New music round-up (for w/e 13 September 2024)

Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 13 September 2024.

Gia Ford has released her highly-anticipated debut album Transparent Things via Chrysalis Records. The album features the recent singles “Try Changing”, ”Poolside”, “Paint Me Like a Woman” and album track “Housewife Dreams of America”. Recorded in LA at the renowned Sound City Studios with legendary producer Tony Berg (known for his work on celebrated albums including Phoebe Bridgers’ Stranger in the Alps and Punisher), Transparent Things is an immersive collection that showcases how Gia is able to craft songs like no other artist of her generation. For Gia, those figures on the fringes of society are by far the most fascinating. Her songs tell the stories of the downtrodden to the downright dangerous. And through them, we begin to hear familiar, uncomfortable truths about ourselves.

Smiling musical assassin Alana Wilkinson is ready to disarm you with her collection of vignettes about the human condition in her debut album Half Time Oranges, out now. Kicking off the year with standing ovations at Woodford Folk Festival, and completing an extensive Festival of Small Halls with Scottish fiddler Ryan Young in NSW, another with Jed Parsons across Western Australia, and a showcase in the US at Folk Alliance International, Alana has announced an album tour across Australia. Whether listening to her song break banter or her musical musings, Alana Wilkinson’s stories skewer ex-lovers, ridiculous social norms and the absurd challenges of a suburban upbringing in a merciless, yet strangely affectionate way, leaving audiences feeling like they’re sitting in her living room, chatting about life over a steaming cuppa.

Danny Jonokuchi is a multi-talented jazz artist based in New York City and Los Angeles. As a jazz trumpeter, vocalist, composer, arranger, producer, and educator, few artists are as diversely involved in their craft. He has been recognized for his performance on two GRAMMY Award-Winning projects, his signature “world-class arrangements” (Broadway World), and albums he has performed on and produced. He is also a recipient of several awards including the 2024 ISJAC Wayne Shorter Jazz Arranging Prize, the 2020 ASCAP Foundation Louis Armstrong Award, and he was unanimously named the winner of the 2020 Count Basie Great American Swing Contest. His latest big band album, A Decade, is his fifth release as a leader and serves as an autobiographical chronicle of his experiences in New York City. His recent big band albums are Past is Present (2024), featuring the music of longtime collaborator Jordan Seigel, and Voices (2023), featuring 11 of New York’s finest jazz vocalists.

Polish Club have independently released their hotly anticipated fourth studio album Heavy Weight Heart. While the undertones and subject matter for the songs on the album are heartfelt and poetic, the sound doesn’t depart completely from their brash rock n roll backbone. “We thought this was going to be our last big label record, so we wrote a bunch of big stadium rock songs intended for a full band vibe,” explains Novak. The album strikes a perfect balance between hard and soft, sincerity and boldness.

Our Ancestors Swam to Shore showcases the rarely heard music of Angolar Creole (N’golá) speakers from the African islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. Many of the five thousand residents are descendants of escaped enslaved Angolan people, who, as their folklore tells, swam to shore after a shipwreck off the coast. Our Ancestors Swam to Shore was produced by GRAMMY-winner Ian Brennan and Italian-Rwandan filmmaker and photographer Marilena Umuhoza Dellias, as a companion to Ancestor Sounds, a collection of field recordings by the descendants of formerly enslaved people of Africatown, Alabama released last year. For this next release, the N’golá musicians of São Tomé repurpose common items, including canoes and fishing gear, as instruments. On Our Ancestors Swam to Shore, the power of music goes beyond melody, harmony, and instrumentation and acts as a transcendent force to tell a people’s history with a nod toward the future.

Gerhard: Don Quixote is the new record from Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. The Catalan Roberto Gerhard studied piano with Granados, and was the only Spanish composer to study with Arnold Schoenberg. It was, however, over twenty years before he committed himself to writing twelve-tone music. In the interim, his output brought a new focus and precision (owing more to Stravinsky and Bartók) to the Spanish style. All the works on this album were composed in that period. Dating from the early 1940s, his ballet Alegrías was originally conceived for two pianos, but soon evolved into the four-movement suite heard here. The flamenco-inspired movements are linked in pairs, and show Gerhard’s brilliance and humour in equal measure.

Australian roots music quartet Green Mohair Suits have released their fifth album Stan Wella. Having started as a way for Green Mohair Suits to hang-out, enjoy a few drinks and stretch their obvious skills at smaller and unrehearsed gigs, things snowballed to main-stage festival spots, international supports and the release of five studio albums. A quartet of expressive songwriters that take their four-part harmonies as seriously as they take their dedication to a good time. Green Mohair Suits (Brian Campeau, Richard Cuthbert, Jason Mannell, Ben Romalis) hold a reputation for inspired showmanship and performances as brash as they are emotive.

Other reviews you might enjoy:

• New music round-up (for w/e 20 September 2024)
• New music round-up (for w/e 12 January 2024)
• New music round-up (for w/e 3 May 2024)