Fontaines D.C. – A Hero's Death
The follow-up by the Dublin indie band's 2019 acclaimed debut, Dogrel, focuses less on their city but still has a strong identity with singer Grian Chatten's accent infusing every vowel. The subject matter though is more the world at large and the great uncertainty that hangs over it like a long, remorseless shadow. This is reflected in the title track, with it's darkly humorous, creepingly horror of a video with actor Aidan Gillen playing the ageing TV chatshow host - as previously highlighted on Song of the Day . Through the gloom, Fontaines D.C. have a bright future, their sound hitting a sweet spot between intimacy and authenticity and killer phrases, with songs that can also be big-audience bangers of singalong soaring emotions. Standout songs include Televised Mind, the angry I Was Not Born, Living In America and the dynamic A Lucid Dream. Out on Partisan Records.
Fontaines D.C. – A Hero's Death
Beyoncé – Black Is King
Inspired by The Lion King musical like her 2019 album The GIft, another parallel is that like her previous album Lemonade, this is one that has to be seen as much as heard, being a film based on the same story. Is that all clear? Anyway, Beyonce really likes The Lion King, and here Simba’s journey with Beyoncé as an ethereal narrator and guide. Hyena characters are a biker gang, Timon and Pumba live in a luxurious mansion. It's visual feast with sumptuous sound and production values, embracing the red, black and green of Marcus Garvey, and above all celebrating blackness, the film directed by Kwasi Fordjour, the Ghanaian creative director of her Parkwood Entertainment company. Key tracks include Mood 4, Bigger, My Power, Already, and Nile. Guests include Kendrick Lamar, poetry by Warsan Shire, and the story spans the African continent and elsewhere. Rippling piano, rich orchestration, African drumming, and Beyonce's voice, singing and narrating, decorate it throughout. A glorious indulgence. Out on Disney+.
Beyoncé – Black Is King (trailer)
Alanis Morissette – Such Pretty Forks In The Road
First album in eight years from the artist who is still best known for, and can't quite escape the extraordinary 33 million unit-selling Jagged Little Pill of 1995, one that is presumably still keeping her life, and income, a little unreal. How ironic. Still, this is far better than her poor last album, the wishy-washy Havoc and Bright Lights, and is buoyed by co-writer and former Morrissey sidekick Michael Farrell. Her strength, as back in the day, is in saying how it is with uncompromising honesty rather than lapsing into pretension, so the song Reasons I Drink, set around an AA meeting, is one to take in with a good gulp, because drinking problems and eating disorders are certainly on her radar. It's a little incoherent and unstructured, but perhaps that's appropriate. Diagnosis, like several track on this album is a quieter piano piece that has some potency, and slow, stirring ballad directness continues with Losing The Plot, and Nemesis. Meanwhile the softer, perhaps soppier Ablaze reaches out for some family connection from a mother's point of view. All this seems very genuine, but is also very much working up as fanfare towards a big 25th anniversary tour of that big breakout album of 1995. Out on RCA.
Alanis Morissette – Diagnosis
The Psychedelic Furs – Made of Rain
A first new album in 29 years? That’s quite some news, even though the band have toured on the festival circuit of late. It harks back to something for old fans but also more. A little bit of their classic 80s sound, a little bit of something new seems to be the balance of this one by Furs, with Richard Butler's dramatic, declamatory delivery, with big sound, stormy rock guitars, and sax, with some new electro keyboard and tinkling natural sounds more echoes a little bit of the band Talk Talk more than the album Talk Talk Talk and Pretty In Pink, such as on the end of opening The Boy That Invented Rock'n'Roll. Don't Believe, and You'll Be Mine with echoes of the Velvet Underground's Venus In Furs, while No-One has a big dash of the Cure, and there's a sneering anti-love song in Come All Ye Faithful. Overall, a strong, consistent, and satisfying set of songs that carries momentum right through with a signature sound and more, from the start to the closer, Stars. Out on Cooking Vinyl.
The Psychedelic Furs – No One
Max Richter – Voices
Fascinating work of interwoven voices and classical by the composer with a work that's taken over decade since its inception and once inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In a time of dramatic global change, Voices offers a musical message of hope. Max Richter invited people around the world to be part of the piece, crowd-sourcing readings of the Declaration to be interwoven into the work, which features an ‘upside-down’ orchestra. He received hundreds of submissions in over 70 languages. These readings form the aural landscape that the music flows through: they are the Voices of the title.Max Richter explains, “I like the idea of a piece of music as a place to think, and it is clear we all have some thinking to do at the moment. We live in a hugely challenging time and, looking around at the world we have made, it’s easy to feel hopeless or angry. But, just as the problems we face are of our own making, so their solutions are within our reach, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is something that offers us a way forward. Although it isn’t a perfect document, the declaration does represent an inspiring vision for the possibility of better and kinder world.” Out on Decca.
Max Richter – All Human Beings (Declaration Readings by Eleanor Roosevelt, Kiki Layne, Hiba Sellaoui)
Song Sung – This Ascension Is Ours
Sisters Georgina and Una McGeough, who grew up in Monaghan, the palce described as "a gnat’s width away" from the border with Northern Ireland, make up Song Sung. They have lived in New York for the past 10 years, but the homeland influence remains with Belfast's acclaimed producer, DJ and film composer David Holmes collaborating. The result is a space-age, hypnotic sound, psychedelic and full of dreamlike breathy voices and reverb, slow, wobbly and wonderfully otherworldly. Key tracks include Somewhere, Telling Tales, Orbiting Slow (Here It Comes), Come Whispering, Come Half Awake, and The Mind's Eye. It all sounds like something out of an certain dreamy, but drily humorous, nightmarish David Lynch TV series. Out on Night Time Stories.
Song Sung – Come To The Water
Dominic Fike – What Could Possibly Go Wrong
Eclectically original debut from the 24-year-old American singer-songwriter and rapper who released on Soundcloud before gaining massive rival interest from record companies. It's hard to pin down his style - a mishmash of hip-hop, rock, teen pop, and grunge. Key tracks include the rocky screaming Come Here, the guitar riffy and catchy Double Negative, the intricate narrative rapping of Cancel Me, the Beach Boys vocal harmonising of echo of 10x Stronger and the trip-hoppy pop of Chicken Tenders. Out on Columbia.
Dominic Fike – Politics & Violence
Creeper – Sex, Death and the Infinite Void
Despite fans' fears of the end, and Will Gould doing a ZIggy Stardust-type announcement at Koko in 2018, the indie-punk-pop band from Southampton are back with a strong second album of tragic romance songs, fuelled by various problems of band members suffering from mental health and heartbreak and grief. Variously influenced by Nick Cave and Dave Vanian, key tracks include Poisoned Heart, Paradise, Be My End, and Cyanide with its swaggeringly huge chorus. Melodramatic, dark and unashamedly posturing, but strangely alluring. Out on Roadrunner.
Creeper – Poisoned Heart
Romare – Home
Now out on vinyl, absorbing, clever minimalist mixture of electronic and dance music combined with lo-fi instruments by the artist Archie Fairhurst who traditionally has used samples. Here he is inspired by American gospel and traditional Irish folk, country, religious hymns and classical with a special nod to composers Thomas Tallis and Vaughn Williams. The oddball materials he uses include a vintage organ he found in a local charity shop, his dad's old 12-string guitar, re-assembling his childhood drum kit from the 90s and a tape player which allowed him to start sampling from cassette tape. Tracks worth checking out are the single Gone, as well as High, Home, and The River. Out on Ninja Tune.
Romare - The River
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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