Chayse Porter "Endless / Boundless"
From Earth Libraries:
How to describe Porter’s solo work…mischievous pop? Cotton candy spun with barbed wire? Beatle-esque, Burt Bacarach-inspired soft rock left to freeze in the warped confines of a funhouse mirror? Whatever your preferred descriptor, Endless / Boundless is a fresher, more direct record than the high-concept psyche excavations of Chay’s Palace, his 2022 sophomore album.
Where Palace was painstakingly crafted with vintage analogue equipment in a studio, Porter opted to compose and record Endless alone in his basement, before the bursting seeds of ideas had any chance to wilt. “I didn’t want to sit on an idea too long and allow the inspiration to fizzle out. It was more important for me to express myself immediately and directly, than ‘correctly,’” said Porter.
While Porter may have used the humble and convenient confines of his basement to write and record the album, engineer Brad Timko gave the final mix a sparkling sheen at the legendary Studio B in Muscle Shoals. However, don’t let this polished sound fool you – there are darker corners of Endless / Boundless to discover along the winding path of these nine songs. **
Said another way, there’s more than just the “dreamsicle skies” of “Rolls of 35”, Endless’ relaxed earworm of a lead single. Porter is intentionally releasing the record’s breeziest material first to welcome listeners in before they reach the thornier, stranger expanses nestled within the tracklist. “I compare it to like…I want you to see the stick that’s holding up the crate and say ‘Okay, that cheese looks really good. But…why is that stick there?’” said Porter with a wry smile.
Lyrically, Endless ruminates on unrequited love, toxic American exceptionalism, and, in one of the record’s lighter moments, unexpected kindness from strangers. There’s jubilant dream pop (opening stunner “Bleeding Hearts”), shoegaze with threats of violence (“Lead Pipe Cinch”), and a cinematic instrumental centerpiece best enjoyed with eyes closed (“Copter”).
With the record on the way and a live band assembled and ready to go, Porter has left listeners a trail of breadcrumbs in anticipation
Ty Segall "Three Bells"
A fifteen song cycle that takes a journey to the center of the self. Ty’s been on this kind of trip before, so he’s souped up a vehicle that’s all his own – a sophisticated machine – to take us there this time. The conception of Three Bells arcs, rainbow-like, into a land nearly beyond songs – but inside of them, Ty relentlessly pushes the walls further and further in his writing and playing to cast light into the most opaque depths.
Elena Setein "Moonlit Reveries"
Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Elena Setién uses her sweeping vocal range and delicate arrangements to create a universe where dream worlds converge with reality. Her compositions, grounded by her remarkable voice and her guitar or piano, ripple with textures and thoughtful details. Setién’s masterfully allegorical songs are both emotionally immediate and provoking. A musician’s musician, Setién has drawn collaborators from far and wide, from her improvisational duo Little Red Suitcase to more recent collaborations with Steve Gunn, Mary Lattimore, and fellow Basque musicians Xabier Erkizia and Grande Days. For Moonlit Reveries, a hallucinatory promenade of mood and rhythm, Setién is joined by renowned drummer/percussionist Glenn Kotche of Wilco.
At the core of Moonlit Reveries is the inspiration that Setién and Kotche found in one another. The two met while Kotche was touring Spain with Wilco, Kotche having been a fan of Setién’s 2022 album Unfamiliar Minds. Immediately the two started discussing collaboration which Setién began by using a series of unique drum patterns from Kotche’s “A Beat A Week” series as the basis for tracks like “Surfacing” and “Asking”. Kotche then sent in fresh drum takes for select pieces that embellished the frameworks set by Setién. Though not every piece features his drumming, his presence on the album invigorated Setién’s desire to delve further into rhythm as an avenue of expression, incorporating more Latin-influenced rhythmic architecture to her music than there previously has been. Says Setién, “Funnily enough, I, being a Spanish artist, sought inspiration in the rhythms of a Chicago drummer to reach something with a Latin feel to it. A somehow surrealistic way to get there.” The songs of Moonlit Reveries also make use of more guitar than Setién previously had ever explored, which Setién traces back to Steve Gunn introducing her to the music of Bridget St. John. “What fascinated me right from the beginning, was the calmness in her voice and her low register. Her music inspired me to try to write songs with a guitar rather than a keyboard: there’s more space for the voice and the sound qualities of both voice and guitar kind of melt into each other.”
Moonlit Reveries is an embrace of wonder, an ode to the alluring beauty, and glow of dream states. For Setién, dreams are to be appreciated, “I remember my dreams very often and they are part of my everyday life, as much as other everyday things.” The compositions are speckled with ethereal embellishments, from ghostly harpsichords to cavernous echoes to reverberating kalimba. Like the frosts of winter melting away, the darker textures of her previous albums give way to flashes of brightness. The twinkle of “Coloured Lizards” lilts with its delicate breeziness. Title track “Moonlit Reveries” revels in a playful mystique, Setién’s words carried by the wind across the night’s sky. For the gentle “Hard Heart” and the waltzing “Strange,” Setién kept things relatively unembellished, valuing the potency of their simplicity. “Mothers” captures the hopeful embrace of parenthood, letting go, and the cycle of life; it was written in the wake of Low’s Mimi Parker’s premature death. A mother and artist herself, Setién was deeply saddened by the loss while drawing strength from what Parker accomplished in her short time.
The winner of several Basque music awards, Elena Setién’s beautiful voice, creative arrangements, and both improvisational and compositional experience make for sophisticated songs with singular textural approaches. Her otherworldly sounds are perfectly complemented by Kotche’s light and agile syncopations throughout. Shading her parables with impressionistic hues, Elena Setién’s Moonlit Reveries is a touching embrace of the mysterious, a sparkling revelry of light dancing across a horizon, lifting the darkness from above.
Torres "What an Enormous Room"
From Merge Records:
What an enormous room is TORRES’ sixth studio album (her third with Merge). It was recorded in September and October 2022 at Stadium Heights Sound in Durham, North Carolina. It was engineered by Ryan Pickett, produced by Mackenzie Scott and Sarah Jaffe, mixed by TJ Allen in Bristol, UK, and mastered by Heba Kadry in NYC. The album contains 10 songs. Mackenzie wrote all of them. Sarah played bass guitar, synths, drums, organ, and piano. Mackenzie sang vocals, played guitar, bass, synths, organ, piano, and programmed drums. Additional synth bass, tambourine, and shakers were played by TJ Allen.