Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 29 July 2022.
Jasmine Myra is a saxophonist, composer and band leader, based in Leeds. Part of the bustling, creative, cross-genre music scene in the city she has surrounded herself with some of the best young talent in the north of England. Her original instrumental music has a euphoric and uplifting sound, influenced by artists as diverse as Bonobo, Olafur Arnalds and Kenny Wheeler, artists whose music shares an emotive quality that you can also hear in Myra’s own compositions. Her debut album Horizons is out now.
With their brand-new sophomore album, Patina, Toronto-based indie pop band Tallies have found a way to expertly walk that razor-thin tightrope between nostalgia and the present, nodding to their favorite bands of the past while transforming their sound into something tight, bright, and undeniably fresh. The band’s 2019, debut self-titled album solidified the their stature as Canada’s leading dreampop scholars as its mix of upbeat pop hooks and heady, larger-than-life production won the band critical acclaim from the indie underground to the mainstream alike. They began work straight away on a second record, which would prove to be an even more life-affirming endeavour than their debut.
Grammy and Americana-award-winning singer-songwriter and violinist Amanda Shires has pushed the reset button with Take It Like A Man, releasing a record that is so unlike anything she has ever recorded that you would be tempted to think it’s her debut album instead of her seventh. Shires, who also plays in The Highwomen, worked with producer Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon) to make a fearless confessional, showing the world what turning 40 looks like in 10 emotionally raw tracks.
Alluvium is the fourth album from C Duncan, Glasgow’s classically trained multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, released through Bella Union. After the haunting raptures of Architect (2015), the Twilight Zone-inspired reveries of The Midnight Sun (2016) and the richly melodic Health (2019), Alluvium is a sublime palate-refresher for Duncan (C for Christopher), brimming with revitalised fluency: a warming dispatch from the daylight zone, if you like.
Phil Jamieson – frontman/singer/songwriter/guitarist for Grinspoon – has today released his first ever solo album Somebody Else. The release of Somebody Else comes on the back of a performance with Grinspoon at Splendour in The Grass and follows the first two nights of Phil’s Somebody Else national tour. The album includes co-production credits from friends Oscar Dawson of Holy Holy and Davey Lane of You Am I; Lane is also playing guitar in Jamieson’s band, as well as fronting the tour’s guest act, The Pictures. Phil has been working on his solo career for some years. Indeed, some of his ‘new’ material predates his role in the Australian stage production of American Idiot.
After Beethoven, Alexander Melnikov and Jean-Guihen Queyras now turn to two more giants of the repertory. Chopin’s Cello Sonata, his last work published in his lifetime, seems almost like a testament, sombre and tormented – a world away from the radiance and surging lyricism of the youthful work by Rachmaninoff that it inspired. These two masterpieces by composers from the two chronological extremities of Romanticism, both pianists above all, are ideally placed in perspective here.
Patrick Holland is no stranger to ghosts. In the last several years, the Montreal-based musician/producer has become accustomed to odd noises, electronics breaking, misplaced items, and, on a recent occasion, a glass shattering spontaneously next to him. Annoying, to be sure, but he’s made peace with it; the unknown, after all, is only frightening if we allow it to be. This attitude is at the heart of Holland’s new album – addressed in part to an unnamed, pseudo-paranormal “other”. You’re The Boss is his first foray into guitar-driven indie pop, full of upbeat reflections on relinquishing control.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- Take It Like a Man (Amanda Shires) – music review
- To the Sunset (Amanda Shires) – music review
- New music round-up (for w/e 17 June 2022)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television