Weekly Music Roundup: Arturo O'Farrill, feat. Ana Tijoux and Cat Power
Week of October 8: This week, border-busting music from Arturo O’Farrill, the new album from Cat Power, borderless music from OneBeat, and Van Morrison’s latest.
Ana Tijoux and Arturo O’Farrill Do A Fandango On The Border
Pianist, composer and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill’s brand new album is called Fandango At The Wall, and it was recorded at an annual gathering of Mexican and Mexican-American musicians at the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego. Arturo founded and still leads the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra here in New York, and he brought not only the band but also musical guests like Regina Carter, the great jazz violinist, and Rahim Al Haj, a terrific Iraqi-American oud player. The project may have been born out of anger at the idea of building walls between people instead of bridges, but the band is in rollicking form on the record and everyone sounds like they’re having a ball. This track, “Somos Sur,” or “We are the South,” features the Franco-Chilean rapper/singer/songwriter Ana Tijoux, whose rapid-fire rap, in Spanish, defiantly claims solidarity among the people of the South. (One verse is little more than a list of Latin American and African country names.) The track’s incendiary rhythms may be too fast to do a fandango, but the blend of Afro-Latin jazz and hip hop works a treat.
Van Morrison Offers A First Look At His 40th Album
Although the Northern Irish singer Van Morrison made his international reputation on songs like “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Moondance,” and “Domino,” he has always been much more than a pop singer. Much of his music is clearly rooted in jazz and soul, and some of his recent albums have included covers of favorite songs from bluesmen, mid-century R&B crooners, and the like. Now, Van The Man is preparing to release The Prophet Speaks, his 40th studio album. It’ll include songs by John Lee Hooker and Sam Cooke, but also a bunch of original works like the title track. “The Prophet Speaks” is built around the classic theme of the prophet whose speech is ignored, and buoyed by a vintage jazz sound that includes some elegant Spanish guitar work and tellingly deployed sax and trumpet. None of which disguises the fact that Morrison’s song, and his singing, are essentially right out of the blues tradition.
The Prophet Speaks, sporting one of the creepiest album covers I’ve seen in years (Van is shushing a ventriloquist’s dummy), comes out on December 7.
Cat Power’s Brooding, Beautiful “Horizon”
On Friday, Chan Marshall, the singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist who records as Cat Power, finally released a new album. Wanderer is her first record in six years, and it is largely an intimate, familial affair. (Marshall became a mom during the time between albums.) Family is certainly on her mind in “Horizon,” a song built on a series of arpeggiated piano chords stretched out long enough that when there’s a chord change, you feel it landing in your chest. Lyrics address mother, father, sister, brother, but the mood is brooding and distant. “You're on the horizon I cannot stay,” she sings; “You're on the horizon I'm on my way.” There’s some subtle electric guitar work and moody drumming, but towards the end a strange, electronic sound begins to weave itself between the threads of Marshall’s layered voice. It sounds like it might be a heavily processed vocal sample, and its effect is to add a note of disquiet to the regret that colors the song’s ending.
OneBeat Brings A World Of Music Together
OneBeat is the latest project from the fertile and perhaps febrile minds of Bang On A Can, the New York-based contemporary music group led by acclaimed composers Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and David Lang. What started as three barbarians at the gate making music with their friends has turned into an annual marathon concert, a record label, a virtuoso house band, a residency in the Berkshires at MASS MoCA, and a commissioning program. (And two of the three former barbarians are now Pulitzer Prize winners.) OneBeat is a residency as well, where young musicians from Madagascar to Malaysia to Manhattan spend two weeks together and then hit the road, playing music they’ve created together. This year’s OneBeat is heading up the East Coast of the US and concludes with three nights in three different boroughs of NYC. The Bang On A Can folks say that these shows often end “in a spontaneous and ecstatic world music dance party.” As evidence, they offer a track from last year’s OneBeat – an original tune called “Yeah Yeah.”
OneBeat plays on October 11 at the Bronx Museum; October 12 at the Queens Museum; and October 13 at Murmrr in Brooklyn.
Pond Releases A Slyly Hilarious Video for “Sixteen Days”
The Australian psychedelic pop band Pond is a spinoff from the even more popular and possibly even more psychedelic band Tame Impala. (The two bands often share members.) But Pond has been making a fair amount of noise on its own in recent years – its 2017 album The Weather was a musical and critical breakthrough, and fans have been waiting to see what happens next. Well, they’ll have to keep waiting a little while longer, because the next Pond album won’t be out until Spring of next year. But to keep us all entertained in the meantime, the boys offer this new video for their single “Sixteen Days.” In it, lead singer Nicholas Allbrook looks like a combination of Rocky from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a slightly glammed-up version of Iggy Pop. He’s strutting and preening for a group of oiled cameramen, one of whom is a body builder who is totally into his very own self, while the rest of the band offers the most desultory playing you could possibly expect for a song this dance-groove-y.
Pond plays in NY at Elsewhere on November 8.
