Record Roundup: Envelope Pushers

Here are seven albums that work on many levels, each one of them seeking to take their chosen form - whether chamber music, folk rock, or electronic music - somewhere new. Their ultimate success, however, is the shifts they cause within me, either displaying future vistas or calling back to early memories I'd nearly forgotten. What will they do for you?

Ted Reichman - Dread Sea The tale Reichman tells in the liner notes and in a poem contained in the Tripticks cassette's j-card, of encountering a "heavily drugged juvenile sloth" attempting to swipe him with a "long, slow arc of its claw," has a certain lysergic flavor that matches these multi-layered audio collages perfectly. Assembled from electronically treated mbira and accordion combined with prepared piano, synth, and tape, the resulting tracks come to your ears fully formed, as if created from one instrument. Of course, there is no requirement to think about aggressive sloths (I prefer the cute ones I see on Instagram!) while you listen. The music will most likely transport you to realms related to your own experiences. Take the journey.

Greg Davis - New Primes As a recovering arithmophobe, reading that prime numbers form the basis of Davis's new album on Greyfade is enough for me to tune out to avoid past anxieties. But that stuff is all behind the scenes. You don't need to know that Davis is using "custom-written software to translate prime number sequences" into music, using only sine tones as his medium, to listen and respond to the sounds contained herein. And while all that sounds super-cerebral, there is definitely an emotional reaction to have to these throbs and drones as they rise and fall, thicken and attenuate. I can't help being taken into an alien space of almost pure loneliness, as if engaged in a space-walk between ships, hungry for the noise, clatter, and melodiousness of human existence. But I can just as equally let the hum of an air conditioner, laboriously beating back the heat, blend with Davis's music as I zone out to the play of leaves and sunlight just outside my window. My mind drifts, imagining the activities of tiny animals for whom a blade of grass might constitute their entire universe. Davis is surely on to something here, and you don't need to know any math for it to grab you.

Congregation Of Drones - Twenty Twenty That artists have their antennae up is well known, so the idea that violinist/composer Pauline Kim Harris and electronic musician Jesse Stiles came together to record the first two foreboding tracks here in February 2020, just days before COVID lockdown, makes perfect sense. After an interruption of some months, they reconvened virtually and continued the project. When complete, they named each track after a headline in the New York Times from the day it was recorded: Gesture Of Devotion, See What Happens, Experimental Treatment, and No Spinning. With that background, it is also no surprise that these richly evocative tracks could make for an excellent soundtrack for reflecting upon what we’ve all been through for last two - now almost three - years. 

But Twenty Twenty is so much more than a mirror to the past. This is stunning, nail-you-to-your-chair music, with Harris’ extraordinarily versatile sound-making abilities - from long, arcing lines to percussion, pizzicato, and beyond - fully matched and intertwined with Stiles’ starlit and multi-hued electronics. While some of it is spaced out and slow, it never lets up in intensity, occasionally exploding into segments that are near metallic. This landmark in electro-acoustic music is also available on vinyl, which should be a fantastic experience, although I do like losing myself in the full 71-minute sweep without having to change sides. I urge you to get to Twenty Twenty STAT, through whatever medium you prefer, and let it mold itself to your life.

Josh Modney - Near To Each I think I might have just found David Bowie's next band and it's a goddamned pity he's not around to take advantage. But knowing how Blackstar's collaboration with Danny McCaslin and Co. turned out, get your mind around Bowie working with Modney, a brilliant violinist here making his debut as a composer, Ingrid Laubrock, a saxophonist equally at home in jazz and new music, Cory Smythe, the genius pianist with the International Contemporary Ensemble, and Mariel Roberts, a fearless virtuoso cellist whose last album was a series of brutal improvisations. And they really play like a band, too, with Modney tailoring the compositions to each player's unique style and engaging in deep collaborations to arrive at the final product. 

The results are a series of gripping dynamic pieces of chamber music that incorporate drones, spiky duels between instruments, pounding ensemble work, and moments of crystalline beauty. Near To Each opens with a solo violin piece that casts back to Engage, Modney's triple-album from 2018, which included a series of improvised solos, but other than Tenor Solo for Laubrock, the rest is all about interaction, juxtaposition, and overlap. The pieces also take you through a series of emotional states, from angst to contemplation, and how you relate those to your own life will be very personal. A couple of my favorite passages in Whalefall and Crystallization I bring to life that sensation of lying back on grass on a hot summer's day, only to have the whine of a small airplane cross the sky - and your consciousness. It's a lonely, restless sound that brings the vastness of our planet into dramatic focus. 

Ballad contains yearning interplay, with Smythe's measured chords reminiscent of Messiaen's Quartet For The End Of Time, his custom software subtly enhancing the sound world. The last piece, Chorale, is a 23-minute tour-de-force and the track that put Bowie dreams in my head. Opening with Roberts' violent cello intertwining with Modney's squirrelly violin, the work gradually develops a narrative flow as searching piano from Smythe transitions it to a different mood. While Chorale doesn't echo anything specific from Bowie's world, it rhymes very nicely not only with Blackstar but the exploratory sides of Low and "Heroes" in the way it works with unexpected sounds and structures to create something as grabby as an avant garde pop song. I can imagine an adventurous listener and creator like Bowie being jazzed by this piece and the others, becoming eager to get involved. I know I am!

Steven Ricks - Assemblage Chamber Rather than questing into the future, Ricks bravely spelunks into the Baroque, pulling out modes and methods (and the occasional harpsichord, played by Jason Hardink) to inform his own bricolage approach. This gives the three acoustic pieces here a wonderful off-kilter feeling as past and present collide in lighthearted and inventive ways. The addition of guitar (Dan Lippell) and bass clarinet (Benjamin Fingland) creates ever more delightful anachronisms in Reconstructing The Lost Improvisations of Aldo Pilestri, while the title track eliminates instruments altogether, with Ricks cutting and pasting bits and pieces of the earlier works into a sound collage that both sums everything up and points in new directions. With great playing by members of Counter)Induction and the NOVA Chamber Music Players, among others, this is a satisfying feast of a collection suitable for gourmands of many genres.

Maya Bennardo - Four Strings Bennardo is one half of the redoubtable duo AndPlay, a core member of the Mivos Quartet, and has played on countless great records in recent years. Here, she finally steps out on her own and the results are captivating. Consisting of two long works for solo violin, Four Strings not only allows Bennardo to pursue her interests in stasis and simplicity, but premieres two important pieces by composers demanding wider attention. The first, Kristofer Svensson’s Duk med broderi och bordets kant, has a folk-like simplicity, with a repeating motif and overall warmth that will call you back home, wherever you're from. The title piece by Wandelweiser composer Eva-Maria Houben is a spacious meditation on individual tones and notes, like pick-up sticks where none of the sticks are touching. Bennardo's concentration and the care she gives every draw of the bow shine brightly here, making a nice contrast to Svensson's more gregarious work. Bennardo can do no wrong, apparently, and I will be glad to follow her to more fantastic music in the future. P.S. She and her AndPlay partner Hannah Levinson publish one of the best newsletters in the biz - in fact, it was they who led me to Twenty Twenty! Subscribe here.

Florist - Florist The permission granted by The Beatles on the so-called White Album to fill a double album with a wide variety of styles and approaches is often more of a curse than a blessing. See under: Sandinista by The Clash or that new goulash by Big Thief, which has some very good songs but makes you work to find them. Not so with Florist, sometimes the solo project of Emily Sprague, but presented here as a full band. Drawing together all of the threads cast out by a decade's worth of Florist releases, as well as those under Sprague's own name, Florist presents everything these musicians can do at the pinnacle of artistic success. From the gleaming chamber-folk perfection of a song like Red Bird No. 2 to the sketches like Duet For Guitar And Rain, the parts assemble into a whole that envelops and inspires. The use of field recordings or ambient sounds of nature only enhances that sense of environment, as if you've turned on one of those old lights with a paper cylinder that sends stars rotating around your room.

