New and recent releases.
After the spectacular success of Alligator, can The National follow up? You bet. Read all about it here.
Baird has made a solo acoustic album in the vein of the traditional English folk that has been such a major ingredient in the sound of her band Espers. Read my review here.
I haven’t found GGD to be the most consistent band, but this release – a 24-minute CD and a 33-minute DVD costing, sensibly, the same as a regular CD – is as good as their debut. There’s a fine line between an artistically compelling evocation of chaos and a shambling mess, and GGD stays on the right side of that line here. The CD is a single audio collage in which samples are sprayed about in a constantly changing soundscape that’s clever, funny, and even funky at times. The film on the DVD, by GGD member Brian DeGraw, is visually stimulating, and the music
(compiled from past GGD releases, rehearsals, and concerts) and visuals complement and comment on each other well.
This Baltimore quartet has a unique sound: Where else are you going to get instrumentals featuring accordion, glockenspiel, and saw? If you’ve heard and loved their debut from two years ago, you’ll love this too; if you haven’t but like the quieter moments of A Hawk and a Hacksaw, check this out and you’ll be smitten too.
Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay (Numero)
Numero has put together such a string of successes in its Eccentric Soul series that to learn, through the issue of this second volume, that Cult Cargo is also a series, is great news. As usual, there’s an overlooked star to be found: Jay Mitchell, whose status is made clear not only by the inclusion of five tracks by him, but more importantly by how good those tracks are. Psych-funk-soul greatness oozes from every beat, and even a cover of the bar-band requisite “Mustang Sally” displays genius, all 13 minutes of it. The rest is uneven, but well worth it for soul aficionados.
The first of a series of reissues of Malian cassette recordings, this captures an entrancing, hypnotically grooving duo concert “probably recorded on a boombox sometime in 1998 or ‘99.” There is nothing fancy about this mix of a stringed instrument, a bit of percussion, and one singer; it’s far more traditional, far less produced, than anything most of us have heard from Mali before. Compared to this, Ali Farka Toure is slick.
Bougouni Yaalali (Yaala Yaala)
The label calls this “a sound portrait of the music you might hear if wandering down the road in Bougouni or Bamako,” villages in rural Mali. There are male and female vocalists, a variety of instrumentation, and so many intoxicating grooves. The lack of artist credits is frustrating in one way but alluring in another. If you’re a fan of Sublime Frequencies, this is your next big discovery.
There’s no title on this disc, but on the label’s Myspace page it’s given as Ngognekorotonkan. Daouda Dembele is a Malian griot (musical storyteller/historian) who plays a jelingoni (“spike lute”) and talks his way through a 42-minute tale. Even not knowing what he’s saying, the music in his voice and subtle permutations of his accompaniment are captivating.
Volta is Björk’s most accessible album since Vespertine. The far-out ingredients on Medulla and the Drawing Restraint soundtrack are poured into song structures with beats underneath. It’s the best of both worlds, really. For my complete review, go here.
Japan’s finest return with another aural assault, their first album of new material in four years – now with added theremin! My review’s here.
