AP St Vincent – Daddy’s HomeĪnnie Clark’s take on 70s rock and soul – with everything from Donny Hathaway to Pink Floyd thrown into the inspirational mix – is thrillingly warped, distorted and occasionally disturbing: the lyrics find her wrestling with celebrity, her personal life and even the very nature of being St Vincent, but the songs are as sharp and smart as ever.
AP Sons of Kemet – Black to the FutureĪn understated, overlooked delight, Will Stratton’s sixth album is beautifully written, beautifully played, and beautifully arranged, its gorgeous, cosseting sound – deft fingerpicked guitar bearing the influence of Nick Drake – masking a series of deeply uneasy songs in which even the most personal moments feel tainted by paranoia brought on by global events. Parks has a lovely, airy voice the songs are beautifully turned her lyrics eschew the kind of hollow sermonising you might expect given the dread “voice of generation” tag in favour of diaristic colloquialism and small, poignant details. The considerable media hype around Arlo Parks’ debut was deserved: Collapsed in Sunbeams is a fabulous album.
Certainly, it’s hard to think of anything else this year that combines such dazzling, potent fretboard pyrotechnics with such a complete avoidance of cliche, informed as it is by his Tuareg heritage in Saharan Africa. Moctar’s ascent from Prince-obsessed global music outlier to full-on guitar hero feels completed by Afrique Victime, which may well be the best rock album of 2021 thus far. Her top lines are some of the best in Latin America, winding around reggaeton rhythms with earnest sensuality, with a strong sense of minor-key melancholy complicating and deepening the overall emotional tenor. The Colombian singer consolidated her superstar status with this breezy show of pop omnipotence. Photograph: Christopher Polk/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images Over music that gives Interpol-style moody indie rock just a touch of leather-jacketed swagger, frontwoman Florence Shaw recites the best lyric sheet of the year, where drab lightweight banalities – the weather, Antiques Roadshow, so many kinds of food – are arranged in poignant juxtapositions that suddenly lend them enormous weight. It’s face-toasting stuff, evocative of standing that bit too close to a bonfire to marvel at its fiery dynamics.
Reed plays sax and guitar, which seethe and rear throughout their third album (produced by Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson), while Nehill’s drums and effects summon stately hauteur and roiling fury. You might compare this sludgy Australian duo to Sleep or Earth for their shared deep-fried undertow, but Takiaya Reed and Sylvie Nehill – respectively of Black Cherokee and Māori heritage – prefer to see their supreme heaviness as the legacy of their Indigenous ancestors. Divide and Dissolve: We Are Really Worried About You – video
0 kommentar(er)