Like the sounds in the background, the lyrics are filled with references to nature, relating the night sky, fireflies, breezes, and so on, to various inner states. The results are pure poetry, as in these lines from Spring In Hours: "oh, the light inside you now oh, the wild inside you now/maybe there’s something that takes us beyond this/and flowers like spring in our arms." Among the shorter songs and fragments are several longer tracks that really show off the interplay between Sprague (vocals, guitars, synth), Jonnie Baker (guitars, synths, sampling, bowed guitars & bass, saxophone, vocals) Rick Spataro (bass, vocals, engineering, piano, synths), and Felix Walworth (percussion, vocals, synths, guitar), like 43, which extends into a jam reminiscent of Jonathan Wilson circa Gentle Spirit. And those player credits are a hint of what Florist means when they call themselves a "friendship project," also pointing out their gently radical reimagining of what a band can be when you break down silos between the individual roles in the group.

Whatever path Florist took, they arrived at a very special place and have given us a masterpiece of an album. I'm slightly despairing at the play counts on Spotify, which suggest people are picking and choosing between the songs.I strongly suggest that, if listening digitally, you entrust yourself to this whole album. I believe you'll find yourself richer for the experience.

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[Video Premiere] Phong Tran: High Tech, High Emotion

On 2017's Initiate, Phong Tran imbued software with high drama and emotion, inspired by “the story in every story” theorized by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With A Thousand Faces. The album also announced an electronic musician with vision, work he has continued with MEDIAQUEER, his synth and violin duo with Darian Donovan Thomas. The duo has also collaborated on visual art, most notably the mind-bending video for Sō Percussion's online performance of Julius Eastman's Stay On It.

Now, comes the release of Tran's second full-length album, The Computer Room, out November 19th on New Amsterdam. Once again applying a thoughtful approach, Tran uses a variety of vintage synths and the occasional snippet of a YouTube clip about simulation theory to pay tribute to his youthful engagement with video games and the virtual spaces to which they gave him entry. It was there that he found the supportive community he needed, one that would only be replicated IRL when he moved to New York and found a group of simpatico fellow artists. 

While sometimes viewed with suspicion, for someone growing up in isolation games on the internet might give them their first sense of being valued for who they are. As Tran puts it, "The Computer Room is also a thank you to the internet community of my youth, the friends who pushed me to get better at something, even if it was playing computer games. Because if I didn’t push myself then, I wouldn’t be pushing myself now with my creative work.” There's also an eerie quality to some of The Computer Room, as Tran limns abandoned virtual spaces with sound, like electronic fireflies showing you the way through your childhood bedroom.

The result is a glorious series of electronic soundscapes, each one building a virtual space of their own and further proving the universal emotional impact of melodic sequences and rhythmic structures. Even if your experience with computer games is limited (as is mine - I was more of a Tetris freak), you will find your own place in these sounds. Unsurprisingly for a multi-threat talent like Tran, The Computer Room also has an equally strong visual component, with the peer2peer x Party Quest video below the perfect introduction to the project.

Opening with the doomy overture of peer2peer, the video shows some kind of technology emerging from the shadows, a sculptural piece of equipment that invites you to engage with it if you dare. Smash cut to Party Quest, the playful sounds illustrating an exploration of a 3D vector animation of a mountain range, the kind of environment you can imagine exploring with a hardy band of virtual companions as good seeks to conquer evil. There are fiery obstacles and random weapons appearing like power-ups, but all remains abstract. For the last minute, it seems the game is over for now, as the melodic material becomes full of the melancholy you feel when an absorbing, affirming activity comes to an end, with hopes to revisit it soon.

Watch peer2peer x Party Quest below and buy The Computer Room, or stream it everywhere, on 11/19. And if you're looking for a gift for a special person in your life - or for yourself - check out the Collector's Edition Box Set, which includes an art book of visuals for the album along with a physical CD and download code, all housed inside of a 2000's-era inspired software box. Edition of 25 so don't hesitate!

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Record Roundup: Enigmas And Excitations

The composer starts with a blank page - or screen - and fills it with notes or diagrams, which are meant to enable others to issue forth sounds that previously only existed in the mind of their maker. While there may be iterations based on collaboration with the musicians, with a back and forth between writer and performers - or even an invitation to improvisation - the fact remains that it all begins one person's mind. Gain entry to some truly enigmatic and exciting thoughts below.

Spektral Quartet - Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Enigma Beethoven, Bartok, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich - just to name a few - all served to make the string quartet a proving ground for a composer. The exposed format presents both an opportunity and a challenge to translate your individuality and complexity across just 16 strings on four instruments. It's a different matter than a solo piece, which can also present difficulties, as one key element is interaction between the players. Still, the rigidity of the quartet makeup provides an excellent opportunity for the listener to compare approaches, like creating an overlay in he mind of The Beatles and Wire, who both use two guitars, bass, and drums as their essential lineup. Shostakovich also helped establish the idea of the string quartet being an especially personal expression, away from the more public space of the symphonic or operatic.

Those are some reasons I was all aquiver when I heard that Anna Thorvaldsdottir, one of the preeminent composers of our time, had written a string quartet. The work, called Enigma, premiered in Washington DC in 2019 and is finally being released on August 27th in a stunning performance by the Spektral Quartet, beautifully produced by Dan Merceruio for Sono Luminus. Right from the start of the three-movement work it's obvious that Thorvaldsdottir is operating on her own trajectory, with little reference to what's come before in the medium. Beginning with some mysterious alchemy that has the strings sounding like a distant wind, or someone's breath, Enigma is instantly arresting. Long, drawn-out chords further the piece's grip, almost physically pulling you in, as a melody emerges from the drip-drip-drip of the sequences. More breathing, the sound of insects ascending in a swarm, glassy notes interleaving, and sustained drones all assemble in a sound world that seems as visual as it is sonic. 

After listening several times, I'm not surprised to learn that there is a virtual reality component to Enigma, created in collaboration with filmmaker Sigurdur Gudjonsson. While the first release will be a conventional CD, eventually you will be able to  explore this at home with a VR headset. However, I imagine its full expression may be in future performances, each conceived to be a "360 degree full-dome theater live concert experience," premiering in Chicago and Reykjavik in spring/summer 2022. Hopefully additional dates will include New York!

The second movement is a little more active, with dramatic barks underpinning drones and occasional quick-moving passages. What starts to sink in is Thorvaldsdottir's preternatural understanding of the many varieties of sound that can be produced between wood, string, and bow. An extraterrestrial would not need much to be convinced she had conceived and built these instruments herself strictly for the purpose of making this music. Movement three is a bit eerie, as if exploring a pitch dark space, cobwebs dancing in pin-sized shafts of light. Then, ever so slowly, a melody develops, an ascending series of chords that seem to pay homage to the human need for order and narrative. An ancient song to carry you home. Listen to Enigma once and you just may believe it has always existed.

José Luis Hurtado - Parametrical Counterpoint Even as the board chair for Talea Ensemble, who play on six of eight tracks here, it took a random internet occurrence - i.e. luck - for me to learn about this album. At a recent board meeting, I learned it was a surprise to the ensemble as well, having recorded the works back in 2015 and then lost track of the project. Perhaps the delay was due to Hurtado, wanting to fill the album out a little, which he does with the two piano pieces that bookend the collection. Hurtado plays those himself, opening things up with the almost violent The Caged, The Immured (2018), which pushes the piano to some of its limits of volume and sustain. It's a thrill-ride from start to finish, with Hurtado in complete control throughout and the patented excellence of Oktaven Audio's sound on full display. Apparently there's a two-piano version, with the second instrument playing the same score, yet read upside down - must be quite an experience!

