The best new albums this week

The best albums – it’s that simple

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Seven Davis Jr – I See The Future (Secret Angels)

The thing about the funk is that it can’t be faked. That’s a well-worn adage which applies all the way back through music culture, before funk itself in the Clinton-Brown sense of the sound even had a name. There are plenty of iterations of funk from wild-eyed psychedelic P-funk to deadeye in-the-pocket jazz funk, buttoned-up blue-eyed funk to mellow, languorous funk. But they’re all unified by that elusive spark that some musicians have, and some quite simply don’t. It’s in the notes played, the creative choices about sonics, but most importantly it’s in the groove.

Since the start of his career, Seven Davis Jr. has proven himself to be a master of that groove, creating a loose, low-down strain of house music steeped in the legacy of Black American dance music but also curiously out on its own. When house music artists chart their own trajectory independent of a scene, it’s usually because they have an experimental streak which doesn’t fit with the demands of a club, city or label. But Sev’s style is actually classic in lots of ways – it’s the force and flair of his identity which pushes him out on his own.

On his new album, Sev remains true to his artistic stamp to date. It’s a sound in which the drums swing hard and the bass slips around the mix so fluid it might well slide off the grid altogether. It’s an iteration of funk which harks back to P-funk, where the playing is so innate it would be impossible to mimic. You quite simply can’t program those kinds of patterns, they come from somewhere deep inside, hanging back on the offbeat, leaning in on the one with infinitesimal poise.

Examples of this groove spill across I See The Future, on the subby whomp of ‘U Already Know’, the sizzling licks of standout track ‘Share Your Toys’, the taut thump of ‘Mission Completed’. Those b-lines wrap themselves around you, syncopating your synapses and instructing involuntary movement. It’s no delicate affair either, as the snap of the drums attests. The beats are invariably tough and rough, kicking in with intent as each track cruises into the next in a heady, segued party mix.

There is an overall rawness Sev has opted for. His dusky vocals remain murky and murmured – a calling card for his music since the get-go – but they’re also finished with a tinny patina which lends a certain lo-fi vibe to the tracks. Between the overdriven bite of the rhythm section and the filtered voice, this is far from a slick and polished affair, which only adds to the sincerity of the sound. Rawness isn’t always a byword for realness when you can cop a thousand plugins to degrade your track, but in Sev’s case it feels like a natural extension of his self-reliant approach and the instinctive immediacy of his expression.

Melodically, there are abundant hooks which make these rugged jams leap out at you, too. The layered organ lines on ‘Let’s Travel’ are as feverish as they are cool, while the synths on ‘Figure It Out’ take on a delirious, discordant carnival quality which finds resolution with the joyous, clattering keys which pile in at the end. ‘I See The Future’ features a nursery rhyme lick which stands up to the cheekiest riffs you ever heard Bernie Worrell lay down.

As well as rolling through with an unrelenting pace from track to track, this is also an album of songs. At times Sev’s obfuscated singing and the heavy tone of the drums disrupts that quality, but you’re never far from a killer hook to suck you in. The aforementioned ‘Share Your Toys’ is perhaps the best example, too overcooked for mainstream radio but with all the chops a classic requires. I See The Future isn’t an album to make Seven Davis Jr. into a crossover star, but if you’re always in search of that tru-skool funk with all the swagger and swerve intact, it’s got everything you need.

ow

50 Foot Wave – Black Pearl (Fire)

Kristin Hersh, Bernard Georges and Rob Ahlers are best known for their parts to play in Throwing Muses, the indie band that pioneered cymballess jangle music. All the while, they always held up the dreamy, refined qualities of their labelmates and contemporaries, like Lush, Cocteau Twins and The Breeders. As the story goes, 50 Foot Wave shot out branchlike from the tree planted by the Hersh sisters, after Kristin grew disillusioned with the emotional heaviness woven into Throwing Muses’ output. In other words, 50 Foot Wave was more cerebral. “It’s got a lot of math in it”.

‘Black Pearl’ is a new surprise curveball, being their first release under the name in 18 years. Despite Hersh’s original comments, we almost certainly hear more unbounded emotion from this LP than most of their earlier work. A gothic pastoral feel is immediately heard, as effortless guitar crunch occupies the surround mix, and vampiric vocals escape Hersh’s mouth on ‘Staring Into The Sun’, which topically deals with a tentative romantic relationship with a stranger. As ever, the band dazzle with their ability to command an enormous sound despite only having three band members. Georges’ bass chops take centre stage, meanwhile, with a crunchy dynamism underpinning only the most satiating of guitar sounds; it’s the cookie crisp of bass.

