New music round-up (for w/e 17 May 2024)

Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 17 May 2024.

Over the last six years, Zayn has been writing his fourth studio album at his home studio. Room Under the Stairs marks his most personal release to date, reflecting where he is in his life while exploring the complexities of healing, stillness and growth. It also sees the genre-bending artist explore a new sound, leaning into his soulful vocals, live instrumentation, and poetic lyricism as a songwriter. The album was co-produced by Zayn with 9x Grammy award winning record producer Dave Cobb.

Lives Outgrown is the debut album by Beth Gibbons featuring 10 beautiful new songs recorded over a period of 10 years, the album was produced by James Ford & Beth Gibbons with additional production by Lee Harris (Talk Talk). Lives Outgrown is, by some measure, Beth’s most personal work to date, the result of a period of sustained reflection and change — “lots of goodbyes,” in Beth’s words. Farewells to family, to friends, even to her former self. These are songs from the mid-course of life, when looking ahead no longer yields what it used to, and looking back has a sudden, sharper focus.

Since the late ’90s, Norwegian singer/songwriter Erlend Øye has been a prolific force of nature, releasing numerous albums, EPs, and singles with his two primary bands, acoustic duo Kings of Convenience, and the more electronic-based The Whitest Boy Alive. During this time, he relocated to the Sicilian town of Siracusa. “La Comitiva” – the title of his new album – is an expression in italian that describes the people that you regularly hang out with. That you might go on trip with, that you go around town with. Just four friends playing together: Stefano Ortisi, Luigi Orofino, Marco Castello and Erlend.

Remembrance serves as a moving final document of the profound creative and personal rapport that banjoist Béla Fleck and pianist Chick Corea first showcased at album length with 2007’s Latin Grammy-winning The Enchantment. Featuring three previously unreleased Corea compositions as well as five short free improvisations, or impromptus, that Fleck has infused with written music. “We pushed this duo to a new place before we ran out of time,” says Fleck, who produced Remembrance. “We have here another cool look at Chick Corea, at the different ways that he can play that we wouldn’t have had. There’s a lot of great Chick Corea out there, and this is different.”

A vibrant homage to the blues, SLASH’s star-studded blues album and sixth solo album of his career overall, Orgy of the Damned is a collection of 12 dynamic songs that revitalize the blues with a stripped-down approach. Celebrating both well-known and largely undiscovered songs, SLASH offers a nostalgic nod to the past while reinvigorating the songs with his inimitable guitar playing and the spirit of collaboration. On Orgy of the Damned, the acclaimed guitarist reteamed with storied producer Mike Clink and enlisted the album’s diverse guest vocalists, which include Gary Clark Jr., Billy F. Gibbons, Chris Stapleton, Dorothy, Iggy Pop, Paul Rodgers, Demi Lovato, Brian Johnson, Tash Neal, Chris Robinson, and Beth Hart. Rounding out his blues band in the studio and on the road, SLASH reunited with two of his bandmates from his Blues Ball outfit in the 90s, bassist Johnny Griparic and keyboardist Teddy ‘ZigZag’ Andreadis, and brought on drummer Michael Jerome and singer/guitarist Tash Neal.

On Paysage, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été , orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.

Kaia Kater’s new album, Strange Medicine (out now on Free Dirt Records), opens with a haunting vision. Accompanied by Aoife O’Donovan, Kater sings of the women burned at the stake as witches in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts and their wish to strike back: “I dreamt I moved through you and / Burned my name into your chest”. It’s an opening salvo from an album that celebrates the power of women and oppressed people throughout history as they rise up and turn the poison of centuries of oppression into a strange kind of medicine. Kater’s songs are dialogues with these historical figures and meditations on her own modern life as well.

Other reviews you might enjoy:

• New music round-up (for w/e 22 October 2021)
• New music round-up (for w/e 17 March 2023)
• New music round-up (for w/e 23 February 2024)