Nadine Shah – Kitchen Sink
Welcome return for the British singer with a Norwegian and Pakistani heritage, three years on from her acclaimed album Holiday Destination, one that pulled no punches on the refugee crisis. Her latest centres on the feminist position in 2020, and how things haven't really progressed. It's a powerful portrayal of sexism and backwardness in society. The cover and title track is inspired by the 1970s TV play Abigail's Party, using domestic chore imagery. Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love_ is a caustic commentary on the male choice of partner. Shah is never going to make an album without a serious message, and this stripped back music and her deep, powerful voice leave no ambiguity. Opener Club Cougar for example, talks about dating a younger man (she's 34, and her boyfriend is 33), and more of the album talks about the flouting the pressures and expectations of womanhood. With styles ranging from jazz to pop to bossa nova, her producer again is longtime collaborator Ben HillIer. Out on Infectious.
Nadine Shah – Ladies for Babies
Khruangbin – Mordechai
This third album from the American quartet who draw on a variety of influences, from East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub to western funk and hip hop and psychedelia, could well be their breakthrough. They've largely been an instrumental band before, but this one features vocals on most tracks, and their smooth fusion of styles is beginning to catch on. Recently profiled on New Songs on this site, So We Won't Forget is one of the standout tracks played by Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald Ray "DJ" Johnson Jr on drums, but also the beautifully funky Time (You and I). Their music feels like sitting on a deserted beach or desert, watching fabulous sunsets, sipping cocktails, such as on Father Bird, Mother Bird, or the beautifully rhythmic Pelota, sung in Spanish. A smooth fusion of delight. Out on Dead Oceans.
Khruangbin – Time (You and I)
Arca – KiCk I
Perhaps more fascinating and cutting-edge experimental than always listenable, the Venezuela-born, Barcelona-based electronic artist Alejandra Ghers, is nevertheless worth checking out. This is her (since 2018 self-classified as non-binary as a trans woman, and using she/her and it/its pronouns) fourth album after Xen (2014), Mutant (2015), Arca (2017), and here, Nonbinary is the stark, hip-hoppish explanatory opener. She's contributed production work to albums by Kanye West, FKA twigs, Kelela, Frank Ocean, and Björk, and after appearing on the latter's 2015 Vulnicura album, in return the Icelandic artist sings recognisable, but Spanish no less on the song Afterwards. The closest to pop is the single Mequetrefe, while La Chíqui and Riquiquí are mishmashes of beats, clicks, repetitive vocalisations and abrupt dreamscape sounds. It's challenging and rewarding, complex, difficult and absorbing, a sort of Latino Aphex Twin. Calor is a mellower piece of power electro-balladry, while Machote edges towards more Autotune conventionality. Deliberately, in-your-face different. Out on XL Recordings.
Arca – Mequetrefe
Becca Mancari – The Greatest Part
The American indie singer, born in Staten Island to a religious Italian/Puerto Rican family, who then travelled from Appalachia to Arizona, from south Florida to India, has a rich personal history, and as well as being part of Bermuda Triangle with Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard, her own follow-up to 2017's Good Woman, is a wonderful exploration of identity and her past. As she says on opener, Hunter, “You’re never gonna track me down / You’re never gonna find me out." The purity of her voice glides above different musical landscapes from indie rock to country, folk to electronica, with pointed, ironic, melancholy, angry, grief-stricken, memorable lyrics. Key tracks include Lonely Boy, Bad Feeling, Pretend, Stay With Me and Forgiveness. Out on Captured Tracks.