Grungey and true to the earliest incarnations of their sound, the ensuing cuts grow increasingly more menacing. ‘Fly Down South’ is like the Muses’ ‘Counting Backwards’ with teeth; Hersh sounds like a tongue-tied banshee against a compressed backwash of dry guitar and sleigh bells, like a drab nightmare before Christmas. ‘Broken Sugar’, meanwhile, gets at a core theme: death. “To remain unseen / it’s killing me” and “I still wear your shackle… let me spin” resound among the lyrics, as Hersh yodels into a swirl of posthumous pain. The whole thing rounds off on a defiant note, ‘Double Barrel’, ending on the theme of love despite the sense of darkness that permeates.

JIJ

Ricardo Villalobos & Samuel Rohrer – Microgestures (Arjunamusic)

Samuel Rohrer feels like an ideal sparring partner for Ricardo Villalobos. The Chilean minimal maven is a law unto himself, as he should always remain, but of course that sometimes winds up in self-indulgence or overly obtuse offerings when a little friction and fortitude can steer his magical touch towards the best results. See also – his work with Max Loderbauer as Vilod. Rohrer shares an affinity for meandering (read: no) composition, needlepoint percussion and tangled rhythms, although his work stems from a live, hand-played practice which gently softens the already limber machinations of Villalobos’ method. 

On this latest album we’re plunged once more into the curious complications of this pairing, where formal structures dissolve under the weight of constant drum mantras. There are absolutely grooves to behold, and the likes of ‘Lobule’ undoubtedly plough their furrow like the best wormhole techno, but this is music to get lost in. That said, the duo know how to pull a switch up when it counts.

Around the seven-minute mark on ‘Lobule’ a positive gear shift brings about a newly gnarly bass line purr and a snappy break . It’s a classy wake up call which soon becomes as obfuscated as the passage before, but it goes to show you can never assume you’ve heard everything you need to in the first five minutes of these spiralling sequences of sequences of sequences.

OW

Spanish Love Songs – Brave Faces Etc (Pure Noise Records)

2020 saw Los Angeles based emo/indie outfit, Spanish Love Songs, drop their critically acclaimed, emotionally devastating third full-length, ‘Brave Faces Everyone.’

Now to coincide with the band finally being able to tour the material, including appearances at this year’s Slam Dunk Festival, they’ve opted to expand the project with ‘Brave Faces Etc.’

Similar to the companion piece reimagining of Sorority Noise’s final effort, ‘You’re Not As _ As You Think’; the collection takes an uncharacteristic approach to its preceding sonic groundwork.

Take the original acoustic driven folk-punk anguish of ‘Optimism (As A Radical Life Choice)’, repurposed here with ethereal synthwave motifs to conjure a much more subdued performance that only deepens the weighty lyrical subject matter.

Primary songwriter and frontman, Dylan Slocum, has often shot straight from the hip in regards to his warts and all honesty and uncomfortably familiar anecdotes dissecting depression, apathy and financial instability. Removing the natural angst these emotive pieces were originally sourced from, and retooling their compositional structures allows for reassessment of Slocum’s messaging in more hopeful or nihilistic circumstances, depending on your interpretation.

From reframing the dour punk anthem, ‘Losers’, as an even more bleak minimalist refrain to the hushed reimagining of the once hopeful despair of ‘Generation Loss’, now seemingly an ode to despairing hopefulness, these expanded or ‘etc’ versions feel as if their existence was always assured.

Expanding on what was already a difficult, heavy listen with hindsight and an opportunity to explore the differing sonic avenues these pieces always had the potential to traverse, ‘Brave Faces Etc’ is far more than a mere retread. Rather these sister versions serve as the Jekyll or Hyde to their album counterparts, and build upon the original’s shoulder shrugged gravitas with earnestness, emotion and ease.

ZB

Valentina Goncharova – Recordings 1987-1991 Vol 2 (Shukai)

Ukrainian label Shukai is the archival branch of Muscut, who continue to present compelling tape-loop oriented music from an international spectrum of experimental artists. When diving into reissues, they have thus far focused on overlooked artists from the Soviet era, and after a successful first foray into the work of Kiev-born Valentina Goncharova they return to focus on the avant-garde violinist’s collaborations outside the academic field she first worked in. Heading away from the strictures of then-Leningrad’s conservatoire, the late 80s found Goncharova exploring free jazz and leftfield rock.

