Quite like every month, the march towards Peter Gabriel‘s new album, i/o, continues. On July, the British artist released his new single So Much in its Dark Side Mix by Tchad Blake (on the full moon, 03/07) and then in its Bright Side and Atmos In-Side mixes (on the new moon, 17/07), respectively by Mark “Spike” Stent and Hans-Martin Buff. According to its author, So Much is “a [pretty] simple song”: it features a string arrangement from John Metcalfe and contributions from Tony Levin on bass, David Rhodes on guitar and backing vocals from Peter’s daughter Melanie Gabriel. The track is a pensive and tense ballad, led by the piano in its Dark Side Mix version, and lifted by a wider orchestral breath in the Bright Side Mix, where all the small interventions by the other instruments can be much easily appreciated; it is indeed very different with respect to the last single, Road to Joy, which was a much more funk-oriented episode. For what is concerned with the meaning of the song, Gabriel said: “the reason I chose So Much as a title is because I’m addicted to new ideas and all sorts of projects. I get excited by things and want to jump around and do different things. I love being in a mess of so much! And yet it also means there’s just so much time, or whatever it is, available. Balancing them both is what the song is about”. The song comes with a dedicated artwork by London-based artist Henry Hudson, a work called Somewhere Over Mercia, that represents something like a line over the horizon: “I started looking at Henry’s work and thought it was great. He’s done some dense and intricate work with plasticine, but then he also has this other more expressionist, horizon work with different colours and they’re very simple and pure. I connected quite strongly with him. The works where Henry’s got horizons are minimalist in a way. They are quite layered and there’s a physicality or three-dimensional element to the way he puts the work together. The idea of cutting the horizon in a different colour, in this case he wanted it to be yellow, and then effectively letting it bleed onto the painting I thought was beautiful and powerful. In the one sense, the horizon is the infinite but it’s also the limit. It had some good symbolism. I think it’s a great piece of work”. Hudson adds that “There’s a universalness about the song. I think the relationship between that song and my horizon lines are quite poignant – dealing with our understanding of what time is, dealing with voids or horizons or places that can appear to be closer or further away.” So Much was one of the tracks taken from i/o that Gabriel didn’t play in the Milan leg of the tour on which I wrote about here, but I think its quiet beauty gives you a very good idea of how many wonderful words one may expect to discover listening to the full album (as anyone who has followed these monthly forays into the individual tracks released so far will know). Can’t wait to hear i/o in its actual, definite shape.
First performed at the recent 2023 Glastonbury Festival in front of an audience of over 30000 people, WELLLL is the new single by British multi-instrumentalist, composer and (by the way) musical genius Jacob Collier since last year’s Grammy-nominated mellow ballad Never Gonna Be Alone featuring John Mayer and Lizzy McAlpine (I wrote about it here). Released on July 14, in little more than two very dense minutes and a half WELLLL summarizes all of Collier‘s style, applying it to a generally more rock-oriented sound, with electric guitars in full evidence: as Collier himself says, “Wellll, what can I say? This song is a collage of catharsis – a convergence of many musical materials I haven’t explored until now. It features my custom-designed 5-string electric guitar, made by Strandberg, and harkens back to much of the rock music I loved as a child. It’s a song about being a child, being wild, and listening to your heart.” In this short track the vocal harmonizations that have made Collier famous, a bunch of variously colored atmospheres, a lot of abrasive electric guitars and an astonishing attention to both harmonic and rhythmic details find their very place, making of WELLLL a powerful rock-pop anthem. I hope that the release of this single will only lead the way to the new album, the long awaited Djesse Vol. 4: we only have to wait a little bit more and see.
