Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 11 March 2022.
Norwegian musician and novelist Jenny Hval has released her new album Classic Objects on 4AD Records. Classic Objects is a map of places; past places, like the old empty Melbourne pubs Hval’s band used to play in, public places Hval missed throughout lockdown, imagined, future places, and impossible places where dreams, hallucinations, death and art can take you. It is interested in combining heavenly things and plain things. The record is Hval’s version of a pop album. Every song has a verse and a chorus. There are interchangeable moments of complexity, interesting melodies throughout, and a feeling of elevation and clarity in the choruses. Heba Kadry mixed it to sound as though it’s played through “a stereo in a mysterious room.”
Walter Smith III and Matthew Stevens are two musicians at the forefront of developments in jazz and improvised music, listing the likes of Terence Blanchard, Ambrose Akinmusire, Esperanza Spalding and Christian Scott as collaborators. The pair started working together in 2017, and four years later, they’re back for the third iteration of their highly commended In Common project. On In Common 3 (out now), Kris Davis takes the piano chair vacated by Micah Thomas, and completing the line-up are two legends of the game – Dave Holland and Terri Lyne Carrington.
Having amassed a formidable catalogue of releases over 5 decades, The Monochrome Set have released their new studio album on Tapete Records – the bands home for the last eight years and five albums. The indie pop veterans have been hard to pin down over this time. Their instantly recognisable sound and darkly hilarious lyrics have always set them apart. Bid’s cerebral Brit wit spikiness and debonair tones melded to infectious melodies and deft songcraft of a cinematic and literary quality has been quietly influential over a diverse set of artists since their inception and throughout different stages of their career so they can count the likes of Graham Coxon, Iggy Pop, Alex Kapranos, Neil Hannon, Johnny Marr and Jarvis Cocker as fans. Bid is joined in The Monochrome Set by fellow original Andy Warren on bass, Mike Urban on drums and newest recruit Athen Ayren on keyboards. For the album recording Alice Healey brovides backing vocals with Karen Yarnell on percussion and Jon Clayton, additional instrumentation.
Gershwin Country is the brand-new album from the GRAMMY® and Emmy-nominated entertainer Michael Feinstein, who re-imagines the classic songs of George and Ira Gershwin through the contemporary lens of country music. Executive produced by his longtime friend and collaborator Liza Minnelli, the album pairs Feinstein with some of the biggest names in country music, including Dolly Parton, Alison Krauss, Brad Paisley and Rosanne Cash. Available for pre-order now on CD and digital, Gershwin Country hits stores March 11—with a portion of all proceeds benefitting MusiCares®, a partner of the Recording Academy® that provides a support system of health and human services across a spectrum of needs, including physical and mental health, addiction recovery, preventative clinics, unforeseen personal emergencies and disaster relief to the music community.
Elsa Dreisig credits Mozart with being the composer who first inspired her to become a professional singer. Now the French-Danish soprano pays him tribute with an album devoted entirely to arias from his operas. Its title, Mozart x 3, reflects a programme constructed around the three masterpieces composed to libretti written by Lorenzo Da Ponte: Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Elsa Dreisig sings arias allocated to three different characters in each of these operas. The total of nine ‘Da Ponte arias’ is complemented by three arias from examples of the dignified genre opera seria: La clemenza di Tito, Idomeneo and Lucio Silla. Accompanying Elsa Dreisig is the Kammerorchester Basel, conducted by Louis Langrée, now director of Paris’s celebrated Opéra-Comique.
Magazine 1 marks a thrilling return to the Techno-Pop sound that Wolfgang Flür helped to define with electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk between 1974’s Autobahn and 1986’s Electric Café. The all new electronic album that has been crafted by alongside some of the most famous names of synth-pop and electronic dance, past and present.
Juxtaposing raw, unflinching personal reckonings with jaunty, buoyant melodies and rich, kaleidoscopic production, Invisible Pictures, Jermey Ivey’s third album for ANTI- Records, is a revelation. Though the songs are rooted in a 21st-century swirl of chaos and uncertainty, the record is, at its core, an undeniably feel-good collection, one that refuses to surrender to the existential ache it so artfully captures. Instead, Ivey embraces the sheer, unmitigated joy of creative freedom and sonic exploration here, drawing on everything from flamenco and classical music to vintage indie rock and British Invasion tunes to craft a passionate, transcendent album more reminiscent of John Lennon or Elliott Smith than anything coming out of Nashville these days.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 30 April 2021)
- New music round-up (for w/e 19 March 2021)
- New music round-up (for w/e 3 March 2023)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
