As for every other month since the beginning of this year, also in June Peter Gabriel released new music from his upcoming album i/o, and in particular the song Road to Joy, in the usual two different mixes (the Bright-Side Mix by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent on full moon, and the Dark-Side Mix by Tchad Blake on new moon). Road to Joy conveys massive funk vibes, especially with the superb synth bassline by Don E (counterpointed by Tony Levin on Chapman Stick). If the Bright-Side Mix has an overall luminous shape, with the gorgeous drumming by Manu Katché in good evidence, Tchad Blake emphasizes all the obscure shades of this grooving funky song in his Dark-Side Mix, giving birth to a much more “urban-funk” version. Such as every other song from i/o, Road to Joy also features a dedicated artwork: this is the time of “Middle Finger in Pink”, an iconic work by the renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. As Peter Gabriel says: “I’m a big fan of Ai Weiwei, both as an artist, as a designer and as a human rights campaigner. He’s an incredibly brave man and regularly risks the wrath of the Chinese government. But his work is exceptional, often political and quite extraordinary. When I was hustling him, I think he had absolutely no idea who I was, so it was an uphill battle at first, but he was open to talking and we got to know each other and hang out a little bit. I was delighted when he agreed to being a part of the i/o project and generously sent us three designs. He has this middle finger image that he uses a lot in his work, and it is often directed to those in power. He’s definitely been at the root end of power, as his father was before him. So that’s an important symbol for him and I guess in the context of the story I am now working on, death is the dominant power, and the hero is coming back to life and raising his finger to death.” Road to Joy adds another brick to the fascinating path that Gabriel is tracing with his new album, and reconnects ideally to other funk-oriented episodes in his discography (such as Sledgehammer, Big Time or also Steam).
A new album by the mighty Cory Wong is on its way, and during June the Minneapolis-based band leader released two new singles from this upcoming work: a classic Wong funk-pop tune titled Ready, realized with the contribution of Ben Rector and released on June 10, followed by the heartwarming pop anthem Hiding on the Moon, released on June 30 and written by Wong together with Cody Fry, Jon Lampley and Marc Roberge from O.A.R. As it often happens with Wong’s works, both Ready and Hiding on the Moon hit the spot: Ready has a sort of Caribbean flavor blended with a subterranean nostalgic mood, and it is cadenced by Wong’s geometric guitar strumming, which opens up in a very lyrical shape over the refrains; on the other hand, Hiding on the Moon is a powerful pop balllad, mainly based on Roberge vocals. Here Wong is in charge of guitars and bass parts (not to mention supporting vocals), with Michael Bland on the drums and co-author Cody Fry on keyboards and percussions, and the song is a small jewel of nostalgic reinvention, that traces and evokes memories and the power of imagination as an antidote to the (somewhat often) difficult times of our grown-up lives. “I’ve been a fan of O.A.R. since I was a teenager. I have seen them play several times; and when I finally got the chance to hang with Marc and the guys, I knew we’d hit it off musically. I had some time off in New York and Marc invited me to come hang and write in his studio. I had a loop of an idea that I had been sitting on for a while that I shared with him and he said, ‘Let me get a microphone up.’ We wrote the song that afternoon, and I took the tracks and ran with it over the next couple of months. I wanted to add some unique guitar elements to it, so I decided to use some natural harmonics as the opening section, and for the guitar solo, I wanted to channel a combination of…Coldplay/Allman/Mayer. This song ended up being a great collaboration that really features both Cory Wong and O.A.R. in a unique way, and really shows the power of creative minds coming together to make something that we wouldn’t have made independently!”
I literally can’t wait to hear the whole tracklist of The Lucky One (this is the title of Wong’s next album), and I’m sure that it will be astonishingly great.
On June 13, Angelo De Augustine released the title-track to his new album Toil and Trouble, due out on June 30 for Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty Records. Toil and Trouble is another episode of De Augustine’s exquisite indie-folk songwriting, featuring imaginative and variously bewildered lyrics (I’ll believe in anything/ If you take away all this pain/ Oh god is this the end?/ I’ve seen it before on CNN […] You will do anything/ If I numb away all your pain/ The poppy field and the Golden Gate/ The dragon’s fire/ A fall from grace), and the song comes with a beautiful stop-motion animated video realized by Clara Murray (such as that for the previous single, The Ballad of Betty and Barney Hill, and in a similar fashion to the first single, Another Universe).