Retour (2013) is next, putting Talea through their paces for a dynamic, fragmented seven minutes and change. It's spicy and tart, full of agitated strings, a blatting trombone, and a flute whispering like a shy person trying desperately to get your attention among the noise. It's a delightful introduction to Hurtado's ensemble work, as are the four versions of Parametrical Counterpoint (all 2015), which pit two variable ensembles against each other to play a series of modules in an order of their choosing. Each version is a fast paced swirl of ideas, with the musicians trading melodic and rhythmic ideas with verve and commitment. Incandescent (2015) for 12 amplified instruments, is full of mechanical interactions, like a rusted engine trying to turn over. While still fragmentary, there's a greater sense of unity among the ensemble and a real sense of forward motion. Le Stelle (2015), for piano and fixed media, closes the album, a starlit and occasionally disorienting series of short, linked pieces that have the piano and electronics combining with a masterful organicity. This is the first I'm hearing of Hurtado, but thanks to this stunning collection he's firmly on my radar now.

Rarescale + Scott L. Miller - 05 IX I was eager to hear more from Miller after Tak Ensemble's marvelous recording of his Ghost Layers last year - and he delivered, putting this wild and occasionally wacky collection of telematically created pieces right in my inbox. With the pandemic pausing their usual collaborative methods, Miller and Rarescale, a flexible ensemble based in the UK, explored ways to work together online. As they normally work with graphic scores that encourage improvisation as the instrumentalist reacts to electronic sounds produced by Miller on the Kyma, they needed a platform that would allow them to interact in real time with very little latency, eventually settling on one called (yes) Netty McNetface. You can see some of how this worked in this video, which show Miller and his colleague, Pat O'Keefe (clarinet), in Minnesota jamming with Viv Corringham (voice and electronics, from Long Island) and Rarescale's Carla Rees (flutes, from London), working off of Miller's graphic score. 

OK, that's a lot of the HOW of 05 IX, but what does it sound like? Featuring Rees and her Rarescale colleague Sarah Watts on clarinets, this varies greatly from Ghost Layers in sound and style. Full of witty asides and amusing outbursts, this combo of people and instruments seems primed for play. Round 2 is a perfect example, with Miller's Kyma echoing and leading Rees' flute, like a robot trying to imitate its human companion. Picture C3PO and Luke Skywalker - but in a Marx Brothers comedy - to get some idea. However, there's more to it than that, with moments of repose and atomization, as if each player is returning to a quiet corner before leaping forth and batting sounds around some more. In just under five minutes, the piece takes you on quite a journey, which can certainly be said for the album as a whole. What other tricks does Miller have up his sleeve?

Douglas Boyce - The Hunt By Night Having delighted in The Hunt By Night when it opened Against Method, last year's brilliant album from Counter)induction, I was excited to dig into this collection. As the four other pieces here demonstrate, the man knows what he's doing, generating chamber works that are both splashy and elegant, whether interacting with the genius of the past, as on Quintet "L'homme armé," inspired by that medieval melody, or the future, as on Sails Knife-bright in a Seasonal Wind, inspired by his son as a four-year-old. Alternately playful and contemplative, that piece, like many here, features members of Counter)induction, in this case, Miranda Cuckson (violin), Dan Lippel (guitar), and Jeffrey Irving (percussion), with everyone engaging deeply with Boyce's music. But all the performances and the recording are top-notch, making this a perfect showcase for a composer deservedly gaining wider attention - give him yours.

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Note: The illustration contains part of a work by François-Xavier Lalanne as seen at The Clark.

Record Roundup: Americana The Beautiful

For the last four or five years, there's been an increasingly bitter battle over what it means to be an American. There are some of those among us who might even have found themselves questioning the whole enterprise, i.e. how good could this place be if it produced those people with those ideas? But most days, the good outweighs the bad, even if the latter can get an unholy grip on the reins for a moment. Turning towards albums like those reviewed below can be a part of both appreciating the good and gathering strength to resist the bad. We must be doing something right if music like this still grows here, alongside those amber waves of grain. Reap the harvest.

Hiss Golden Messenger - Quietly Blowing It The critic's job can be tough when an artist nails it in their own words, as HGM's M.C. Taylor does in his essay, Mourning In America, when he says, "I'm not sure what the difference is between celebrating and mourning. I feel like I was doing both at the same time." There in a nutshell is the array of moods, from joy and sorrow to hope and regret, found here, masterfully distilled and blended into a complex whole, like one of those whiskies made from 12 different barrels of varying ages. In that same essay, Taylor also talks about the difficult journey to Quietly Blowing It, which began in late 2019 when, blown out on the trail and unsure of his purpose, he cancelled his first Australian tour - he hated disappointing people but  says "it felt like the best $10,000 I'd ever spent" - and came home to his family. 

From the outside perspective, part of the conundrum Taylor was confronting is what might be termed the corrosive effect of success, which can burn off rough edges, dispel mystery, and tie up loose ends in the misguided quest for more of the same. When his last album, the beautiful Terms Of Surrender, earned his first Grammy nomination (for best Americana album), perhaps it also allowed some of those voices, both external and internal, to intrude enough for him to doubt his process. But the best defense against that lay in his own remarkable discography, now ten albums strong and stretching back to 2008. That Grammy nom - and the increasing attention that led to it - was arrived at without compromise, in his continual pursuit of realizing songs that combined the personal and the universal while paying homage to his musical forebears and honing his own distinct sound.

Beginning with three hymn-like chords on a keyboard (likely played by Devonne Harris, of Richmond, VA stalwarts Butcher Brown), Way Back In The Way Back welcomes you to the album like an old friend, with chiming guitar joining in and soon that Matt McCaughan backbeat I've rhapsodized about before (or it could be Brevan Hampden, who's just as good). As the song wends its way with a weary strength through lyrics that hint at the exhaustion Taylor described, a pair of saxophones join in, played by Stuart Bogie and Matt Douglas, lending muscle and building a foundation for a guitar solo both stylish and raw (sounds like Josh Kaufman, but the great Buddy Miller is also in the credits), and the sense of a man who knows exactly how to express himself is undeniable before the song is even over. But if he doesn't put the couplet, "Up with the mountains/Down with the system," on a t-shirt I will feel free to question his merch strategy!

Now, last time around, some sought to make hay out of the fact that Scott Hirsch, who had been on many prior albums, was not present. He's back this time, lending his lap-steel and synth expertise, yet Phil and Brad Cook, who were on several albums as well as being in the touring band from time to time, are absent this time. While Brad's sensitive bass playing and Phil's over-driven guitar and harmonica solos and dominating abilities on the organ are always highlights onstage and on album, HGM has always been Taylor's vision and I have seen nothing to indicate that anything interpersonal is involved. Scheduling is a more likely culprit, as both Cooks are busy in many kitchens, including their own. Hell, if Phil makes an album as good as Southland Mission again, I'll be actually happy he wasn't on this one. And never forget that Alex Bingham, who plays bass here, created what Aquarium Drunkard called the "song of the year" in 2019. This is all just to say: Whether you're a longtime Hiss fan or newer to the band and listened before you read the credits, you knew you were in good hands just by the sound of the thing.

The Great Mystifier is a nifty country-tinged mover, with twin-lead guitars tipping their hat to Duane and Dicky, while Mighty Dollar is molasses-slow, with a funky groove for Taylor to preach his anti-prosperity-gospel gospel: "It never fixed a broken heart/It never made a dumb man smarter." Give the man a mega-church for the truly righteous. The song kind of grinds to a halt, leaving a space for the achingly gorgeous title track, limned with Hirsch's lap-steel, to make its mournful way. "The shape of things/Don’t look so good/On the TV there’s a riot goin’ on," Taylor sings, recognizing our recent history while giving tribute to Sly Stone who caught 1970 with as much acuity on that classic album. Curtis Mayfield also gets called into the room on Hardlytown, with its rousing "People get ready" in the pre-chorus. If It Comes In The Morning, a co-write with Anaïs Mitchell, also has a gospel flavor, providing a needed uplift continued by the solid-rock folk of Glory Strums (Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner). Thus bolstered, Taylor feels free to sink into the near despair of Painting Houses, co-written with Gregory Alan Isakov and one of the saddest songs he's recorded. 

