Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 6 September 2024.
Beyond Beyond Beyond, the fifth studio record by The Crane Wives, explores the mixture of fear, joy, and deep vulnerability that occurs when a person is on the cusp of changing the course of their life. The eleven track album is a circular journey that asks heavy questions of the listener: Am I strong enough to change? Am I brave enough to take the risk? Do I deserve the chance to be happy? It offers the listener momentum to move forward, a guide through dark spaces with shimmery other-worldly melodies and an encouraging push to venture forth into the unknown. The project is an electric departure from The Crane Wives’ previous releases, prominently highlighting the lead guitar work of songwriters and singers Kate Pillsbury and Emilee Petersmark. Drummer Dan Rickabus contributes darker, stormy and dynamic rhythms to this record, while bassist Ben Zito creates narrative movement in the songs with his rooting, counter-melodic approach.
Atlas Genius have just released their new album End of the Tunnel. The band has put together a special recipe for the new collection of songs. Album ingredients: Lost love, guilt, passion, a dash of social commentary, existential crises, reckless abandon, and honest self-criticism. May contain traces of lust.
Beatrice Rana, characterised by Gramophone as a pianist of “fire and poetry, imagination and originality, temperament and charm, all on top of fearless technical address”, brings together two monumental sonatas on her new album. On the record, Rana presents Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Piano Sonata (No. 29) and Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B♭minor, Op. 35, famous for its third movement, the Funeral March.
Over the course of his brilliant and groundbreaking quarter-century career, Grammy Award-winning alto saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón has reveled in doing the hard work, whether he was transforming Puerto Rican plena into a vehicle for improvisation or writing a body of tunes inspired by the history of the American continent. But no project he’s tackled has involved the kind of intensive, granular research required by Golden City, a sweeping suite inspired by the demographic and political evolution of San Francisco, from the pre-colonial period to the contemporary tech-dominated era. His 17th album as a leader, Golden City is out now via Zenón’s Miel Music label.
Hole Erth, Chaz Bear’s eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi, is the genre shapeshifter’s most unexpected and bold move to date, with Bear diving headlong into rap-rock, Soundcloud rap and Y2K emo. The album blitzes anthemic pop-punk next to autotuned, melancholic rap – two genres that inform one another now more than ever before — and packs in the most features ever on a Toro y Moi album.
Sydney punks Party Dozen (Kirsty Tickle and Jonathan Boulet) have released their new album Crime In Australia via GRUPO. Taking notes from classic Ozploitation cinema of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, ‘Coup De Gronk’ builds on Party Dozen’s uniquely Australian aesthetic to match their original sonic offering. Kirsty’s saxophone acts as an instrument of savage coercion as Party Dozen roam the streets of Sydney in one epic shakedown.
Sage Warrior is a genre-crossing, borderless, twelve-song odyssey into ancestral wisdom from the critically acclaimed singer, trumpeter, and songwriter Sonny Singh. The album explores the Sikh spirit of the sant sipahi, the sage warrior: the sage leads with love; the warrior answers the call to courage. Introspective and urgent, spiritual and rebellious, the album offers bold new renditions of Sikh devotional poems from South Asia, channeling ancestral wisdom for our time. Singh created the album as a companion to the new book Sage Warrior by visionary civil rights leader and bestselling author Valarie Kaur. Each track on the album accompanies a chapter in the book. Together, the Sage Warrior book and album offer an electrifying multisensory experience of Sikh wisdom—a clarion call to love, devotion, and courage in dark times.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 13 May 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 8 September 2023)
- New music round-up (for w/e 20 October 2023)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