On this compilation we travel far musically, through the dissonant, concrete-informed extremities of her work with avant-garde saxophonist Sergei Letov to the lilting melodies and atonal flurries conjured up with experimental synthesist Pekka Airaksinen. The album’s opening piece, ‘Reincarnation II’, was created with Alexander Aksenov, is the real treasure on here. From a bed of harmonious, looping violin phrases to Aksenov’s ascendant sax, the piece grows with Goncharova’s falsetto cries to reach a truly uplifting zenith.

The more challenging parts of this collection shouldn’t be skirted around though – there’s a deep sense of studious skill interfacing with freewheeling improv. At its best, Goncharova’s inquisitive practice yields moments of beauty as well as many a compelling foray into seldom heard sounds.

OW

Emissive – City of Rooms (Telephone Explosion)

It’s instructive that Emissive’s debut LP appears on Telephone Explosion. The Toronto-based label has a broad and accomplished catalogue which deals in indie rock and avant-garde as much as electronic music. Hailing from the same city, the artist otherwise known as Evan Jamal Vincent first appeared on leading Canadian dance music label Pacific Rhythm, and the sound on his LP remains beholden to the tradition of grid-sequenced techno. But his particular take on dubby, melodic machine music has a certain universality which leaps beyond the bounds of the dancefloor. Hence that first single attracted so much praise – there’s something in his sound which cuts through.

Listening to ‘Natural Springs’ it might be the particular ripple of dubby echoes or indeed those titular springy sound effects, the steady stream of melodic embellishments or the elegant throb of the acid b-line – something in Vincent’s sauce stands out. His sound chimes with the Canadian line in modern deep house, but it’s more strident and less smudged than the West Coast Mood Hut fraternity. It’s not all beholden to the thump of a 4/4 kick though. There is space afforded to the gentle pattering of ‘Chlorophyll’, which strikes a classic ambient techno tone naturally suited to the Emissive line in exquisite synthesis, while ‘Sunset Yellow’ explores fractured rhythms offset by expansive atmospherics.

On paper, all these ingredients chime with a thousand other techno producers any time in the past 30 years, but Emissive does something special with those tools which makes City of Rooms a must-check for those who like their machines with soul.

OW

Prince Daddy & The Hyena – Prince Daddy & The Hyena (Pure Noise Records)

Arguably one of the goofiest acts to peer out of the emo revival woodwork in recent years, Prince Daddy & The Hyena craft psychedelic, emotive, sardonic stoner-punk for the enlightened slacker generation.

Signing to Pure Noise Records last year, the Albany, New York based four-piece are set to finally drop their third full-length and follow up to 2019’s acclaimed ‘Cosmic Thrill Seekers’, which saw a purposeful lean into more bizarre compositional tendencies.

On their self-titled effort, there’s a sense of lashing out in all directions with some of the most frantic, unhinged cuts the band have ever produced such as the ever-shifting indie-grunge of ‘A Random Exercise In Impermanence (The Collector)’ or the early noughties emo-pop of standout ‘Shoelaces’.

The acoustic delicacy of initial single, ‘Curly Q’, might offer the most sincere turn yet from a group whose grey area machinations when it comes to sincerity and vulnerability are often what allow them to be so endearing.

Opting to self-title a release can traditionally be perceived as an artist standing by a singular work as totally definitive or exemplary. With Prince Daddy’s knack for melting pot aggro-post-emo-pop-punk-indie-grunge weirdness, their third album shirks the responsibility of topping its predecessor by embracing all sonic corners of their smoke-filled aesthetic with exceptional abandon.

ZB

Manegarm – Ynglingaattens (Ode (Napalm)

While viking and folk metal are often perceived as dated, theatrical genres, there are a subset of acts who utilise their source influences to immense degree.

One such prime example is Sweden’s Manegarm, who fuse elements of viking lore, folk instrumentation and black metal fury, in order to conjure pieces equal parts anthemic and vicious.

Following up 2019’s excellent, ‘Fornaldarsagor’, with their tenth full-length, ‘Ynglingaattens Ode’, the band move from strength to strength by leaning ever further into all dynamic aspects of their sonic spectrum.

Take the ethereal folk-twang strings that open lead single, ‘Ulvhjärtat,’ before careening into blast beats, frosted riffs and cavernous howls, yet all the while maintaining a triumphant chorus delivered with impassioned clean vocals.

While unlikely to convert the average passer-by, those with an ear for the genres in question, with niggling doubts as to whether their fusion can move beyond the playful and into the grandiose, look no further.

ZB

This week’s reviewers: Zach Buggy, Oli Warwick, Jude Iago James