Angels In The Headlights, a glorious slice of spaced-out cowboy music that seems barely tethered to earth, fluttering heavenward on Hirsch's steel wings, may be the shortest at just under two minutes, but if Taylor ever plays it live, I hope it goes on for 20. Sanctuary, which ends the album, could almost serve as a mission statement for the whole HGM project, with its perfect opening and closing lyrics: "Feeling bad/Feeling blue/Can’t get out of my own mind/But I know how to sing about it." It already feels like a standard, too, partly because it was released a while ago, but mostly due to Taylor's emotionally engaged craftsmanship, both with his pen and in the studio. The same could be said of Quietly Blowing It as a whole, which Taylor produced solo, arriving at one of the deepest expressions of his art yet released. Careful, dude - keep this up and you just might blow it for real by getting even more successful.

P.S. HGM is one of THE great live acts - if you want a reminder of all we've been missing since March 2020, check the dates to see if they're coming to a venue near you.

Jeffrey Silverstein - Torii Gates As he did on last year's wondrous You Become The Mountain, Silverstein is mapping out a very distinctive territory where tributaries of the New Age river flow into a gentle stream of sun struck Americana. A key element is Barry Walker Jr.'s pedal steel, which seems to take as much from Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois's Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks as it does from Nashville. Spare bass from Alex Chapman and Silverstein's guitar and vocals complete the picture, along with an occasional drum machine. Songs seem to emerge out of the atmosphere on repeated listens, and one they do, the mood and the melodies will be tough to shake off. No matter, you can just play it again...and again...

Corntuth - The Desert Is Paper Thin On his debut album, Music To Work To, this Brooklyn-based artist applied a canny songwriting sense to the tools of ambient music for a winning combination that was as good to work to as it was to just listen. Here, he takes us on an imagined journey through the American southwest, adding the organic tones of his own acoustic guitar - often miked extremely closely - and the pedal steel of Pete Finney, who's worked with Mike Nesmith, Beck, and everyone in between, to the electronic textures. The sound is sublime, with the looped nature of the songs making for a hypnotic experience. Between Silverstein and Corntuth, Hiss Golden Messenger has some good company in the spaced-out cowboy music genre - book a flight. The album releases on July 16th but you can pre-save the first single now to hear it on July 2nd - and keep an eye on Corntuth's site, Bandcamp, and Flow State for more information to come.

Amy Helm - What The Flood Leaves Behind The story we tell ourselves and others about why a record works or doesn't work is just that - a story. But the working or not working is a real thing that can't be explained away. So, I could tell a story about Helm's first two albums seeming to come from an obligation to her heritage as the daughter of the legendary Levon Helm, or maybe diluted by producers or music biz affiliations. But who knows? All I can say is that, while the second album, This Too Shall Light, was getting closer, I was not compelled to keep listening. That all changes here, with these ten new songs quenching a thirst I didn't know I had, and it's a drink of which I have yet to tire. I can tell myself story about that, too, about her prodigal return to Levon's studio, home of his rambles and where she may have first raised her voice in public. Or I could talk about Josh Kaufman, who produced and played a half dozen instruments beyond his usual brilliant guitars, and who seems to be able to create a place of comfort for artists, where they can produce their best work. 

And if you're a Hiss Golden Messenger fan looking for Phil Cook, he's here, too, along with expert rhythm section Michael Libramento (bass) and Tony Mason (drums). They're intrinsic to the success of the album, along with Daniel Littleton's electric guitar and the superb horn section of Stuart Bogie (sax) and Jordan McLean (trumpet), who even give some Garth Hudson wooziness to Renegade Heart, the final track. Helm has also come into her own as a songwriter, writing or co-writing seven of the songs here, showing an ease with her history (from Cotton And The Cane, co-written with Mary Gauthier: "My father was a sharecropper’s son/Handed hope and hymns to ease the pain" and "Heroin, I’m locked out again/On the side of the road") and a fine use of imagery (from Coming Home: "Found a picture of her/I framed it in gold now it burns up the room"), making songs that feel simultaneously new yet familiar, personal and universal.

Maybe she learned some of those lessons from M.C. Taylor, whose sterling song, Verse 23, opens the album, applying a Dylanesque resonance and concision to lines like "Some got caught in the wanting/And some lost the feel/Some got lost in their own eyes/And went crazy on the hill." But the true glory of the album is Helm's voice, rich and earthy now, reminiscent of Frazey Ford, and less concerned with conveying words as with carrying emotional weight. Whether on gentle songs like that opening track or the gutsy funk of Breathing, everything she does feels completely natural and from the heart. So take all the stories you've heard or told yourself about Amy Helm and close the book. This is a new volume and one I suspect we will be reading for a long time. It should be great to hear live, too.

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New Americana, Part 2: Hamilton Leithauser & Paul Maroon

Record Roundup: Novelty Is Not Enough

Some of the hardest work of writing AnEarful is choosing what to share out of the many, many recordings that come my way. As ever, the cream rises to the top, but when interrogating why the cream is the cream, I think I've settled on something: Newness is not enough. While it's certainly admirable to push music forward by organizing sound in a manner that seems to have never been done before, for me to truly love something it must go beyond the merely novel. For example, take The Residents. While I can certainly say nothing else sounds like them and I appreciate the opportunity to hear something so strange, I'm not compelled to make their music a part of my life. Their novelty is something on which we can objectively agree, it's what is lacking for me that shades into the subjective. That said, perhaps some of what I share below may not fit the bill on all levels for you - but I hope you will give it a chance to at least expand your conception of what music can be and do.

Sō Percussion and Friends - Julius Eastman: Stay On It One of the most riveting events of the current livestream era was when Sō Percussion presented their version of Eastman's pioneering piece of maxi-minimalism with a stunning, mind-melting video by MediaQueer (the duo of Phong Tran and Darian Donovan Thomas) as part of their Brooklyn Bound series. I was in the kitchen, listening the chats and music that preceded it while doing the dishes, etc., but when that video started up, I could not look away from their next-level collage of TV ads, street protests, and bits of cultural detritus. I also had the sense that the performance of Stay On It was special on its own, instantly treasuring how the repetitions seemed to build momentum while allowing other themes and sounds to emerge. Now that it has been released as a standalone recording, I'm delighted to be 100% RIGHT. The four members of Sō laid down the elemental groove that drives the piece and then invited some extraordinary guests to add to the flexible structure of the piece, including Tran and Thomas on electronics and violin respectively, Grey Mcmurray on guitar and vocals, Beth Meyers on viola and vocals, Alex Sopp on flute, piccolo, and vocals, Adam Tendler on piano, and Shelley Washington on sax - each one a player who brings their all to any project. What a joy to hear this piece in a committed, well-recorded performance, allowing all the layers of one of Eastman's most accessible and optimistic works to reveal themselves clearly. It's as fresh and revelatory as it must have been in 1973, when he wrote it. Simply put, they've set a new standard for Eastman's ensemble work, and one as high as Jace Clayton's sparkling take on his piano music. There will be more Eastman goodies to come, too, as Wild Up has announced a multi-year project, starting with Femenine - hear an excerpt here.

Kenneth Kirschner & Joseph Branciforte - From The Machine, Vol. 1 Greyfade is a new boutique label prizing sonic excellence on vinyl and in high-resolution digital formats (no streaming) and seeking to present music that arises from innovative processes. In this case, Kirschner and Branciforte have transferred algorithmic and generative techniques from electronic music into the acoustic realm, using software to compose two pieces of austere elegance. The first, April 20, 2015, originally an electronic composition by Kirschner and here arranged for two cellos (Mariel Roberts and Meaghan Burke) and piano (Jade Conlee) by Branciforte,  finds the instruments in dialog, if not quite conversation, sliding around each other in a series of brief phrases. The second, 0123, composed by Branciforte for "low string quartet" (Tom Chiu, violin, Wendy Richman, viola, Christopher Gross, cello, Greg Chudzik, double bass), has the players work their way up an octave by exploring the same four-note cell in a ruminative fashion. Both works generate a mysterious disquiet that I think would exist even if you didn't know there was code behind them and represent a planting of the flag for Greyfade, claiming impressive territory that I look forward to exploring further on their first release, which featured collaborations between Branciforte and vocalist Theo Bleckmann, and their next one with the JACK Quartet, coming in September.

