This week, returns for The Decemberists and Staples Jr. Singers, and new music from Joan As Police Woman and Meshell Ndegeocello, separately and together.  Also, So Percussion and Caroline Shaw, and STEFA*.

The Decemberists Return, Same As They Ever Were

It’s been six years since we last had an album from The Decemberists, the indie-folk-prog-rock band led by singer and storyteller Colin Meloy. Their new album is called As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, and as we’ve come to expect, it’s full of brainy, melodic songs, many of which clearly wish they were centuries-old English folk tunes. But there are also echoes of tango, spiritual jazz, country, and orchestral music. The standout track is the album’s closer, the 19-minute long “Joan In The Garden,” a shining example of what makes Decemberist fans so dedicated to the band (and of what makes their detractors so dismissive). An epic dream of Joan Of Arc in an alternate history, it begins as a haunting ballad, but soon picks up steam (and an increasingly grand arrangement); bells ring out, the guitar stops singing and begins to wail. And then, about 10 minutes in, the song gives way to an abstract soundscape full of half-heard voices, nocturnal keyboards, rustling electronics… it is, depending on your point of view, either classic or self-indulgent psychedelia in the tradition of early Pink Floyd.  (Of course, it could be both.) Sixteen minutes in, the song returns, in a hard-charging, metal-adjacent version, and Meloy finally reveals where the album title comes from.

The Decemberists perform on CBS Saturday Morning this coming weekend.  

Staples Jr. Singers Release Their First New Album In 50 Years

Most of us first heard of the Staples Jr. Singers in 2022, when the Luaka Bop label reissued their self-produced 1975 gospel/blues album When Do We Get Paid. A band of siblings from rural Mississippi, they had named themselves after their favorite band (the Staple Singers, obviously), recorded that album, and drove around the South performing. Nearly half a century later, they found themselves, for the first time, leaving the South and playing in actual concert halls. (I saw them at that year’s Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, where they quickly became audience faves.)  Now, they’ve released Searching, a collection of new songs produced by Ahmed Gallab, who records as Sinkane. He knows better than the mess with a good (and authentic) thing, but you can hear his impact in the hypnotic, reverb-drenched production on “Don’t Need No Doctor,” one of the album’s two standout tracks, and even more so perhaps in the other, the opening song “Living In This World Alone.” Featuring the voice of Annie Brown Caldwell, the sister in the founding trio of Brown siblings, and a band that now includes three generations of the Brown family, the song cooks thanks to their ability to relate to Gallab’s effortless sense of funk.  

Members of Combo Chimbita Help Out On STEFA*’s New Song

Colombian-American singer Stefa Marin Alarcon (they/them), who records under the name STEFA*, has just released the lead track from their debut album Born With An Extra Rib. The song “Sonambula,” or “sleepwalker,” uses lots of alternately spacey and buzzy electronic effects, with STEFA* singing over almost chant-like layers of their voice. Half of the NY-based Colombian band Combo Chimbita helps out, with Prince of Queens on bass and synth, and Dilemastronauta on drums. Their version of sleepwalking sounds a lot like dancing.  

Joan As Police Woman Releases First Single From New LP

“Do we secretly long for ruin?” wonders Joan Wasser, who records under the name Joan As Police Woman. Putting aside for the moment the question of whether “secretly” belongs in that sentence, the sentiment is the driving force behind Joan’s new single, “Long For Ruin,” the first from her new album Lemons, Limes and Orchids, which comes out on September 20. It has a midtempo groove that recalls 90s trip hop, with Joan’s soulful vocals, more R&B than the punky sound of her early work, backed by an elegant arrangement that features organ, tasteful guitar riffs, and the always excellent Meshell Ndegeocello on bass.  

And Speaking Of Meshell Ndegeocello…

The Grammy-winning bassist, singer, songwriter, and producer is planning to release her next album on August 2; it’s called No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, and is inspired by that writer and civil rights activist, and especially by his 1963 non-fiction book The Fire Next Time. Ndegeocello has just released the single called “Love,” which is a colorful mix of gospel-inflected vocals, funky bass, and celestial, almost psychedelic keyboards. It’s an unlikely blend that could easily turn gray in the wrong hands, but this is familiar territory for Ndegeocello and she gradually builds up the arrangement as the song arcs like a rainbow towards its conclusion. 

Meshell Ndegeocello has also announced that she’ll be playing at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn on August 2, in Prospect Park. 

So Percussion and Caroline Shaw Continue Their Collaboration

The quartet known as So Percussion champions the work of living composers; Caroline Shaw is not just a living composer, but a Pulitzer Prize winner. So their collaborations in 2021 made sense. In both of those records, Shaw drew on traditional American music, especially folk hymns, for lyrics and occasional bits of melody. She’s the composer, and on the second of the two albums, the vocalist; So Percussion is the performing ensemble. But their new album, Rectangles And Circumstance, is different. This is a “band” record. All five musicians wrote the songs together, and used the same multitracking and production techniques common to pop and rock records. So Percussion’s idea of “percussion” includes everything from synthesizers to a roll of duct tape, and Shaw’s multitracked vocals often shimmer in counterpoint with themselves. The track “Slow Motion” also features Danni Lee Parpan, who is half of Shaw’s other songwriting band, Ringdown, and who helped write and sing this song.  It’s typical of the group’s refusal to stay in their musical lane.