Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 18 March 2022.
April March has quite the resume: an animator on Pee Wee’s Playhouse and for Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” video, and collaborating with Brian Wilson, Jack White, LL Cool J, Jonathan Richman, Ronnie Spector and Bertrand Burgalat. But she also has an acclaimed recording career, heavily influenced by French pop music, making a name for herself in France with her self-produced albums as well as albums with Bertand Burgalat and Aquaserge. Following a quarter century of recording, March unveiled In Cinerama as a vinyl-only release for Record Store Day in 2021, but it’s now available widely. In Cinerama has a wide sonic span from Nigeria to California, with Fela Kuti’s drummer Tony Allen at the helm and The Beach Boys’ Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford by his side, as well as talented friends ranging from the French underground to Nashville. The 11 tracks, co-written and co-produced by Mehdi Zannad, recall the 5th Dimension, Belle And Sebastian and even your favorite Gainsbourg or Curt Boettcher productions but stand on their own just as fresh and contemporary as the waves of Malibu or a Parisian Uber.
Loss and hope, isolation and communion, the cessation and renewal of purpose. Timeless and salient, these themes echo throughout the fifth album from Midlake, their first since Antiphon in 2013. Produced to layered, loving perfection by John Congleton, For the Sake of Bethel Woods is an album of immersive warmth and mystery from a band of ardent seekers, one of our generation’s finest: a band once feared lost themselves by fans, perhaps, but here revivified with freshness and constancy of intent.
Forever On My Mind is the new Son House album of previously unreleased recordings from the legendary “Father Of The Delta Blues”. It features the never-before-recorded track, “Forever On My Mind.” The album comes from noted blues manager and historian Dick Waterman’s archives which were the first upon Son House’s 1964 re-discovery. Restored to remarkable clarity, by producer Dan Auerbach for Easy Eye Sound, these recordings represent the earliest recordings of House upon his return to the limelight after 20+ years away.
Shostakovich was in his early thirties when he first turned to the string quartet. He planned to produce a full cycle of 24; he completed 15. These works embody his resistance to a crushing Soviet power that held the belief that all art should be political. At the same time, he used them as a means of personal, autobiographical expression, aimed at presenting a true depiction of himself as a man and an artist. Bringing together nos. 3 and 8, the Novus Quartet make Shostakovich’s revolt tangible, while faithfully representing the magnificent, heartrending world of this great composer.
New Gospel Revisited is the new album from the fearless and formidable American composer and trumpeter Marquis Hill. A live recording that revisits and reinterprets his debut 2012 album New Gospel, this time round employing a band of super-heavyweight musicians including Walter Smith III, Joel Ross, James Francies, Kendrick Scott and Harish Raghavan. Marquis Hill’s rise over the last few years has been striking and there’s no letting up. Since winning the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute Jazz Composition award he has demonstrated full command of his art and built a reputation for synthesizing what he describes as the essential elements of the Africa-American creative heritage including contemporary and classic jazz, hip-hop, R&B, house and neo-soul. Now, his sights are set even higher. New Gospel Revisited, is an extraordinary live recording that reimagines his debut as a leader with a new band, a new focus and a sharpened ear as a bandleader, composer and performer. The set is breathtakingly good with a band that sounds as inventive and creative as it reads on paper.
Island Family is the fifth album from Isle-of-Eigg dwelling electro-acoustic psych-pop wonder Pictish Trail: AKA Johnny Lynch. A strange, unpredictable, sardonic and yet deeply personal record inspired by all from Fever Ray to The Flaming Lips, Liars, Mercury Rev and Beck, Island Family is Pictish Trail’s contrarian view of arcadia; a search for the euphoric in the bucolic, bound up in sometimes conflicting ideas and feelings around nature and environment, sincerity and artifice, escapism and belonging. It’s an album about how no man can remain an island, however hard he might try.
PLOSIVS – Rob Crow (of Pinback), John Reis (of Drive Like Jehu), Atom Willard (of Rocket From the Crypt), and Jordan Clark (of Mrs. Magician) – have released their self-titled debut album. The album includes the great recently released single “Hit The Breaks,” as well as the just-released “Broken Eyes,” which continues down the fiery Pinback-meets-Hot Snakes path of the lead single.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 3 December 2021)
- New music round-up (for w/e 25 March 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 6 May 2022)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