Peter Gilbert - Burned Into The Orange No one could accuse New Focus co-founder Gilbert of using the label to promote his own music - this is only his second release and the last was over a decade ago. But his dazzling command of various forces, from string quartets (both the Arditti and the Iridium are featured) to electronics to solo tuba, makes me hope we don't have to wait that long for more. Each piece grabs the attention like a great storyteller, with Channeling The Waters for flute and percussion (Camilla Hoitenga and Magdalena Meitzner, respectively) being emblematic. Opening with a heavy metal fanfare, it leads you on a labyrinthine journey that never ceases to fascinate, which could be said of the album as a whole. Join the adventure.

Wavefield Ensemble - Concrete & Void This first album from an ensemble launched in 2016 and made up of new music all-stars, including Julia den Boer, Hannah Levinson, Greg Chudzik, and Dan Lippell, was recorded at a socially-distanced concert at a parking garage in Montclair, NJ in October 2020. But you would never know it's a live performance, such is the gleaming perfection of the sound. Presented are five meaty works (the shortest is just over eleven minutes) from composers, including Jen Baker, Jessie Cox, Victoria Cheah, Chudzik, and Nicholas DeMaison, who all collaborated deeply with the players. Pushing through the COVID era restraints (no in-person rehearsals, etc.), the group has arrived at a series of gripping, cinematic soundscapes, with Cheah's A wasp, some wax, an outline of the valley over us a fall being especially involving. Like all the pieces, the integration of electronics and acoustic instruments is seamless and her use of suspense brings to mind Bernard Herrmann's work for sci-fi television or tracks from Nine Inch Nails Ghosts, as she draws you through a series of images in sound. After all of Cheah's tension, Chudzik's Silo washes over you like a hymnal, with his cello surrounded by harmonics and drones. Concrete & Void firmly establishes Wavefield as a group to watch, and I hope I can get to their next concert, especially if it has free parking!

Chris Campbell - Orison Using an array of forces including members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, "hybrid-music" violinist Todd Reynolds, and drummer Dave King from The Bad Plus, Cambell has created a seven-movement work that brings a sense of calm and reflection for its 37-minute length. Reminiscent of some of John Luther Adams' pieces, with high, whispery tones from the violin and swirling harmonics, King's drums (often played with brushes) and repeating piano figures lend forward motion to the piece. "Orison" is a perfect title, but "oasis" would work, too, for the way Campbell's music clears space in the mind. Although there are fewer daily shocks in 2021 than in 2020, this still feels just like what the doctor ordered. During the years of its composition, Campbell came to think of the piece as "a companion" and this listener feels the same. Keep it close.

Various Artists - A New Age For New Age Vol. 3 Eventually all genres of music, from the lauded to the discredited, come around for reconsideration. "New Age" music, which I used to view as sort of the strip-mall yoga center version of ambient, has been having a nice moment over the last few years, whether in the revival of Laraaji's career or ear-opening reissues like Pearls Of The Deep, the best of Stairway. Starting in 2019, the ever-expanding Whatever's Clever label began inviting artists to submit pieces that reinterpret New Age music and curating compilations based on what they received. The first two volumes (and Vol. 4, for that matter) were wonderful, but this is the one to which I keep returning. Partly that's because it has a NEW SONG from Elana Low, which is a precious thing indeed (full disclosure: I suggested she submit something!), but also for the sheer variety that somehow coheres into a satisfying journey. Opening with the supremely witty Serenity Now by shm0o0o, with its "dee-do-dee-do-dee-do...dah!" refrain, we are also given the rain-streaked chamber music of 4385650503, a collaboration between LLLL, Mitsuhiro Fujiwara, and DaisyModern, and the sun-dazed folk of Reliable Feelings by Adeline Hotel among other explorations in mostly electronic tones and textures. Considering Whatever's Clever has released four volumes in the series without repeating artists, they have obviously struck a nerve with creators. Don't miss out on what's exciting them - you may even find a new soundtrack for your yoga practice.

Ben Seretan - Cicada Waves This dreamy series of piano improvisations accompanied by nature sounds would have been HUGE during the original New Age era - it's also the most distinctive and assured music I've heard from Seretan, the founder of Whatever's Clever and a stalwart of the indie-rock/folk scene in the northeast. He just sounds so settled, spinning chords and melodies while rain washes down or crickets sing around him, and that sense of contentment is contagious. For full immersion, watch the videos he's created or commissioned for each song. Good luck getting a cassette, though, as he's already sold out two pressings. 

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Note: The cover photo includes a detail of Shoshanna Weinberger's installation for the Sunroom Project Space, on display at Wave Hill.

AnEarful acknowledges that this work is created on the traditional territory of the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger peoples.

Record Roundup: Song Forms

The combination of words and music is as old as language and songs continue to be astonishing transmitters of thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and are limited in form only by their creators' imaginations. Here are a few recent releases mapping out multiple geographies of song form.

Will Liverman and Paul Sanchez - Dreams Of A New Day: Songs By Black Composers You would need know nothing about this album's contents, or even its name, to be immediately struck by Liverman's voice. From the first notes, that we are in the presence of a masterful baritone is immediately clear. He has depth and power to spare, but the transparency and delicacy of his upper range is very distinctive. The contents are special, too, as Liverman followed his passions to present a range of Black composers that takes us from Henry Burleigh, born in 1866, to Shawn Okpebholo, born in 1981. From the latter, we have a world premiere recording of Two Black Churches, commissioned by Liverman, and comprised of a song each for two era-defining acts of violence, the Birmingham church bombing in 1963 and the Charleston shooting in 2015. The first is a setting of Dudley Randall's poem, Ballad Of Birmingham, and Okpebholo has constructed a fascinating piano part (brilliantly played by Sanchez), which seems to both fuel and fragment Liverman's steadfast delivery of the words, occasionally seeking a hymn-like resolution. The second somberly sets The Rain by Marcus Amaker, which provides a stunning bookend to an image from the first song on the album, by Damian Sneed and based on Langston Hughes' I Dream A World. Hughes writes of "joy, like a pearl" attending the needs of mankind, while Amaker's view is bleaker: "When the reality/of racism returns/all joy treads water/in oceans of buried emotion." Okpebholo and Liverman have given us a signature piece for our era that will resonate through the future we are building. And that's just a microcosm of what Sanchez and Liverman have accomplished on this crucial collection.

Caroline Shaw - Narrow Sea From the opening words, "I am a poor wayfaring stranger," you may suspect we are in the world of 19th century American song, specifically hymns. But even if you come to it without that foreknowledge, the creamy, deeply felt soprano of Dawn Upshaw will make you feel those words in your bones. Accompanied by Sō Percussion's wild array of instruments that click, clink, and clatter alongside Gilbert Kalish's searching piano chords, Upshaw sounds completely at home in Shaw's deconstruction of these old songs. My only complaint is that at about 20 minutes, this song cycle leaves me wanting more. Even with the addition of Shaw's Taxidermy, a little gem for percussion and spoken word, Narrow Sea makes me nostalgic for the glory days of "peak CD," when Upshaw and Nonesuch were putting out brilliantly curated albums like The Girl With Orange Lips or White Moon: Songs To Morpheus. I can imagine Shaw's cycle being given context among works by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, and Christopher Trapani - or some of those composers sourced by Will Liverman. Instead of wallowing, I think I'll just make a playlist with Narrow Sea and Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part, Shaw and Sō's next collaboration, which features 10 new song adaptations sung by Shaw herself, coming June 25th. 

Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince This is Aftab's third album but the first for me and I can't help feeling I've joined a trajectory near its apogee. That's just another way of saying: WOW. Her complete command of the eclectic environs through which this album transits is nothing short of amazing. She moves through many genres, including art song, folk, and in one delicately devastating moment in Last Night, reggae. All of this is infused with the modes and moods of her Pakistani heritage and blended with such subtlety that any seams are invisible. Her taste in collaborators is as finely honed as her compositions, most notably violin wizard Darian Donovan Thomas, who lavishes Baghon Main with his special brand of liquid light. The album is dedicated to Aftab's brother who died during the early stages of its creation and no matter what losses you've experienced in the last few months or years, there is succor and peace to be found in these remarkable songs. As Aftab sings in Saans Lo, with lyrics by Annie Ali Khan: "There’s no one in this desolate world but you, but at least you have yourself/Breathe."

Domenico Lancellotti - Raio After the years that separated his last two albums, Cine Prive (2012) and The Good Is A Big God (2018), having Vai A Serpente, which opens Raio, slide into my Release Radar was an unexpected delight. Begun following a move from Brazil to Portugal, much of Raio was recorded after the pandemic hit, but you would never know any of it was made by remote collaborators. In fact, it feels even more unified than his other albums, almost a song cycle, with themes and textures appearing and reappearing throughout. He's still mining an encyclopedia of Brazilian sounds, leaning more towards the folky and jazzy sides of his homeland and saving his wackier Tropicalia-influenced side for the wry groove of Lanço Minha Flecha and parts of Newspaper, the instrumental that closes the album. Raio is a wonderful album and can serve as an introduction to this special artist as aptly as the others. Start here, start there, just start!

Jane Weaver - Flock My introduction to Weaver was 2017's Modern Kosmology, an explosion of melodically fueled art-pop that was an instant addiction. Now, nearly 30 years into her career, she's gone even further towards pop on Flock, incorporating the raptures of Goldfrapp and Stereolab along the way. With lighter-than-air synths and danceable grooves, Flock is infused with an inspiring sense of unfettered creativity and zero compromise. There's also not a trace of insincerity in Weaver's breezy soprano, which she often uses as an additional musical element, singing repeated lines and sometimes sampling herself. While fans of the bands mentioned above are likely already onto Weaver, there's absolutely no reason why devotees of, say, Billie Eilish wouldn't also be into this - let's hope the algorithms serve them well.

Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg Delivering completely on the promise of their 2019 EPs, this London quartet continues to find variety and invention in their patented blend of Florence Shaw's interior monologue speak-singing and colorfully angular post-punk played by Thomas Paul Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard (bass), and Nicholas Hugh Andrew Buxton (drums). John Parish's production has found the ideal balance, sinking Shaw's voice just enough into the mix and treating each instrument with care. Even if the songs weren't so good, New Long Leg would be notable for the bass sound alone, a rounded throb somewhere adjacent to Jah Wobble's work with PiL or Philip Moxam's in Young Marble Giants. The songs can read like stream of consciousness rambles (from Leafy: "I run a tight ship/Helicopter circling/Kalashnikov to look forward to/It’s a glam musical") but somehow assemble in your mind to become stories of fractured relationships, forensically detailing what's left behind or what an imagined future could hold. Speaking of days to come, I hope I get to see them in concert when such things happen again - looks like fun!

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AnEarful acknowledges that this work is created on the traditional territory of the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger peoples.

Record Roundup: Chiaroscuro

There are times when unremittingly bleak music can provide necessary catharsis. At other times - like our current moment, I believe - a more nuanced sound world can give us the sound support we need. The five excellent releases below all include some light with their shade. 

Scott Wollschleger & Karl Larson - Dark Days Played with deep engagement by Larson, a longtime collaborator, this series of short piano pieces works together so seamlessly you might think they were all part of a longer work. But that's more due to the expert assembly of the album rather than a sameness of tone, texture, or mood. While the bleak outlook implied by the title does leach into that work, the overall sensation is one of quiet yet glimmering contemplation. Although I don't have synesthesia, unlike Wollschleger (who uses the "colors of sound" in his process), I associate the album with iridescent jewel tones that grow more complex the longer you look at them. Pre-release, I spent many a morning with Dark Days, finding it quickly assuming a place in the soundtrack of my 2021. Let it happen for you.

Akropolis Reed Quintet - Ghost Light The sheer sound of this group, made up of oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, and bass clarinet, is instantly captivating. There's a sublime smoothness of tone, texture, and ensemble that brings to mind the reed sections of great American orchestras like that of Duke Ellington or Glenn Miller. The Akropolis are sure-handed in their curation and collaboration as well, as the five pieces here interact and relate to each other in thought-provoking ways, exploring everything from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to racial violence in their native Detroit. Their choice of composers - all unknown to me except for Jeff Scott who I know as a member of Imani Winds - leads to a wide variety of sonorities and emotional impacts. Stacy Garrop's Rites For The Afterlife, takes us through the narrative of the Egyptian Book of the Dead with an appropriate sense of mystery and even a little Kurt Weillian wit in the third movement, The Hall of Judgement. Kinds of Light by Michael Gilbertson provides portraits in sound for Flicker, Twilight, Fluorescence, and Ultraviolet in colorful fashion, without leaning on the concept too hard. 

In Niloufar Nourbakhsh's Firing Squad - inspired by the first line of One Hundred Years of Solitude - the quartet is mirrored by a recording of themselves, occasionally sounding like an infinite loop. Theo Chandler's Seed To Snag has almost has the whimsy of a classic Disney score as he describes the lifecycle of organic material, adding yet more colors to Akropolis' palette. Scott's piece, Homage To Paradise Valley, closes the album and incorporates spoken word as Marsha Music reads her poems about Detroit's earlier days. Scott's music is tuneful and sparkling, with nods to jazz, and Music's poems are lively and nostalgic, with their tales of her father's record shop and the musical luminaries that put the city on the map. The readings do interrupt the overall flow of the album for this listener and I can imagine programming them out after a few plays, but that's a minor quibble about this powerful artistic statement.

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė - Saudade Given her expert and brilliantly original deployment of small forces on In Search Of Lost Beauty... from 2019, it should be no surprise that this Lithuanian-born composer now presents symphonic works of a similar mastery. Of the four pieces here, perhaps Horizons is the most extraordinary, a gripping and sustained exploration of dynamics and darkness that also highlights the glories of the recording and work of Giedrė Šlekytė and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. Hints of past masters like Sibelius are certainly evident but this absorbing and inventive music is in no way retrograde. Yet it is accessible enough that American orchestras should be clamoring to program Martinaitytė. With Saudade as a calling card I can imagine that happening quite soon.

Christopher Cerrone - A Natural History of Vacant Lots and The Arching Path These two releases feature Cerrone at his most contemplative, with hanging chords, decaying notes, and chord progressions that seem to search their way through personal memories and shared histories. Vacant Lots is a brief piece originally written for percussion quartet and presented here as a solo piece for vibraphone and electronics, played by Andy Meyerson. It works equally well in either setting, perhaps even benefiting from the sonic focus of the solo version. 

The Arching Path (due on May 21st from In A Circle Records) includes four pieces from the last decade, with three of them being deeply embedded in place. The three-movement title piece refers to the Ponte sul Basento, a concrete modernist masterpiece in southern Italy, but Cerrone avoids any of the obvious musical tricks that might imply, instead using a chiming and percussive piano (played by Timo Andres) to unfurl melodies that are deeply affecting while avoiding the sentimentality that can mar the work of Nils Frahm. Double Happiness adds field recordings from Umbria and Cerrone’s lapidary electronics to the soundscape along with percussion played by Ian Rosenbaum. The five movements are distinct in their textures while maintaining a general air of rain-streaked reflection.

I Will Learn To Love Somebody, the third piece, sets five poems by writer-provocateur Tao Lin for soprano (a spectacular, gleaming Lindsay Kesselman), piano, percussion, and clarinet (Mingzhe Wang). It pulls the collection in a slightly more dynamic direction, with leaps in range that recall some of Scott Walker’s dramatic flair - appropriate, when you consider the attention Cerrone is paying to every word. The words themselves combine a conversational style with enough ironic distance to keep them from being diary entries with line breaks. Even without close attention to the words, however, these are gripping art songs that are an even more fabulous showcase for Kesselman's talents than The Pieces That Fall To Earth from the 2019 album of the same name.

