New music round-up (for w/e 16 December 2022)
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 16 December 2022.
On Mynolia’s sharp debut All Things Heavy, the singer invents herself as a vulnerable dreamer, armored by heavenly melodies as she moves through an increasingly disconnected world. Though the album is titled All Things Heavy, Mynolia is more balanced. “My driving force is discomfort and connection, making room for the spectrum of emotions we all face, while laughing at it.” It is in this spirit that she closes with Baby AI, a little joke about big fears of artificial intelligence. “I wrote Baby AI as a joke plea to an emotionless techno child that seems like it will outgrow us quick, and we might end up at its mercy.” This is an artist that refuses to give less than all to her songs, spinning beautiful melodies and lush vocals from uncanny sources. After all, a lack of identity means you’re free to make up your own.
For Helen Ganya, entering her thirties made her question and pull away from the hetero-normative social constructs that surround us. On her new album polish the machine, the Brighton-based songwriter stretches away from the suburban nightmare, seeking a cathartic reprieve that looks beyond the ordinary. “I was looking to the truth of removing any expectations that we’ve acquired along the way,” she says. polish the machine leans further into Ganya’s interiority, but refuses to succumb to despondency, instead pursuing a platform for community and tentative optimism. Here, the constraints of societal roles are loosened to encourage a different route: a wandering, ever-evolving path.
Ken Serio is top of the list when it comes to go-to drummers on the East coast of America. He has recorded, toured and performed with Billy Joel, Alicia Keys, Joey Ramone, Mark Egan, Philip Glass, Danny Gottlieb and The Beastie Boys to name a few. He is a prolific recording artist and now brings forward a collection of Christmas songs on a new album entitled A Jazzy Yuletide. Ken and his fellow musicians from The Jazz Warriors have compiled a collection of songs that represent an alternative to the massly over played tunes we are used to hearing at this time of year.
In the video for “Storm in Summer,” the title track from her 2021 EP, Helen Ballentine (a.k.a. Skullcrusher) is safe behind glass while rain, hitting the window, casts shadows across her face. There’s a sense of removal—she’s contained, remains dry. But on her spellbinding first full-length album Quiet the Room, the window is open, and all of the rain is getting in. Guitars degrade into splutters. Pianos flicker like ghosts. Across these fourteen tracks, the outside world seeps in and the inside world crawls out. This album is the sound of a barrier dissolving: Ballentine is ready to let you in.
After the phenomenal critical success of the first two volumes of the complete Sibelius symphonies (Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Diapason d’Or, FFFF Télérama and more), the Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra introduce us to the ‘green’ side of Sibelius who, suffering from health problems and financial worries, moved to the shores of Lake Tuusula just before writing his Third Symphony. His output was powerfully inspired by nature. The new album features Symphonies 3 and 5, and Pohjola’s Daughter, Op. 49.
Chris Wilson’s Landlocked, Faithless & Free, has been re-release in a very special 30th Anniversary Reissue that sees Wilson’s original 1992 album released on vinyl for the first time and expanded to a double LP/double CD with the inclusion of tracks from the associated CD EPs The Big One and Alimony Blues. Landlocked was Wilson’s first solo album and it garnered two ARIA Awards nominations – for Best Male Artist and Breakthrough Artist, Album – and acclaimed by Rolling Stone as a “major talent”. It followed his releases with the Crown of Thorns and Pub Dogs (see Cheersquad’s 2022 reissue of the Pub Dogs’ Scatter’s Liver) and preceded the classic live album Live At The Continental (which belatedly made the ARIA Top 20 album charts when reissued by Cheersquad in 2020).
Simon Juliff’s album Stars combines brightly dappled glimmers of classic pop-rock melodicism and echoes of Big Star, T. Rex, The Who and Neil Young with an occasionally darkened, frazzled vibe and guitars that crunch and spangle. The feeling is sparky and electric and the performances powerful but not over-rehearsed; the album captures a delicious looseness and follows the old Alex Chilton idiom of trying to capture the moment that it comes together rather than the one when it’s been done to death.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 14 October 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 18 August 2023)
- New music round-up (for w/e 27 October 2023)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television