A full moon and a blue supermoon during August meant two new singles from the upcoming i/o album by Peter Gabriel: on August 1 Olive Tree (the Bright Side Mix by Mark Spike Stent, followed a couple of weeks later by the Dark Side Mix made by Tchad Blake), while on August 31 Love Can Heal (Bright Side Mix, by Stent again). Olive Tree is a brilliant yet mysterious up-tempo, featuring string arrangement from John Metcalfe, and further contributions from Gabriel’s band (Manu Katché on drums, Tony Levin on bass, David Rhodes on guitar, Josh Shpak on trumpet and additional percussion from Jed Lynch). While the Bright Side Mix shows more “pop”-vibes, the Dark Side one reveals a much more dreamy and obscure character, giving this piece a sort of “live-feel” that make it extremely engaging. The artwork for Olive Tree is a piece of art titled Chroniques avec la Nature and realized by the artist Barthélémy Togou. As Gabriel himself said, I was aware of Barthélémy Toguo’s work, which I found very haunting and very strong, but I first met him at WOMAD in 2015, when he came as artist in residence. I wasn’t talking about this project at that time, but when I was thinking about re-connecting to nature and his work seemed ideal. I think it’s super strong and looks wonderful on stage. Barthélémy listened to the song and his piece was created as a direct response to the music, which hasn’t always been the case with the other artists, but he was determined that he should generate something new and I’m very glad he did, it’s wonderful.
In addition to Olive Tree, the second single released during August is Love Can Heal. Both the songs were in fact executed live during the Milano concert I had the opportunity to attend on May (here is my report). Love Can Heal is much more of a dreamy landscape, an emotional drift leaded by the hauntingly beautiful voice of Gabriel (and deep and groovy basses by Tony Levin), to which a fascinating chorus responds in the refrains: a calm, suggestive piece of chamber rock, with some ambient and even classical nuances (a sensation that comes mainly from the strings). In this case, the artwork consists of an animation by Aardman Animations Ltd of a work by the artist Antony Micallef titled a small painting of what I think love looks like. Following Gabriel, Antony Micallef is a stunning painter. I’d seen some of his portraits and they are with thick layers of paint, so there were references to Auerbach and Bacon for me, just very physical, very powerful and I just fell in love. Those paintings, in some ways, are more brutal, but this one is so tender and I think Antony manages to capture a lot of that intimate tenderness around love that is very hard to put into pictures. I was delighted when he was happy to be part of this.
Those of you who follow this page will be very well acquainted to Nate Smith and especially to the mighty Cory Wong, by far one of the main protagonists of my literary deliriums disguised as musical reviews. Nate Smith, world renowned jazz drummer who collaborated with a number of other acts along the years (I just mention here Vulfpeck and the side project The Fearless Flyers, together with the very same Cory Wong, Mark Lettieri and His Bass-Majesty Joe Dart), has been invited to do a three-night residency at Montreal Jazz Festival, held on 2, 3 and 4 of July. Following these three nights of music, which Smith has shared with a number of world-class musicians arranged in three different trios (the first one featuring Lionel Loueke on guitar and Michael League on bass; the second one with Keifer on keys and Carrtoons on bass; and the last one involving Cory Wong and Victor Wooten; obviously, Smith was on drums in all of these configurations), a series of videos has been released during August. Here you can listen to Bounce, a showcase for Nate Smith’s thunderous drumming, the relentless Cory Wong’s right hand (Wong blesses the song also with a beautiful, atmospheric solo played with a dreamy and “expanded” sound) and featuring the well-known-but-at-the-same-time-always-astonishing wootenesque bass virtuosity. Some more info about this Montreal Series can be found online, while you can check for other videos on Smith’s Official Youtube channel.