The final piece takes us to a New York subway station, Hoyt-Schermerhorn, using piano limned with electronics and evoking an air of solitude, as if during a late night transit where the next train can’t come soon enough. I’m already peering down the tracks, looking for more from Cerrone.

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AnEarful acknowledges that this work is created on the traditional territory of the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger peoples.

Record Roundup: New Music Cavalcade

The turns of history that have transpired since I started this post are even more head-spinning than the kaleidoscopic variety of music I discuss below. But the fact remains that whatever happens in the world of politics, we will always have artists to inspire us and reflect the world back to us in ways that lend perspective, strength, and solace. With the monumental election now behind us, the end of the year also seems to approach ever more rapidly. However, I will attempt to get one or two more "regular" posts up before we start delineating the best of 2020. Because, yes, there is yet more mind-blowing music to cover!

Tracks from the albums below, and many others, can be found here or below. Click follow to make sure you don't miss a thing.

  

Ash Fure - Something To Hunt The first time I heard Echoes by Pink Floyd (which was shamefully late in the game), I thought, "This should be played in concert halls around the world." So when I put on this album, the first portrait collection of Fure's music (also shamefully late!), I felt my vision coming to a certain kind of reality. Especially on Shiver Lung (2016), which opens the album, there's a sense of distant observation, narrative sweep, and mounting terror that brings some of the legendary band's sounds and structures into the realm of contemporary composition most effectively. I'm not surprised to read that it's an excerpt from a longer work, The Force Of Things: An Opera for Objects, as Pink Floyd themselves fruitlessly pursued an album made solely for household objects. As heard here, Shiver Lung is a landmark work of nearly pure sound that makes astonishingly original use of the forces of the International Contemporary Ensemble, who perform most of the pieces on the record. I've probably rung this bell too often already, but if you have some bigger speakers in your house, let it rip on them for full immersion. Something To Hunt (2014) is more recognizable as ultra-modern chamber music, although of a highly distinctive nature, with strings plucked and stroked, and a dynamic architecture that edges towards chaos before pulling back. 

Soma (2012), a reflection on Fure's grandmother's Parkinson's disease, is a restless assemblage of piano notes, rustling strings, and white noises, and would fascinate even without knowing the inspiration behind it. The most stripped-down piece here is A Library on Lightning (2018), which makes the most of a trio of trumpet, bassoon, and double bass, ranging from skeletal stretches to furious conglomerations for a discomfiting 14 minutes. Bound To The Bow (2016) is presented in a spellbinding live recording by the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra and brings us full circle to the sound world of Shiver Lung, with shimmering electronics blending with the acoustic instruments. It's edge-of-your-seat stuff and the perfect conclusion to Something To Hunt, which finally begins to slake the thirst I've had to dive into Fure's music, which, like that of Anna Thorvaldsdottir is highly complex but holds broad appeal. Don't miss it.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir - Rhízōma Speaking of this Icelandic wonder, her first portrait album, which introduced me to her music nearly a decade ago, has been reissued in a stunning remaster by Sono Luminus, and includes a new recording of Dreaming performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. You have no excuse to miss it the second time around.

Jacqueline Leclair - Music For English Horn Alone Funny how the world converges sometimes. Just today I started catching up with the awesome podcast from TAK Ensemble, listening to Hannah Kendall interview Elaine Mitchener and thinking I need to follow up on both of them. Then I plucked this album off my teetering stack and spotted Kendall's name among the seven composers Leclaire included here. At just over three minutes, Kendall's piece is short but characterful. Called Joe (2006),  and based on the photo of the same name by Richard Boll, it asks more questions than it answers while conveying empathy for its subject. Leclair's technique in this world premiere recording is flawless, as it is throughout this concise collection. There's plenty of variety here, too. In The City At Night (2008) by Jenni Brandon has some of Gershwin's jazzy insouciance, full of dance rhythms and narrative thrust, while Kara Obermüller's different forms of phosphorous (2020) tends towards abstraction, exploring extended techniques. Perhaps most radical is Música invisible (2004) by Cecilia Arditto, which has Leclair removing the reed and bocal to make some very human noises. 

The Obermüller and Arditto pieces are also recorded for the first time, as is Layered Lament (1984) by Faye-Ellen Silverman, which in its use of electronics is at least 20 years ahead of its time. Besides just being a good listen, such advocacy and archiving make Music For English Horn Alone, which also includes fascinating works by Meera Gudipati and Lisa Bielawa, a truly important release and one that will define this repertoire, for years to come.

Dominique Lemaître - De l’espace trouver la fin et le milieu This gorgeously recorded collection of Lemaître's cello music, played with mastery and a deep connection by Dan Barrett, was my introduction to the French composer. Based on these jewel-toned pieces, which often tingle the spine and always engage the mind, I'm ready to deepen the friendship. The album opens with Orange and yellow II (2013), in a transcription from the original two-viola version, making full use of the eight strings as Barrett duets with Stanislav Orlovsky. Inspired by Mark Rothko and written in tribute to Morton Feldman, the two cellos pursue a dialogue that is as riveting as listening in on a conversation by dazzling intellects. Like many of the pieces, the highly resonant acoustic is almost another instrument, with notes hanging in the air and echoing in the distance. 

Mnaïdra (1992) and Plus haut (2018) are the two solo works here and a good measure of how Lemaître's work has developed over the years. The former is lyrical and almost folk-like, with gentle strums and tidy melodies, while the latter is an epic of abstract yearning, ending with a series of piercing repeated notes ("higher" - as implied by the title) that will stay with you for some time. Pianist Jed Distler is on hand for Stances, hommage à Henri Dutilleux (2015), which has single notes from the keyboard decorating long, ruminative lines from the cello, like sunlight sparkling on water, and you would likely not need the title to recognize Lemaître's debt to his fellow French master. The album also includes Thot (1994), which has Barrett playing with clarinetist Michiyo Suzuki in a wonderfully hushed exploration of woody textures. Read the notes and you will find that Lemaître is, in some ways, what you might expect from a cultured French composer: elegant, well-read, well-traveled, and with phenomenally assured technical skills. But that doesn't mean that this music isn't quietly surprising and the fact that it is surpassingly excellent is likely a result of all those qualities. There's something to be said for new music made old school!

Brooklyn Rider - Healing Modes This high-concept album interleaves the five movements of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 with five new pieces commissioned by Brooklyn Rider from some of today's most notable composers. While Beethoven's 250th anniversary was obviously an impetus for putting the album together, along with the world's desperate need for healing, there's no way the group could have predicted just how much healing when they commissioned these works a few years ago. I'm also fairly certain the group was not expecting Beethoven to become a flashpoint in the ongoing quest for social justice in classical music. While celebrating his "genius and humanity," as violist Johnny Gandelsman puts it, is a valid point in every year, whether the concept ultimately works for you will depend on your patience for listening to Beethoven. For me, I'm just not in the mood - and not for ideological reasons but for musical ones. I have shelves of the stuff, after all, and it just felt too familiar, even in their lapidary performance. So after a couple of listens, I teased out my own playlist of just the new works and...WOW. This is some of the best string quartet music of recent years. 

Matana Roberts' borderlands... opens the album in cinematic fashion, with indistinct voices, "Psycho" jabs, intricate and angry pizzicato, and the occasional moment of calm. By the time the players started spitting out "We hold these truths! To be..Self Evident!" I was almost on my feet. Reena Esmail's Zeher (Poison) seamlessly combines the sinuous melodies of Indian classical music with brusque chording for a bracing and beautiful eight minutes. I was reminded of her lovely piece on Nicholas Phillips' Shift and once again have a whetted appetite for more. The third new piece on Healing Modes is Gabriela Lena Frank's Kanto Kechua #2 and, based on this commanding and incantatory work, she is someone about whom I need to know more - and here's the perfect place to do just that. 

