Bartees Strange "Live Forever (RTP)"
Shy Boys "Talk Loud (Polyvinyl)"
From Polyvinyl:
Do you think you know what Shy Boys sound like?
Each album feels different, and the audience gets the pleasure of listening in while Shy Boys experiment with and master new sounds. On their new album, Talk Loud, our Shy Boys are clearly so in sync with each other that they are able to explore getting out of sync in a way that feels right. The album is fun and scary at the same time. Right when you start to feel comfortable you turn a corner into a different dimension. They pan vocals, take audible breaths. The backing vocals are pure feeling. There’s a comfort to feeling surrounded by the five distinct voices that make up Shy Boys, but once in a while it starts to feel foreboding, too.Touring can be a grind, and it can also feel like summer camp. Bands develop shorthand for communication, get used to tight quarters. You talk to each other and you sit in silence. It magnifies and affects your relationships with your bandmates, with yourself, and what home means to you. With Bell House, the tight-knit Shy Boys spent about a “year-and-a-half cheek-to-cheek in a conversion van touring the country,” recalls lead singer, Collin Rausch. They became friends with artists they’d been fans of… tripped in northern California under the redwoods… played for a couple thousand people and… played for two people. Arriving home from this intense journey together and separating from each other physically aligned with some personal and musical perspective changes. The outcome is an album that grapples with attachment.
“Fraid I Might Die” and “Trash” reference the universal passage of time. On “Fraid I Might Die” the synth sounds are airy and sharp. The accompaniment builds, and then cuts to just keys, the lyrics repeating all throughout, like a chant. “Fraid I might die / With every beat I get older / Fraid I might die / With every beat I get closer.” The more you exist, the closer you are to ceasing to exist; living is dying. The lyrics of “Trash” seem at first to be about daily life: cleaning the house knowing you will just have to clean it “over and again” – the monotony of daily life. But upon a closer listen, it stretches beyond the narrator’s house and into the whole world and the painful overwhelming endless cycle of consumerism. Another standout moment on the album, “View From The Sky,” is undeniable proof that bands can still write hits organically. The song has glossy elements while remaining endearingly human. There’s doo-wop backing vocals paired with laser-show shredding. Every sound is imbued with emotion, every flick of the wrist is meaningful. There’s just no way to listen to this album without tuning into their spiritual well of connectedness. It embeds itself in your body.
Shy Boys are like musical astronauts, with instrumentation from the beyond. Talk Loud has the heart-string-yanking ability of music concocted in a laboratory, but it still feels heavily human. It’s complicated, it’s swirly, it surrounds you and extends itself deep into your brain. There are noticeably more synths (and less guitar) than previous Shy Boys albums. There is a lot of hand percussion sprinkled throughout the record: shaker, wood block, finger cymbal. Drums and bass do a secret handshake. Lyrics about malaise are juxtaposed with joyful sounds. The record is cinematic, sparkly, jumpy, and spooky. At times Talk Loud connotes a children’s TV program or puppet show: haunting and funny become one. In their own words, “Shy Boys is a bubble…to the point that we might just be making music for ourselves.” Their musical perspective and context is limited and insular, which translates into music that feels limitless, experimental, and unlike anything.
Geof Bradfield / Ben Goldberg / Dana Hall Trio "General Semantics (Delmark)"
The collaborative trio of Ben Goldberg (clarinet, contra alto clarinet), Geof Bradfield (soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet), and Dana Hall (percussion) explores new directions on General Semantics. Their Delmark Records debut features original music by the trio as well as unique interpretations of Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, and Hermeto Pascoal. The unusual instrumentation-especially the lack of a bassist- enables the musicians to transcend traditional instrument roles of accompaniment, improvisation, and interaction and create music that embraces form and harmony alongside freedom and spontaneous improvisation.
Sidi Touré "Afrik Toun Mé (Thrill Jockey)"
Sidi Touré is one of Mali’s most enduring and buoyant artists. As a master of Songhaï Music, Touré has been lauded for his dynamic and emotive voice both as the leader of the Songhaï Stars and on his own. Following the boisterous full band of arrangements of 2018’s Toubalbero, Afrik Toun Mé is an album of intimate comforts and subtle beauties. Touré, joined by virtuoso guitarist Mamadou Kelly and calabash player Boubou Diallo, blends parables and tales of inspiration that honor courage and resilience in the face of trial and tragedy. The spare and arresting songs of Afrik Toun Mé (in English, Africa Must Unite) captures the familiarity and personal touch of life’s small communions with the sincerity and poise that are indelible to Sidi Touré.
The lean recordings throughout Afrik Toun Mé retain the innate beauty and hopefulness of Touré’s music. Trading melodic guitar phrases and polyrhythmic gestures ripple around Touré’s dulcet singing like the swing and slosh of gentle brooks. Album centerpiece “Tchaw Yan” (roughly “Knowledge”) emphasizes how paramount Touré sees the pursuit of science is to the advancement and improvement of Africa. Touré says: “Science is the driver of progress. Today everything we see is thanks to scientific progress and to arrive at scientific progress people must go get an education. If Europeans were able to colonize Africa, it was because of technology. If China has become a world power, it is also because of technology and education. They started by agricultural auto-sufficiency, then healthcare and finally scientific progress – airplanes, computers, mobile phones, etc. And so he who is not educated, is in total obscurantism.” Touré highlights individual growth as well as communal with stories of virtue like “Bortchin” (A Noble Man) and sacrifice like “Guara Tcha Jina” (The Rooster’s First Crow). For Touré, this progress is critical to the unification of Africa: “Look at the buzzing of this beautiful Africa, which slept before like a fish in water, slept like a doe wandering in the bush. Now troubled by fishers, threatened by hunters, she has woken up. Africa must unite as so many luminaries have already said: Bob Marley, Alpha Blondy, Tiken Jah Fakoly… Doctor Kwame Nkrumah said Africa must unite or it will perish. We need African unity, at whatever the cost.”
Touré has been faced with the many challenges that come with limitations on communal and social gatherings during the 2020 pandemic. As one of countless artists around the world severely impacted by these limitations, his nearly daily performances have been restricted for months on end. The modest acoustic trio on Afrik Toun Mé captures the essence of his passionate performances, Touré delivering his encouraging and urgent messages as if plain spoken to friends gathered around a fire or over a cup of tea. In the face of turmoil both local and global, Sidi Touré’s Afrik Toun Mé is a work of pure radiance.