New music round-up (for w/e 16 September 2022)
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 16 September 2022.
Until recently known as Mandolin Orange, Watchhouse has long been on many a roots, country and folk fan’s radar. As a duo, formed in North Carolina in 2009 by Andrew Marlin and fiddler Emily Frantz, Mandolin Orange became new flag bearers of the contemporary folk world, releasing five acclaimed albums and rising over the next decade to fill venues like Nashville’s famed Ryman Theatre, then amphitheatres the size of Red Rocks. In 2019, after a name change, they released album number six, simply entitled Watchhouse. Now they’ve stripped it back with Watchhouse (Duo), a re-recording of the album in duo format (out now). Watchhouse – as a duo – will be touring Australia in October 2022, with shows in Sydney, Brisbane, Melboune and Castlemaine (Vic).
Recorded in just one day, Tripwire is the latest album from saxophonist and composer Will Vinson. Realising a long-held ambition to record a chord-less trio album, Vinson is joined here by bassist Matt Penman, one of today’s most adventurous bass players, and drummer Eric Harland, known for his impressive work with the world’s jazz luminaries. Special guest tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana also joins for two tracks. The record captures the energy of returning to the studio and playing for the first time since the Covid-Pandemic lockdowns, and further cements Vinson’s reputation as a virtuosic risk-taking leader.
Metamorphosis seems enchanted to the untrained eye—butterflies magically appearing from the chrysalis, the interiors of which we can’t see. But the reality is messy. One body dies to make space for another. It’s easy to forget the discomfort it takes to transform, seductive to behold only the beauty on the other side. Not so on Marina Allen’s Centrifics, the follow-up to her critically-acclaimed debut Candlepower (2021). Over ten songs, Allen is clear-eyed, wading into the lake of her own sorrow, unsure of what awaits her but unwilling to remain on the comfort of dry land. “I was fed up with hiding myself,” Allen says of the intention behind the songs. “I just kept saying ‘yes’”.
Wide-Eyed Nowhere is Turin Brakes’ ninth full studio album, a set of new songs emerging 21 years after their seminal debut (which was reissued last year). It’s no easy feat maintaining an optimistic attitude through the turbulence of the years, but the band found their own method down in deepest Tooting to produce this lean, bittersweet collection. The South London 4-Piece comprising Olly Knights, Gale Paridjanian, Rob Allum and Eddie Myer recorded this new set of songs at Twin Palms – Olly’s garden studio – over the summer of 2021, choosing to let time infuse into the music and mature in a way it couldn’t in a pressurised commercial studio setting.
Allan Pettersson’s Symphony No. 15 is characterized by a high degree of tension right from the striking opening: brief, emphatic chords from horns and trombones above the tremolo of a side drum. Soon an expressive melodic subject is heard from the first violins, followed by contrasting rapid scales – at which point Pettersson has presented the greater part of the symphony’s building blocks. Like so many of the composer’s symphonies, the 15th is in one movement, but with clearly defined sections. It was completed in 1978, two years before Pettersson’s death, and was followed in 1979, by the sixteenth symphony, the last work that the composer submitted for performance. Only later did it become known that Pettersson had also been working on a Viola Concerto – a work that, if not fully completed, was so far advanced that it has been accepted as part of his œuvre. It is presented here by the Swedish violist Ellen Nisbeth, who also performs one of Pettersson’s very earliest compositions – a Fantaisie pour alto seul, dated June 1936, when the composer himself was about to embark on a career as violist. On this the tenth disc in their acclaimed Pettersson cycle, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Christian Lindberg bring their combined expertise to bear on the orchestral scores.
Sounding simultaneously from the past, the present, and the future, the debut album MLDE by Marxist Love Disco Ensemble seeks to eradicate both the trite from disco and the sobriety from political music. Half poetic, half tongue-in-cheek, this stunning compact eight-track album is influenced by Eastern European and Mediterranean 70s disco records. In the words of band member Paolo, “it was written in response to hearing ‘I love America’ by Patrick Juvet. The song prompted the question: why does disco, a genre originally created by oppressed minorities, eventually become synonymous with Western capitalist excess?” MLDE seeks to break this connection. Merging disco, post-disco 80s pop, and boogie into the fold, MLDE was recorded using only analogue instruments, giving it warmth and space.
Djo, the musical project of actor / producer / songwriter Joe Keery, has released his highly anticipated, co-produced sophomore album Decide via AWAL. Decide is Djo’s follow up to Twenty Twenty, Keery’s 2019 critically acclaimed guitar-forward record and his first solo-effort since departing his band, the Chicago psych rock outfit Post Animal. Decide serves as a sort of aural history of Keery’s late 20’s. It features reflections on growth, relationships and navigating it all in a world filled with technology at its centre. It’s his sonic ambitions however that take these introspections and melt them into a warped reality with each layered synth pulling the listener’s emotional strings. A spellbinding collage of snaky pop hooks, neon melodies, and deeply personal singer-songwriter lyricism, the album melds high-tech songcraft with quick wit, irrepressible spirit, and an impressive breadth of vision that showcases glowing synths and big beats over the trippy guitars that defined 2019’s acclaimed debut.
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David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television