Then we get i am my own achilles heel, a mesmerizing 12-minute piece from Du Yun, which maps out a wide dynamic range, from airy whispers and pensive melodies to gnarly tangles of sound. She can do no wrong. The final new piece is by Caroline Shaw, the tuneful, Americana-infused Schisma, ending the album on a perfect note of hopefulness, although in no ways uncomplicated. By all means, follow the program and listen to Healing Modes as programmed by Brooklyn Rider. But if that's not hitting the spot, find your way to these wondrous new works through other means. 

Another hint of the depth of talent in Brooklyn Rider is violist Nicolas Cords' new album, Touch Harmonious, which mixes new works by Anna Clyne, Dmitri Yanov Yanovski, and Dana Lyn with older pieces by Britten, Handel, Bach, and other, all played with the same burnished tone and emotional engagement he displayed on Recursion, his solo debut from 2013. Gandelsman also has a new album, following up his complete recording of Bach's Solo Partitas, this time assaying the master's Complete Cello Suites transcribed for violin, including the first-ever recording of the 6th suite on a 5-string violin. It's a fleet-fingered take, emphasizing the Baroque dance rhythms embedded in each movement. Gandelsman's technique is flawless yet imbued with personality, making you hear these oft-played works anew. Now, if I could just get cellist Michael Nicolas to give me a sequel to Transitions, my life would be complete...for a little while, anyway!

Chris P. Thompson - True Stories & Rational Numbers Though inspired by the fearsomely complex player-piano works of Conlon Nancarrow and some deep thoughts about just intonation and Hermann von Helmholtz’s book On the Sensations of Tone, these nine piano pieced gleam with off-kilter charm, like a futuristic blend of Aphex Twin, Roger Eno and Erik Satie. Put it on and the sparkle will fill your room, like mirrored mobiles spinning around themselves, as you hear the piano in a whole new way.

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Record Roundup: In Their Prime

Here are four albums from artists who are at least at mid-career - and seemingly at the peak of their powers. Crucially, each album is good enough to serve as an introduction to their work, should you be unfamiliar - as in one case I was.

Fleet Foxes - Shore What are the elements that make fans like me so devoted to this band? First there's the embrace of many acoustic instruments in concert and counterpoint, creating an atmosphere of comfort much like that old cliché, the favorite sweater. Then, there's the heavenly voice of Robin Pecknold, often joined in three- or four-part harmony. Finally, there are the lyrics, which invite you on a quest for resolution and understanding of each other, the world, and ourselves. 

This surprise album, made before and during pandemic lockdown, also positions Fleet Foxes as Pecknold's project, as it includes none of the band members credited on previous albums. He has also said that he had a bigger hand in those albums than we earlier thought. Many of the stunning harmonies, for example, were him and him alone, painstakingly layering his own voice. That's not to say there aren't collaborators on the three earlier albums or here, where members of Grizzly Bear, the horn section known as The Westerlies, and even two of Hamilton Leithauser's children appear, among others. 

Whether a result of the extended process, new partners, or simply a honing of Pecknold's craft, this is the most direct and uplifting Fleet Foxes album yet, often cruising at a celebratory gallop, or (as on Can I Believe You) offering bold dynamic shifts, those gleaming horns seeming to sparkle in ocean sunlight. Few of the introspective convolutions of 2017's Crack-Up - wonderful as they were - are present on Shore. The sense of compassion and empathy is so strong, as on Featherweight when he sings, "May the last long year be forgiven/All that war left within it/I couldn’t, though I’m beginning to/And we only made it together," that it's hard to imagine even Fleet Foxes skeptics not finding Shore a welcome presence in their lives. 

And when you've listened to the album a bit, you could expand the experience by making a playlist of all the artists Pecknold lists in Sunblind, his gorgeous tribute to his heroes. Compiling Richard Swift, John Prine, Bill Withers, Judee Sill, Elliot Smith, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Chris Bell, Arthur Russell, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and others, will make for a heck of a listen, and may further illuminate the sheer artistry and passion of Shore, an album I would prescribe as medicine during these times of multiple stressors on the heart, body, and mind. Take a dose. 

Angel Olsen - Whole New Mess Anyone fascinated by the creative process - and I am - can't help but be intrigued by the idea that this record, primarily made up of earlier recordings of songs that appeared on last year's triumphant All Mirrors, has been in the can since 2018. Artists are often insecure, but it's hard to imaging listening to these sumptuously emotional performances and thinking they are in some way unsatisfactory. I say "earlier recordings" instead of demos, because these stripped down versions, mostly Olsen's guitar and voice with occasional organ from her co-producer Michael Harris, feel complete in and of themselves. The recording, made in a converted church with a resonant natural echo, is tactile and may best be experienced on a "real stereo" so you can feel the weight of her pick against the strings and have her voice move some of the air in your own space. 

On All Mirrors, the songs were presented in maximalist clothing, strings and synths stacked to the rafters. Hearing them in skeletal form only confirms their strength as exquisitely constructed combinations of form and content. Even the 101 strings of the Melachrino Orchestra could not have dimmed the indelible incandescence of these melodies, and Whole New Mess simply confirms Olsen's place as one of the preeminent songwriters of our time. On the title track, one of two new songs here, Olsen declares, "It won't be long before it's really showing/It's every season where it is I'm going," and it's hard to know if she was looking ahead to All Mirrors or even further into the future - either way, I plan to be there.

Michael Zapruder - Latecomers Zapruder is a protean composer of sparkling chamber music, innovative operas, and folk-rock songs with a literary attention to detail. Latecomers is his first collection of the latter in 11 years - and my introduction to his talents. While the album was recorded over many years and includes textures ranging from the acoustic propulsion of the luminous title track to the almost glossy pop of New Quarantine, it still feels like a coherent collection, like having a wide-ranging conversation with a friend. That second song is a dystopian imagining of quarantine as a gated community that was written years before our current news cycle - not the first time an artist has shown an almost uncanny prescience. 

But the strongest songs here - and they're all good - seem more focused on personal matters. Seafaring, a song for which Michael Chapman and Sam Beam would kill to claim authorship, goes for the gut when Zapruder sings: "And then that house in Maryland got cancer in its walls/and we made all those long and sad phone calls." TOO relatable - I think we owe each other a hug. Zapruder's wry, somewhat dry voice, is perfect for delivering the wisdom and wit that abound on Latecomers, maybe no more so that in I Don't Think You Understand, the last track, which has him explaining with saintly patience: "There’s salt in the water of the sea/there’s sugar in the fruit of the land/but if you think there’s an answer in me/I don’t think you understand." So no answers, maybe, but plenty of the right questions, all couched in finely wrought melodies and clever musical settings. Consider me more than pleased to make Zapruder's acquaintance!

Frankie And The Witch Fingers - Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters... On 2019's Zam, their fifth album, this LA-based prog-psych band arrived at a new level of supremacy in their chosen field. On songs like Pleasure, the rhythm section of founding bassist Alex Bulli and new drummer Shaughnessy Starr achieved an almost frightening level of power and precision, and the sound throughout was of a band truly coming into their own, especially singer and songwriter Dylan Sizemore, who owned his vocals more than on previous records. From that new peak, FATWF have only continued to ascend on this latest collection. Even with Bulli having departed, the rhythms achieve a tight looseness (or is it a loose tightness) that is the height of head-nodding immersion. 

The guitar dynamics of Sizemore and Josh Menashe are also something to behold, whether interlocking in dizzying fashion or assembling to deliver hammer blows, like the power chords on Reaper, which give my speakers a welcome opportunity to show off. But there's far more than brute force here, with new textures introduced from cello, synths, and plenty of group percussion jams. The lyrics seem to offer a scabrous view of humanity, with music and other modes of altering consciousness a saving grace of life on planet earth. Whether it's the wah-wah workout on Sweet Freak, the delirious twin-leads of Where's Your Reality, or the near-funk of Simulator, FATWF provide their own best argument that rock and roll can get you past whatever it is you're going through - and in spectacular style, too. 

Find tracks from all these albums - and many more - here or below.

 

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