This week, Moses Sumney returns, Raye shows off, and Robert Plant & Alison Kraus remake a Led Zeppelin remake. Also, Angélica Garcia, Landless, and beabadoobee.
Moses Sumney Offers A Vintage New Sound
Moses Sumney has used his extraordinary voice in many different ways: in his own art rock/futurist soul productions, in collaborations that leave genres behind, and in his growing career as an actor. His new single is called “Vintage,” and it looks back to the sounds of 90s R&B, with Sumney pleading with a lover to come back and give him another chance. “I'ma take it back to 1993,” he croons, “When I get my fingers on a time machine.” (That would make him one year old, but let’s allow the guy some poetic license.) The sentiments and the sounds are mostly vintage, although there are some subtle touches – an abrupt change of arrangement, a surprising flatted note in a melody – that suggest Sumney’s varied musical experiences. Sumney also directed the old-school R&B-style video.
Angélica Garcia Explores Her Dual Life On Gemelo
We first met Angélica Garcia in 2017 when she released Medicine For Birds, an album of gothic-tinged country-blues and indie rock. Last Fall, she began releasing songs in Spanish, signaling a major change in her musical direction. Now, her LP Gemelo (“Twin”) has come out, and as the title might suggest, it’s all about duality. There are still a few songs in English, but most are in Spanish. The texture is highly electronic, but still rooted in Latin rhythms. And the songs cover both loss and triumph. The album’s closing track, “Paloma,” has an exuberant chorus, and the arrangement seems to expand each time it comes around. It’s sung in Spanish but even if you don’t speak the language at all, you may find yourself singing along with the song’s irresistible, almost chant-like “hey Paloma” refrain.
A Hybrid Suite From Raye
The English singer Raye made history earlier this year when she walked off with six Brit Awards. No artist has ever won that many in a single year. Her combination of modern, hip hop-inflected pop and mid-century jazz has cross-generational appeal, and her new single, “Genesis,” is an unusual case in point. Unusual, because instead of blending the sounds and styles together, Raye gives us a three-part suite of disparate parts. It’s a gospel-tinged spoken word ballad, a mid tempo R&B/dance banger, and ultimately, a brassy big band jazz tune. She says the different sections are all held together by the theme of looking to let some light into dark times. I think the sudden switch to the jazz finale is a bit jarring, but each of the song’s many sounds is pretty convincing on its own.
Robert Plant and Alison Kraus Remake A Led Zeppelin Remake
Robert Plant and Alison Kraus are touring again, building on the success of their 2007 hit collaboration Raising Sand. And in addition to playing their own brand of American roots music, they’re also doing a few Led Zeppelin songs in their set. They’ve just released a version of “When The Levee Breaks,” which Plant and the rest of the band had based on the old Memphis Minnie song. This new version is darker, with droning electric guitar, but it also includes a quick reference to the Zeppelin song “Friends” and a violin solo that seems to blend Appalachia with hints of India. The final chorus simply fades out; presumably this song segues into something else in the duo’s live set.
Robert Plant & Alison Kraus play at the Jones Beach Theater on June 29 and the PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey on June 30.
beabadoobee Waltzes In On Her New Single
The singer and songwriter beabadoobee (aka Beatrice Laus) was born in the Philippines and raised in London; she has become a leading indie pop artist with her brand of warm, folky, just slightly off-kilter music. Her new single is called “Coming Home,” and it’s a charming little waltz with lyrics about such important events as doing the dishes and taking out the trash, all told from the vantage point of someone who’s on tour (an American state, she sings, merely reminds her of how far she is from home) and missing home. And possibly listening to the Beatles.
beabadoobee’s new album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, comes out on August 16, and she’s had to add a second Central Park Summer Stage show on September 12 to her previously announced September 11 concert.
Landless Sings Haunting Versions Of Irish Folk Songs
Landless is four women from Dublin who offer versions of mostly old, mostly Irish folk songs in bewitching harmonies, in part inspired by traditional American Sacred Harp singing, with occasional, spare instrumental accompaniment. Cut from the same doom-laden, drone-based cloth as Lankum and OXN (and working with producer “Spud” Murphy, from both of those bands), Landless have just released an album called Luireach – which, interestingly enough, can mean both breastplate and a type of hymn – and this track, “The Fisherman’s Wife,” begins with a single voice over a repeated piano note, before a second voice joins in, and soon, all four are describing the hardships of the women who wait for their husbands to return from the seas. The simple, insistent piano accompaniment suggests their nervous pacing, but the real emotion is in the bleak harmonies of the four voices.