New music round-up (for w/e 7 April 2023)
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 7 April 2023.
Oracle Sisters’ highly-anticipated debut album Hydranism is available globally via US indie label 22TWENTY. The Parisian three-piece make music that is at once melodic, poetic, and visionary. Working with the lightning speed afforded by the simplicity of a piano and a guitar, they construct complexity through their lyrics which stem from observations of everyday life to the broader planes of symbolism. Their melodies, intertwined with harmony, always strive to uplift and surprise in the spirit of a great pop song coupled with the depth and feeling of a timeless folk song. For Hydranism, Oracle Sisters enlisted an elite collection of talent to help them create their distinct sonic vision, including Grammy Award Winning Mixer Noah Georgeson (Marlon Williams, Cate Le Bon, The Strokes), Maxime Kosinetz (Papooz, Cola Boyy) and Philip Shaw Bova (Andy Shauf, Feist).
Everything eventually turns to dust. Everyone knows this, but few want to acknowledge that our time on this mortal coil is fleeting, preferring to remain in stasis, in hopes that “the end” will pass them by. Chicago trio FACS have been perfecting their brand of intense, cathartic art rock over the course of four ever-evolving albums. Beginning with 2017’s Negative Houses thru 2021’s landmark Present Tense, which saw the trio dig deep into the gaping maw of a black hole & pulling back whatever debris they could grasp onto. Their newest Still Life In Decay comes as an addendum to the last album – a “post-event review” if you will.
Acclaimed French trumpeter Erik Truffaz returns to Blue Note Records with an album that adds his unique touch to music featured in his favorite films from the golden age of cinema. Truffaz offers compelling new interpretations of themes from classic movies including La Strada, L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud, River of No Return, Le Casse & more.
Mind Maze is, amazingly, Trees Speak’s fifth album to be released on Soul Jazz Records in the space of little over two years – an output matched only by the intensity of their music created during this short time. As with all their previous releases, ‘Mind Maze’ is a mind-boggling tightrope walk across an array of musical influences that seamlessly create the unique present-day world of Trees Speak. The band’s sound is characterized by a combination of German krautrock motoric-beat rhythms, angular New York post-punk attitude, 60s spy soundtracks, psych, rock, jazz, and 70s synthesizers and vocoders. There is also a cosmic spatial awareness to their sound; both personal inner space and galactic outer space, as well as a wilful pushing of sonic boundaries.
Amandine Beyer makes no secret of the importance of the body in her way of playing, you just have to see her to be convinced of it. The cover of her new album – Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber: Mystery Sonatas – illustrates it, and its presentation text confirms it. It was dance – Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker – that led her to approach these Sonatas of the Rosary, and she plays them as such far from the liturgical canons. With four different violins, she underlines the contrasts, the dazzling and the whispers of these sonatas in freedom, plays on the rhythms, brings a color and a sensuality which lead to the very heart of the music, and thereby, brings out its supernatural accents.
North Americans — the project of guitarist Patrick McDermott and Barry Walker on pedal steel – have released their new album Long Cool World via Third Man Records. After working with several musical collaborators in the past, Long Cool World strips away most of them, allowing Walker and McDermott to settle on an approach that is at once intricate and simple, creating hypnotic music that loops and layers, with subtle shimmers of noise or quiet psychedelic freakouts hiding beneath McDermott’s unshowy but emotionally affecting guitar work and Walker’s pedal steel hum.
iTopia, out today, is the momentous concept album by The Get Right Band. The LP, which features Bo Koster (Roger Waters, My Morning Jacket) on keys, Jacob Rodriguez on saxophone (Michael Buble), and Eleanor Underhill on vocals (Underhill Rose), masterfully explores the impact of social media on relationships, mental health, sense of self and the ever-evolving state of the world. Through seventeen tracks, the album follows a protagonist who falls into a deep online rabbit hole, passing through techno-utopianism to the most anti-social side of social media.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- Garden Party (Rose City Band) – music review
- New music round-up (for w/e 8 July 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 14 May 2021)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television