Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 11 November 2022.
The United States of the Broken Hearted is the new album from Jeb Loy Nichols. Produced by Adrian Sherwood, careful arrangements frame twelve beautiful, acoustic-based songs. The album features contributions from the likes of Martin Duffy (Primal Scream/Felt) and Ivan “Celloman” Hussey, fresh from his work on the massively acclaimed duo of Horace Andy albums, Midnight Rocker and Midnight Scorchers, both of which featured songwriting contributions from Jeb Loy.
Pop singer-songwriter Lila Drew has released her debut full length album All The Places I Could Be, out now via AWAL. To mark the release, the 22 year old, London-born, L.A-raised Yale student has also shared the official music video for album stand out track and opener Used To, directed by on-going creative collaborator Vincent Haycock (Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish). On hAll The Places I Could Be, Drew brings a radiant clarity to the more shadowy aspects of coming-of-age: the self-doubt and insecurity, misplaced longing and paralyzing anxiety, transforming the unease of young adulthood into high-impact pop songs.
Fenella – Jane Weavers’ experimental ensemble in collaboration with Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah – returns with a hallucinogenic excursion into ambient textures and hypnogogic drones on new album The Metallic Index. Taking further steps into their combined compositional universe with this follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed Fehérlófia album. Loosely based on a genuine story accounting the short-lived abilities of a young psychic nurse in 1920’s London, Fenella’s niche muse justifies this celebratory return to vinyl but not once does it fall into the supposed tropes of staid hauntological-plunderphonics which repeatedly come to muddy our thirsty streams.
Bill Frisell convenes a new line-up of musical friends on his third Blue Note album Four, which features the acclaimed guitarist with Greg Tardy on saxophone and clarinet, Gerald Clayton on piano, and Johnathan Blake on drums. Together the foursome delve into intimate explorations of 13 Frisell originals both new and old to create this stunning new work that is a meditation on loss, renewal, and friendship.
Nicolas Bougaïeff presents his brand new album Begin Within, released on Mute. This is the first vocal-lead record from Nicolas, and is inspired by self-transformation. It’s about honesty, instinct and lessons hard learned through intimate Berlin stories. Nicolas addresses these themes in form and content, explored with the use of his voice. Much like his debut album The Upward Spiral, Begin Within continues to illustrate Bougaïeff’s approach to electronic music from a compositional lens, pushing boundaries of rhythm and genre.
Charlotte Sohy has given life to thirty-five opuses intended for all musical groups, fifteen of which, still unreleased, appear in Charlotte Sohy: Piano Music. TThis album is the first volume of a collection from La Boîte à Pépites to highlight the works of female composers. Célia Oneto Bensaid joins Orchestre National Avignon-Provence, Quatuor Hermès and Debora Waldman for this groundbreaking exploration of a sorely overlooked composer.
Jo Meares is a Sydney-based songwriter but he spends a large portion of his time in different locations around the globe, whether it’s Melbourne, France or Berlin, gathering life experiences and inspiration for the impressionistic and cinematic songs that have comprised his previous four albums. Dream Hotel is the culmination of Jo Meares and Anth Dymke’s collaborative explorations within their musical partnership over the last three years; taking inspiration, shaping and re- contextualising each others ideas as they built an album’s worth of atmospheric sonic landscapes around Meares’s evocative and poetic songs.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 13 January 2023)
- New music round-up (for w/e 3 May 2024)
- New music round-up (for w/e 18 August 2023)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