The Grid Generation marks the collaboration of guitarist and composer Cory Wong with virtuoso drummer Louis Cole, and it’s the fourth single from Wong’s upcoming new album, The Lucky One (scheduled within the end of the year). Musically, The Grid Generation is a typical Wong-funk piece, characterized by rhythmically portentous riffs and a great drum work, and enriched by the horns of the always magnificent Hornheads, now longtime associates of the Minneapolis musician. In a way, The Grid Generation follows a long tradition of Wong’s instrumental explorations, dating back to his first solo works: it features the trademark, syncopated strumming of the powerful Wong’s right hand together with melodic yet rhythmic, inventive phrasing by the Hornheads, with the addition of throbbing, lightning-fast drumming by Cole, in order to create a soundscape that acts as a background for a fulminant guitar solo and for the already mentioned interventions by the winds. As always, talking about Cory Wong we are dealing with absolute excellence in its most refined form, and The Grid Generation makes no exception.
Everything Everything has recently announced the release of a Deluxe Version of their astonishing debut album Man Alive (I wrote what I think it could be one of the very first Italian reviews of this album and you can read it here). Together with the well-known tracklist of the album, this Deluxe Version (which will be out on August 25) will feature also some b-sides and other rarities from the same first period of the band. During July, Jonathan Higgs, Jeremy Pritchard, Michael Spearman and Alex Robertshaw released a couple of these b-sides, Riot On A Ward and the indie-rock anthem Luddites & Lambs. This last one, in particular, photographs a period of the band that is now very distant (yet subtly present), mainly made up of electric guitar work and with a trend close to a lot of new-wave music coming from the 80s and 90s. It is however refreshing to listen to a sound that was already so well characterized on such early periods, based on the indisputable vocal qualities of Higgs and on the arabesques intertwined by Spearman‘s guitars as well as on the fluid and engaging interplay of the Pritchard-Robertshaw rhythm section: it makes me think more and more that I was right over 12 years ago, when I came across this band’s first single and realized I was facing something unique. If you are not quite convinced, take a listen to this two songs and see how much road the band has covered since this start, and anyway how much this musicians has been loyal to themselves and their pristine musical (and lyrical) vision.
In the past months, I often wrote about the London singer and songwriter Alice Auer, especially regarding the singles she released from her Baby Cry EP, out on May 25 through the British label Young Poet Records (if you are curious, see here, here and here). At the end of July, Auer has released a live recorded version of the opening track from her EP, Greek Street, accompanied by a video: beside the quality of the writing, which we had already discussed in the past, it is Auer‘s remarkable vocal talents that dominate the scene… and then there is also a beautiful bassline played on what seems to me a very good-looking Warwick Starbass 5 strings bass!
So, this is an acoustic EP. It’s really made me realise how much I enjoy the folk side of my music and the harmonies and types of instruments that go along with it. They’re all sweet and slightly simple songs ahah. Songs that are made to be listened to, but also in a subconscious sense, if that makes sense? A lot of the songs came around quite quickly in terms of writing them. I had the pleasure of getting my friend Tobie Tripp to write and record string arrangements for three of them. I’ve never had a string arrangement on a song, but it’s always something I’ve longed for. The whole process has been very fulfilling, and I feel like I’ve taken a big step forward in terms of figuring out my sound.
