Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 24 March 2023.
Recorded in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic and in the wake of a series of tornadoes that wreaked havoc on his Nashville neighborhood, I Survived, It’s Over sees Rich Ruth pushing his music even further into heretofore untapped sonic and emotional terrain. Melding inventive sound exploration, complex instrumentation – from shredding guitars and swelling strings to flutes, saxophones, pedal steel, and more – and a transcendent passion for nature, Ruth has created a milestone work of organic, symphonic power, a deeply affirmative musical movement that transforms the unease and sorrow of this difficult era into something strong and true and beautiful.
Mélusine, the new album from Cecile McLorin Salvant, features a mix of five originals and interpretations of nine songs, dating as far back as the twelfth century, mostly sung in French along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyol. The songs tell the story of the European folkloric legend of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday as a result of a childhood curse by her mother. Mélusine later agrees to marry Raymondin on the condition that he never see her on Saturdays. He agrees but is ultimately convinced by his brother to break his promise, piercing his wife’s door with his sword and finding her naked in the bath, half snake, half woman. When she catches him spying on her, she turns into a dragon and flies out the window, only to reappear every time one of her descendants is on their deathbed.
GRAMMY Award-winning trio, Nickel Creek — mandolinist Chris Thile, violinist Sara Watkins and guitarist Sean Watkins — have released Celebrants, their first new album in nine years. Their fifth studio album, Celebrants marks a highly anticipated return for the beloved trio and explores the inherent dynamics of human connection. Across the 18 tracks, the trio addresses love, friendship and time with lyrics both poetic and plain-spoken, as they see bridges built, crossed, burned and rebuilt. Recorded at Nashville’s RCA Studio A, the album was produced by longtime collaborator Eric Valentine (Queens of the Stone Age, Grace Potter, Weezer) and features Mike Elizondo on bass.
Australian/English savant of purposeful pop Mereki has shared her debut solo album Death of a Cloud. Created over seven years and three continents, in collaboration with a roster of the artists Mereki trusted most to bring this deeply personal and intuitively conceived material to life, the album is a look into the joy and difficulty of self-realization and finding the universe within, expressing this journey through music.
Beethoven: The Late Quartets is the Calidore String Quartet’s third album and most ambitious project to date following their acclaimed albums Babel (2020) and Resilience (2018). It has been twelve years since friends Jeffrey Myers (violin), Ryan Meehan (violin), Jeremy Berry (viola), and Estelle Choi (cello) formed the Calidore String Quartet while students at the Colburn School in Los Angeles. “Performing the Beethoven cycle is the musical equivalent of scaling Mount Everest,” says violinist Ryan Meehan. “It is a gruelling nine hours of music comprised of some of the most technically intricate and emotionally demanding music ever conceived, to which we have dedicated much of our studying and performing since the quartet’s inception.”
The new album Billy Valentine and The Universal Truth sees Billy alongside a stellar cast of musicians, including Larry Goldings, Jeff Parker, Pino Paladino, James Gadson, Linda May Oh, Alex Acuña, Amber Navram from Moonchild and Blue Note recording artists Joel Ross and Immanuel Wilkins. They re-cast a series of important songs from the African-American songbook in a unique and inimitable style, profoundly influenced by the events that were going on around them throughout 2020 to 2022, when the album was recorded at the historic EastWest Studios in LA. The works of Mayfield and Scott-Heron are joined by those of Pharaoh Sanders, Prince, Stevie Wonder, War and Eddie Kendricks. It is a sonically stunning and emotionally moving record.
“YIAN” (燕), means swallow in Chinese, and is part of “Siew Yian,” the name given to Lucinda Chua by her parents to preserve her connection with her Chinese heritage. Just as the migratory songbird lives between places, so did Chua, the artist living in the in-between of the English, Malaysian and Chinese cultures that make up her heritage. In the absence of Mandarin as a mother tongue, music became a way to express the parts of herself that couldn’t be described in words; YIAN emerged as a way to heal. A deeply introspective and fully realized vessel of creative expression (Chua self-produced and engineered eight of the ten tracks), YIAN emerges as less an album than a worldview, a commitment to learning and uncovering one’s own selfhood honed over Chua’s lifelong reconciliation with her own personal history and identity.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 19 April 2024)
- New music round-up (for w/e 12 August 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 4 October 2024)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
