Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 17 March 2023.
Daddy Long Legs, New York City’s most diabolical rhythm & blues street gang, have released their eagerly anticipated new album Street Sermons via Yep Roc Records. The band’s fourth studio album represents a wellspring of bottled-up feelings and emotions that need to be taken to the streets. Produced by Oakley Munson of the Black Lips at Old Soul Studios in Catskill, NY the band expands upon a sound that’s all their own and features guest appearances from Punk Rock legend Wreckless Eric providing backing vocals on “Nightmare” and “Silver Satin” and The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian on “Ding-Ding Man”, In dark times Daddy Long Legs continue to shine their light everywhere they go, leaving a piece of themselves on stage every night because it’s in them and it’s got to come out.
After meeting at a memorial for a mutual friend, Tony Molina (Ovens) and Sarah Rose Janko (Dawn Riding) started spending nights into mornings playing guitar and singing their hearts out to an audience of empty wine bottles in the East Oakland warehouse where Sarah lived. Both fans of each other’s respective musical projects, they bonded over a shared love of The Byrds and Bill Fox and leaned into their friendship as a much needed support in a time of dizzying grief. The days were marked in trips to Jackson’s Liquor store, the same spot Tony frequented while recording with his band Ovens a decade earlier, at a studio in the same neighborhood. The nights drifted by. The songs kept coming. They decided they wanted to record all they’d been pouring their hearts into and The Lost Days was born. Their new album, appropriately titled In The Store, is out now.
For his third Mack Avenue Records release, 5-time GRAMMY® Award-winner Billy Childs assembles an all-star quartet with trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Brian Blade. On The Winds of Change, the critically acclaimed pianist/composer offers 5 brand new original compositions alongside exhilarating arrangements of Chick Corea’s “Crystal Silence” (originally on Corea’s 1972 ECM recording of the same name with vibraphonist Gary Burton) and Kenny Barron’s “The Black Angel” (originally on trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s 1970 Atlantic recording of the same name) to push the creative boundaries of the group and inspire a collective new sound to pay homage to jazz legends and the artistry.
Picture this: a big storm is brewing overhead. You’re careening through the backroads of rural Iceland, trying desperately to catch your flight out of Reykjavik as the skies darken behind you. You’ve just had one of the best songwriting sessions of your life, in a farmhouse deep in the Icelandic countryside. This exact scenario is what befell Belgian duo The Colorist Orchestra and Icelandic-Italian singer-songwriter Emiliana Torrini during one of the many recording sessions for their new collaborative album—and the experience was so emblematic of the entire awe-inspiring, chaotic, life-affirming process, that they ended up naming the record Racing the Storm.
Forever Forever is the new album by Genevieve Artadi, the LA-based singer-songwriter, producer, archer and Dr. Mario enthusiast (“I keep my Switch in my back pocket most days”). A creative tornado, Genevieve is known for being the force in KNOWER, Expensive Magnets and her former band Pollyn, signing to Brainfeeder to release a sparkling solo album Dizzy Strange Summer in 2020. The following year she also collaborated with Thundercat, Raedio and Louis Cole on ‘Satellite Space Age Edition’ for the Insecure Season 5 soundtrack (HBO). Forever Forever encompasses a truly kaleidoscopic range of influences, making it impossible to pin down stylistically. Rooted in jazz, but winding up at alternative rock or avant pop, it’s in the lineage of legendary boundary-testers Stereolab and Talking Heads.
Musicians have always sung its poetry: peaceful or tormented, serene or disquieting, clear or obscure, the night comes in an infinite variety of atmospheres that composers have always tried to capture. Drawing on the vocal repertoire, Roland Pidoux has written the transcriptions on Ode à La Nuit for an octet of cellos, the Cello8 ensemble, founded by the Association Talents et Violon’celles.
The sweeping vantage points of Photo Ops’ Burns Bright belong first to the quiet of Nashville’s first modern suburb after World War II. Terry Price lived there while perfecting the melodic soft-rock modes that pleased audiences on tour with Camera Obscura and Fences. Price took this way of seeing to a new home in Los Angeles. Long drives through dimensional vistas ended in his room in Los Feliz where he recorded Burns Bright. When Etta James, Molly Drake, and The Byrds are all touch-points of sound and silence, what emerges is a gentle homage to the commonalities of lasting influence in pop music, a kind of time-bending presentiment — the moment of tracking in a studio when everyone senses it’s a moment that will be remembered. Reaching through the layer of industry noise in both hallmark cities as we know them from a distance — is this a hit? — Price treasures the visceral experience of making and recognizing music.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 31 March 2023)
- New music round-up (for w/e 11 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