On July 14, together with a music video accompanying the title track, Matilda Mann released her new EP You Look Like You Can’t Swim. I stepped into Mann’s music a few months ago, and I immediately recognized something great in her work (as some of you may remember, I wrote about her in a past monthly Round-Up). The EP, out for Arista Records, is a brilliant collection of five, sparkling tracks that opens on the serene indie-pop The Day That I Met You, embellished by strings and vocal harmonizations (featuring beautiful verses about meeting someone that can change your life, such as And though I’m still battered and bruised/ I forgave the world the day that I met you). The following In Plain Sight is a short glimpse of folk-pop beauty, a romantic ballad where the voice of Matilda Mann reaches gorgeous heights: In Plain Sight is a simple yet beautifully written song were the soul vibes listened in previous Mann’s works (I think of songs like Strange (for now) , for instance) meet the physicality of acoustic guitars, creating a mix of uncommon delicacy and warmth. The song revolves around how difficult it is to not overthink everything, especially for what concerns relationships, and ultimately speaks about the right timing in meeting that one person: Love is a matter of timing was the tagline of Wong Kar-Wai’s movies 2046, follow up to In the Mood for Love, while here Matilda Mann sings Some would say it’s obsessive, but I think it’s damn impressive that I found you hidden in plain sight, just like sometimes you would only need to take a better look around you because, as Edgar Allan Poe already knew, the best place to hide something is in plain sight, and love is no different. The third track, Margaux, emerges from a texture of guitar arpeggios, creating a dreamy landscape: in the very words of Mann herself, “I think whenever I’m overwhelmed or stressed, the best thing for me has always been having some time alone. Sometimes you can feel yourself slipping away from someone, and you’re not quite sure why, until you figure out that it’s because you’re best apart. I guess ‘Margaux’ is from the perspective of who you’re leaving: how they saw you fall away; how the subtle things started to change; and how life is how without them”. Musically speaking, Margaux is a short and slow ballad, built on an intimate folk-like guitar arpeggio, on which Mann almost whispers the verses in a sort of tender nostalgia that permeates the entire story. If Only talks again about relationship, in a slow cadenced waltz-like movement, and it ultimately is another guitar-voice episode, a fair acoustic passage embellished by gorgeous string arrangements, and deep, pressing basses that accompanies the song in a powerful crescendo, before the ending in which Mann‘s voice, cracked and almost broken, murmurs the last verses (If only I was somebody who wanted/ Just for the day, but you wanted/ Someone you know that wouldn’t leave/ I know that’d never be me/ I know that’d never be me). Inside the closing title track, You Look Like You Can’t Swim, we find all the difficulty of growing up and finding one’s place in the world: You Look Like You Can’t Swim acts as an endearing, tense and beautiful finale for this work, a delicately-crafted folk song with Mann’s beautiful voice in great evidence, singing utterly inspired and evocative lyrics. The song is accompanied by a video which features some serious Wes Anderson-vibes (and particularly Moonrise Kingdom-vibes) and makes an adorable match with the beautifully nostalgic folk soundscape created by Mann with the song.
You can call the music in this very short EP chamber-pop, baroque-pop, indie-folk or whatever: I’m not really interested in categorizing and dividing stuff by genre. What is important here is that You Look Like You Can’t Swim shows a complete and well-shaped musical and lyrical universe, thus allowing British indie-folk singer and songwriter Matilda Mann to fully express her vulnerability and her astonishing talent. Mann says about the EP that “the songs were all written so sincerely and honest, that I wanted them to be simple and stripped, with the right arrangement, to give the lyrics their moment. This is my favorite project I’ve ever worked on and feels like everything I want to say”, and this is exactly what one gets from listening to these five songs. The tracks are all somewhat characterized by soft acoustic guitar riffs and string plucks, with sparse intervention by pianos and basses, so as to accompany Mann‘s warm vocals which are in turn capable to transform each song into an intimate confession, a soulful poetry or a delicate and mellow lullaby. I would say that You Look Like You Can’t Swim contains beautiful music for haunted yet brave hearts in the shape of a tender, intimate and vulnerable record full of a delicate sense of catharsis and of a subtle yet ferocious intensity, something similar to the warmth of the sea waves when they retreat after having caressed the beach. In fact, You Look Like You Can’t Swim has something of a caress and, at the same time, something of the deep, burning intensity of an open-heart confession: opening up in such an honest way requires courage, and that is why, as I wrote earlier, this EP is definitely a work for haunted yet brave hearts, being so beautifully written and performed, and so beautifully alive and filled with a more than human warmth. Waiting for an LP, I think You Look Like You Can’t Swim represents one of the most brilliant works I’ve heard in the first part of this year, and definitely one I will keep on listening to for a long, long (and sweet) time.
The Matilda Mann image accompanying this post is property of photographer Caity Krone, and the copyright is hers: I just found the photos on a website and re-used them.