Becca Mancari – Hunter
Pottery – Welcome To Bobby's Motel
Fabulously wild, energetic debut LP by the Montreal indie band who play at a relentless pace with consummate musicianship, particularly the rather astonishing slick drummer Paul Jacobs and are a must-see in a live setting. This is post-punk, part art-pop, recalling, most obviously, Talking Heads, but also Devo, Gang of Four, Parquet Courts and something more of their own with rapid changes of pace and complexity and raw, rousing unison vocals, including on the single, Texas Drums Pt 1, which, mischievously for radio play is 'funky' drums, but sometimes sounds suspiciously like another F-word. Key tracks include Take Your Time, Under The Wires, Down In The Dumps, NY Inn and Hot Like Jungle. Aside from the slower Reflection, pure adrenaline from start to finish. Out on Partisan Records.
Pottery – Take Your Time
LYR – Call In The Crash Team
A superb album of lyrical beauty and musical invention by Simon Armitage, the current Poet Laureate of northern gentle voice and vivid image, here forming a new band with musicians and producers Patrick James Pearson and Richard Walters. This is spoken word fare of high quality indeed, coloured by a wide variety of soundscapes and live instruments ranging from rock-pop to ambient. Filled with stories and images of grief and humour, relationships and death, art and anxiety, Armitage's ability to juxtapose unlikely words is exquisitely funny and also moving. Standout tracks include the tribute to a lost friend, Zodiac T-Shirt, the caustic portrait of a male collector-type from a female narrator's point of view, Never Good With Horses, the symbolic feel and response to a departed bullying relative's old Great Coat, the story of a person who stalks the grassy gaps between the dual carriageway on Urban Myth #91, and the lovely array of items weighing less than 100g on The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. Transcendent, earthy yet ethereal gorgeous poetry that pulls you in, and is more than worth a listen over and over. Out on Mercury KX.
LYR – Great Coat
Public Practice – Gentle Grip
A taste as much of New York, but also a new York, in the form of singer Sam York, alongside Vince McClelland, and Drew Citron on synth and bass, and drummer / producer Scott Rosenthal recalibrate Big Apple punk and disco of the late 70s with echoes of Talking Heads (the song Each Other), Blondie (the song My Head), Suicide (the song Moon) and Bush Tetras, plus later bands such as Parquet Courts or Savages. Sharp, punchy authentic work that captures the ironies of modern life, as York sings, drily on Compromised: “You don’t want to live a lie / But it’s easy / Your house is important / Your car is important / Your shoes are important / Dinner’s important." Fun and focused. Out on Wharf Cat.
Public Practice – Compromised
Bananagun – The True Story of Bananagun
This joyously upbeat full debut from the Melbourne band is a non-stop fountain of fabulous energy and rhythm changes, dipping into colourful cocktails of music styles via excellent musicianship. From 60s and 70s afrobeat and exotica to Fela Kuti-esque repetition, proto-garage rhythmic fury of The Monks and the grooves of Os Mutantes, plus a dash of early-90s indie funk a la Stone Roses, there’s an enticing, intoxicating lost-world exoticism right here. The vocals are more thrown-in than central to the work, as their strength is very much in the instrumental element right from opener Bang Go The Bongos to the jazzy-psych end track, Taking The Present For Granted, as well as the singles Do Yeah, and Out of Reach. Pour yourself a glass and try some. It's guaranteed to put a spring in the step. Out on Full Time Hobby.
Bananagun – People Talk Too Much
HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III
Third, and perhaps most interesting of albums by the Los Angeles sisters Alana, Danielle and Este Haim, adding some new styles, such as jazz saxophone, Caribbean soft lilts, funk, and UK garage beats to the soft west-coast rock and country of their previous two. But there's no shortage of melancholy and relationship-related and other anxiety here in this more mature work, with Este struggling with type 1 diabetes, Alana catching up with the grief for her best friend who died in a car crash in 2012, and lead singer Danielle, struggling with depression. So it's more of a reflective album than the bangers of their exhausing 2018 tour. Key tracks include Summer Girl, a reworking of Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side, the catchy Up From A Dream, the guitar-driven The Steps, as well the depression-addressing Now I'm In It, as well as I've Been Down. Out on Polydor.
HAIM – The Steps
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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