Since we’re talking about Cory Wong, August has also marked the (to me) unexpected release of The Lucky One, the new album from the Minneapolis guitarist and composer, which I thought it would have been published late in the year… well, good for us that I was wrong. The Lucky One has been anticipated by a number of beautiful lead singles (I extensively talked about them in the recent RoundUps), and a week before its official release Wong dropped Call me wild: this song, featuring Dodie on vocals and ukulele, appears as a classical Wong-funk tune, with deep and powerful basses (played by Cory himself), a groovy drum pattern by Aaron Sterling and beautiful vocal melody. Call me wild is something like a clockwork orange, a funk machine based on the irresistible groove of bass and drums, with sudden melodic openings in the choruses: another great song in which Wong pursues (and obtains) the perfect hybrid between funk groove and pop melody, with an attention to detail that is out of the ordinary (pay particular attention to the constellations of small sounds accompanying the various parts of the piece).
During August Sufjan Stevens announced a new album, Javelin, out on October 6 for his label, Asthmatic Kitty Records. Along with this announcement, Stevens released the song So You are tired as a first single. The song is somewhat a classical Stevens piano ballad, featuring electronic interferences and a light guitar strumming, and providing an ideal background to his author vulnerable, aching yet wonderful voice. In So You Are Tired, Stevens broods about endings, accompanying his reflections with a chamber-folk that recalls the glories of his recent (and not so recent) past (Be alone with you, but also the subtle beauty of a masterpiece like Mystery of love). So You Are Tired is in fact a breakup song in the guise of a lullaby: the brilliant lyrics (and this is certainly not a surprise) wrote by Stevens stage at the same time a centrifugal motion, which separates, and a centripetal one, in which the narrator tries to hold the other’s hand tightly (I was a man born invisible turns into I was a man indivisible and ends up in I was the man still in love with you/ When I already knew it was done), and as much as the distance between the two grows, it seems that there’s still something to discover in the mystery of our deepest feelings… and few other artists are able to delve into the depths of the human soul like my beloved Sufjan. Welcome back, then, to Sufjan Stevens, and of course I don’t look forward to hear the whole album!
Those of you who regularly follow this page may probably remember John Pope for his association with Archipelago, one of my favorite acts in the contemporary European jazz scene (see here and here). As well as being involved as electric and upright bass player with Archipelago (together with the bandmates Faye MacCalman and Christian Alderson), Pope participates in several different combos and bands, such as for a duo with the violinist John Garner, and he is the leader of his own quintet, the John Pope Quintet, featuring Jamie Stockbridge on alto and baritone saxophones, Graham Hardy on trumpet and flugelhorn, Johnny Hunter on drums and glockenspiel and the gorgeous Faye MacCalman on tenor saxophone and clarinet. The band has announced their second album, Citrinitas, due on October 6 for the New Jazz and Improvised Music Recodings label (the same as Archipelago) and following the debut act Mixed with Glass from 2021. The band also released the first single, Free Spin, on August 18: you can preview Free Spin and two other songs (Shadow Work and Hiba) on the bandcamp page for the album.
Coming to Free Spin, the piece begins with the tempo set by the drums on an unusual rhythm, on which the groove of the double bass lies to accompany the theme exposed by the trumpet: the song has the fluid and changing structure of a wave, made up of moments of fullness and emptiness, suspensions and burning restarts, a small and very modern free-jazz odyssey in which each instrument (and each instrumentalist) is both a vehicle of melody and a rhythmic mechanism, helping to build a puzzle game which, as a whole, takes the form of a furious crescendo which ends in the leader’s double bass and the saxes and trumpet engaging in an authentic dialogue while exposing the theme as a conclusion. In a few words, Free Spin confirms John Pope as a very interesting and gifted composer and musician (as a bass player, I’m particularly struck by his virtuoso expressiveness on the double bass, which transpires although every note played by the English musician is no less than functional to the piece), and it is a great lead single to work as an introduction for an album which, you can be sure, will have its own beautiful space on these pages as soon as it will be out. Stay connected to find out more!