June also marked the return of my beloved Mark Kozelek, who released the single Damian as a first anticipation to a new album of unreleased songs (which I believe will bear the same title) under his moniker Sun Kil Moon. Damian has been released on June 16, and it is a soft, delicate folk ballad about the death of a friend: in pure Sun Kil Moon’s style, for better or for worse, Damian holds together all the merits of Kozelek‘s writing and also all those idiosyncrasies that so many criticisms have attracted to the American singer-songwriter after the publication of the highly successful album Benji. I’m personally inclined to seek for poetry in all the small things that fill up our lives, and I genuinely think that Kozelek is an indisputable master in this art: probably Damian adds nothing to the carrier of his author, but it is a soulful, peaceful song which bodes well for the quality of the new album.
Over six years after their last studio album, a self-titled, eight track LP released on May 5, 2017 (I wrote something about it here), Slowdive made their comeback in June with the first single from the upcoming album, Everything is Alive (out September 1 on Dead Oceans label). The band leaded by Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell released the song Kisses on June 20, with a video shot in our country (in Napoli, to be precise): Kisses proceeds in the footsteps of that classic shoegaze sounds that made the band’s fortune (and the story of a good part of 90s music) and, as always, it is truly exciting to listen to Halstead and Goswell’s voices shaking verses and choruses of a song as simple as fascinating, entirely built upon one of the most recognizable Slowdive’s trademark, a cathartic instrumental crescendo. Furthermore, Kisses works much like a time machine, taking the heart and mind back to the golden age of shoegaze (a mythological era in which Slowdive could even contend with Oasis for the scepter of Next Big Thing- it could sound strange today but please believe me, especially the one here that are younger, if I say that it is quite true). There is probably a little new under the sun, but Kisses confirms that this music still knows how to speak to the heart of the listeners, awakening the same sensations today as it did thirty years ago: and that is not a trivial matter at all!
Rumour has it that The Smile, the super-band founded by Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood with Sons of Kemet‘s drummer Tom Skinner, are working in the studio to follow up on the beautiful debut album A Light for Attracting Attention, released by XL Recordings last year (we talked about it here): in this regard, Yorke & Co. have released the single titled Bending Hectic on June 20. Bending Hectic expands what we listened to on the debut album of the band, featuring melancholic vocals and sparse, evocative drum parts. The piece also makes use of the fundamental contribution of the strings by London Contemporary Orchestra, and manages to stitch together post-rock atmospheres, classical echoes and jazz-futuristic digressions in an absolutely non-radio-friendly (or non-Spotify-friendly, if you prefer) playing time. As it happened for the songs included in the first album, The Smile’s music is something you have to deep dive into, and to experience profoundly: but there’s not a lot of music that’s so inspired and valuable around here, and so Bending Hectic is also something we need to take care of, something we need to let grow.
For the penultimate track out of his second solo album released on Vulf Records under the moniker Vulfmon, titled Vulfnik, the mighty Jack Stratton reunites with his partner in crime Jacob Jeffries and the result is the beautiful, haunting and moody ballad called Blue. The song, written by Jeffries and Stratton together with Harrison Whitford, is accompanied by a marvelous video animated by Miles Senzaki (a.k.a. Point Lobo), which perfectly captures the melancholic mood of the piece: Blue confirms Stratton as an eclectic composer and songwriter, and his works as very rich palettes of colours, atmospheres and ideas. We will talk very soon about Vulfnik in its entirety, but in fact we can already say that the Vulfmon project is one of the most interesting things among those that were born from the working group that gravitates around the Vulfpeck, and for sure everything Stratton releases is something you need to listen to (at least, simply to be updated about the low-volume-funk state-of-the-art).
With a very short song, a kind of sonic blitz, James Blake announced on June 28 his new album, Playing Robots into Heaven, to be released September 8 under Republic Records label. The song itself is called Big Hammer, and it is something completely different from the typical Blakean sound: less than three minutes of a minimalist, electronic/disco sound with absolutely no concessions to the romantic moods to which Blake has always been accustomed. It seems that Playing Robots into Heaven will see James return to his electronic roots from the days of Hessle, Hemlock and R&S records (the CMYK EP, in particular): for sure, Big Hammer gives a strong adrenaline rush, immediately making it clear that we are faced with a completely new path. We just have to wait an see!
The title of this post reprises a couple of verses by Robert Frost, which closes his poem titled A minor bird, from the West-Running Brook collection (mostly written along 1923 and published by Henry Holt and Co. in 1928).
A Minor Bird
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.