, their full-length debut for the PNKSLM label, does succeed in homing in on a consistently hooky, distorted, and dissatisfied sound. The album launches into grudges with a driving, rambling borderline dance-rock on "Autobiography," an uptempo track that has Holm mocking his guitar player, confronting a former mate, and ultimately asking for an apology "for the friendship you threw away." He's interrupted at times during the song by segments of churning, head-banging guitar unisons and, later, duetting, ultimately dissonant guitar solos that aren't quite able to see eye to eye...
Modern, low-key, R&B-inspired sophisti-pop from Plug Research staple Mike Milosh. Rhye - Home / Sweetest RevengeTwo of the singles Michael Milosh released ahead of Home had more dancefloor zest than anything off Blood, his previous Rhye album... Milosh's approach as a songwriter and vocalist hasn't changed much. He's still addressing his lover, gently coaxing and assuring her, letting her know how he feels, communicating at all times on an intimate level. Throughout are references to (quiet) storms, waves, and rain made with literal and metaphorical purposes... This being the Rhye album with the most layers, Milosh was wise to employ the brilliant Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, the Killers) as mixing engineer. Every change pays off.
Toronto-via-Prince Edward Islands indie act that takes cues from a long lineage of collegiate slacker pop. Kiwi Jr. - Cooler Returns / Cooler ReturnsKiwi Jr.'s 2019 debut, Football Money, was a long-labored triumph of intellectual slacker pop, burying nods to obscure influences under a whirlwind of bounding hooks. The brief album from the Toronto quartet flew by in a dazzled rush, with the energy of the first Modern Lovers' record juxtaposed with lazy, Pavement-esque melodies and lyrical barrages that were stuffed to capacity with esoteric references and culture-jamming imagery. Sophomore album Cooler Returns is much the same, but feels ever so slightly more refined, allowing the band's unique stew of influences and reference points a little more room to gel...
Peruvian artist who works with samples and sound manipulation for their murky, surrealist songs. Peruvian-born artist M. Caye Castagnetto architects a strange new world on their debut album Leap Second, building songs from samples that clash soft, organic instrumentation with murky electronics and surreal atmospheres. Castagnetto worked with musicians like Beatrice Dillon and Aileen Bryant in the creation of the source material for these wobbly, nocturnal songs, boiling down the sounds into the samples that make up Leap Second's ten concise selections. The span of time spent on the album shows up in how stylistically varied it can be from track to track... Leap Second feels like a filing cabinet full of layers and contrasting ideas, but it's surprisingly warm for how chaotically composed it sometimes seems. The album washes by quickly, and with repeat listening it becomes clear that all the strange detours and unrelated segments are connected by Castagnetto's curiosity and daring.
Glam rock star of the 1970s who became a hit producer as well as a trailblazer in ambient, experimental music, and electronica. Aside from his productions for mega-selling stars like David Bowie and Coldplay, or his Windows start-up jingle, Brian Eno's work has received its greatest exposure through film and television. While his earlier Music for Films releases included pieces originally intended as imaginary soundtracks, many of which ending up being used later, Film Music 1976-2020 is more like a greatest-hits compilation of his most memorable cinematic appearances... "Reasonable Question," from 2020's We Are as Gods (a documentary about Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand), has a scintillating melody and jittery IDM beats, and is easily the most exciting, kinetic track here...
Composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist best known as the co-founder of the platinum-selling indie folk trio the Lumineers. After 15 years of belting out hearty folk-rock refrains to increasingly large audiences, Lumineers co-founder Jeremiah Fraites makes a surprisingly subtle solo debut with Piano Piano, a collection of tranquil piano instrumentals that occasionally veers into the avant-garde and quasi-classical wilderness. Like so many acts in 2020, the Lumineers' touring plans were waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Fraites -- recently transplanted to his wife's hometown of Turin, Italy -- found himself with time to contemplate his long-intended solo album. Sifting through years of musical fragments on phones and hard drives, a collection of melodies began to take shape, all of them played on the piano with little accompaniment...
The Second Hand Orchestra and James Yorkston, Still Corners, Palberta, Jordana, Yung, Rhye, Kiwi Jr., M. Caye Castagnetto, Brian Eno, Jeremiah Fraites
