This week, a tribute to the city of Beirut, a new song from the band Beirut, and a debut for 100-year-old Marshall Allen.
Lebanese Singer Yasmine Hamdan Mourns The War In Her Homeland
Lebanese singer and producer Yasmine Hamdan is based in Paris, but the ongoing strife in her homeland has compelled her to write and release a new song called “Hon هون,” her first new music release since 2018. Hamdan was a pioneer in electronic Arab pop with her band Soapkills around the turn of the century, but you may know her from her scene in Jim Jarmusch’s film Only Lovers Left Alive, where she captivates the movie’s two music-loving vampires who stumble onto her performance in a small club. Her voice remains a deeply moving instrument, and in this song she sings about “a tiny land/with a gaping wound,” which could as easily pertain to Gaza as Lebanon, and points to the sad universality of her theme.
The Band Beirut Returns With A Unicorn, Of Sorts
Singer and songwriter Zach Condon’s band is called Beirut as a tribute to Lebanon’s history of cultures coming together, and over the years the group has (sporadically) presented works that blend indie rock, Balkan music, French chanson, and more. Now, the resurgent group (back after Condon had battled throat issues) has announced a new album called A Study Of Losses, written for the Swedish circus known as Kompani Giraff and based on the novel Verzeichnis einiger Verluste (“A List of Some Losses”) by Germany’s Judith Schalansky. The single they’ve released is a curious mix of vintage electronics, Condon’s crooning vocals, and quasi-orchestral production; it’s called “Guericke’s Unicorn,” inspired by the tale of a supposed unicorn fossil that was actually put together from the bones of other animals. (A narwhal provided the “unicorn” horn.) The video uses imagery from Kompani Giraff, and the band has announced it’ll be touring for the first time in six years. The album A Study Of Losses comes out on April 18.
Marshall Allen Releases First-Ever Solo Album – At Age 100
Sax player Marshall Allen has been part of the Sun Ra Arkestra since 1958, and since Sun Ra’s death in 1993, he has kept the spiritual/cosmic/musical legacy of Sun Ra alive, leading the Arkestra both in recordings and live performances. But now, Allen has released his debut solo album, New Dawn. All of the music was recorded after his 100th birthday last May, and includes his own work and of course some of Sun Ra’s pieces, like the classic “Angels and Demons At Play.” This piece, “African Sunset,” features Marshall Allen playing the EWI (electronic wind instrument) – easier on his century-old lungs than a sax, although he still plays that instrument too – which allows him to add some of the swooping astral touches that Arkestra fans will recognize, while the band, many of them Arkestra veterans as well, offer a sultry, Latin-tinged rhythm that may remind you of the 1960s instrumental style known as exotica.
Two Groups Combine For Musical Soundscapes Of The American West
Immersion is an electronic music duo consisting of Colin Newman of the post-punk band Wire, and his wife Malka Spigel of the rock band Minimal Compact. They’ve been doing a series of collaborations that they call Nanoclusters, and today they’ve released the latest, Vol. 3, which features the “ambient country” band SUSS. SUSS is known for expansive, cinematic works that suggest the open lands and big sky of the American West, and their collaboration with Immersion has resulted in a series of songs and instrumentals that feel like the soundtrack to a nighttime peyote trip under the desert stars. “In Between Us” has lonely vocals appearing out of the sonic mists created by SUSS’s sustained instrumental textures.
The two groups will be touring together, and playing in New York at Joe’s Pub on April 4.
Sachal Vasandani Reinterprets A Classic Jazz Ballad
“What’s New “ is not new – the song goes back to the 1930s, although I associate it with the great Frank Sinatra recording of it from his landmark 1958 album Only The Lonely. A perhaps even more heartbreaking rendition is Helen Merrill’s recording, from 1954, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who found her version after the Sinatra. Today, on Valentine’s Day, jazz singer (and songwriter) Sachal Vasandani released his album Best Life Now, which is mostly a collection of original songs that show love as a sloppy, even difficult thing – no flowers and chocolates here. And tucked in among these new songs is his inventive take on “What’s New.” Drummer Nate Smith provides a restrained but unmistakably funk-inflected beat, and the rest of the band, instead of leaning into the song’s melancholy, glides along beneath Vasandani’s croon. Dayna Stephens takes a saxophone solo that gets progressively more animated, and Vasandani provides wordless accompaniment here and there, allowing the questing sax to have the last word.