Weekly Music Roundup: Ali Sethi, Joey Bada$$, and Maya Beiser
This week, Ali Sethi’s long-awaited debut; Joey Bada$$ claims the throne, sort of; and Maya Beiser gets biblical, sort of. Also, Jeffrey Brooks’ paintbrush piano.
Ali Sethi Releases Love Language – In Several Languages
Born in Pakistan and now based in New York, singer Ali Sethi has been making waves for a few years – his song “Pasoori” has been a global hit – so it’s a little surprising to realize that his new album, Love Language, is actually his debut solo LP. Openly queer, trained in South Asian classical music, and raised on Western pop, Ali Sethi shows his range over sixteen tracks that include reggaeton, dream pop, elements of hip hop production, echoes of the 90s South Asian Massive dance movement, and more. In its ecumenical embrace of so many pop styles, it’s a little reminiscent of Bad Bunny’s work, with Sethi singing mostly in Urdu and Punjabi. (There is some English, nicely deployed, in the song “Villain.”) This song, “Hymn 4 Him (Ghoomray),” switches seamlessly between Latin reggaeton beats and South Asian tabla rhythms. Sethi croons the verses, but reaches for an arena-ready chorus in one of several highlights from this rising star of global pop.
Joey Bada$$ Is (Almost) The Greatest NYC Rapper Ever, He Says
Hip hop is full of rappers boasting about their skills, their wordplay and their flow, their bank accounts, etc. Joey Bada$$ has just put out his new album, called Lonely At The Top, and the title tells you all you need to know. The lead single, “ABK,” finds Bada$$ reaching for metaphors from all over the place to show just how above the fray he is – he’s King Arthur, he’s the franchise player – so it’s super interesting to hear him rap about how everyone’s afraid to come at him because they know he’s “the illest spitter in the city after Nas, Big and Jigga.” So… he’s the fourth-best rapper from New York after Nas, Biggie Smalls, and Jay-Z? That’s unusually moderate, measured language from the guy who in the previous verse says “the crown is mine.” On the other hand, this is the same rapper who performed a version of this on the Jimmy Kimmel show with almost comically cleaned up language, so Bada$$ clearly knows how to play the game if you’re gonna get to that lonely, lonely top. And acknowledging your heroes isn’t a bad move.
Lot’s Wife Inspired Salt, From Cellist Maya Beiser
Cellist and producer Maya Beiser has done some ambitious and surprising projects – re-creating David Bowie’s final album Blackstar with composer/arranger Evan Ziporyn as a cello concerto, or doing an all-cello version of Terry Riley’s groundbreaking Minimalist classic In C, among others. Her latest is Salt, an album that features new music compositions – and several very old pieces – that look at how women’s voices have been silenced over time. There are laments for Phaedra (from the late Sir John Tavener) and Ariadne (from the early 17th century composer Monteverdi), as well as music by Meredith Monk and Clarice Jensen for multiple layers of cellos, often electronically enhanced. The title track uses words by the screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson and the voice of the remarkable singer/actress/radio host Helga Davis to bring to life a work written for Beiser by Missy Mazzoli. It offers a harrowing, century-blurring look at the Biblical figure of Lot’s Wife, who turns to look back while fleeing her home and is turned to a pillar of salt. The reference to modern refugees is unmistakable. The suite is in five parts, and in Part 2, Lot’s Wife (notice we don’t even get her name in the story) recounts a summer day when “He photographed me/Cause we were bored/And hot.” But she goes on to say it was a long time ago – “Before bibles and iPhones” – and Helga’s shapeshifting voice adds to the kaleidoscopic nature of this striking work.
Jeffrey Brooks’ New Music Is Out Of Time
Composer Jeffrey Brooks has just released his new album, The Memory Palace, and it is a remarkable document for several reasons. First, there is the striking, floating sound of the music – unmoored from rhythm for long stretches, and when rhythm does enter, the music seems unperturbed by its arrival. This from a composer whose earlier compositions were fiercely pulsing works that incorporated electric guitars and drum sets alongside more conventional classical instruments. Then there’s the fact that Jeffrey Brooks is still making music at all. “Okay it’s not exactly the cover of Rolling Stone,” he wrote in a recent email, but “I'm on the cover of Stroke/Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Magazine.” Brooks has had at least four strokes (doctors aren’t sure about the exact nature of the last one), which have left him unable to use his right hand, with a weakened left hand and vision that couldn’t really follow text on a page. But Brooks found other ways to write music – and other ways to play it. The central sound of the title track of The Memory Palace is the instrument he calls the Steinocaster, a grand piano with electric guitar pickups which is played by continually brushing the strings inside the instrument with paintbrushes. Placing weights on the keys changes the sound (and allows a musician with very limited mobility a way to still “play”). The resulting sound is eerie, almost like an echo of a sound that you didn’t initially hear. And because of the pickups that sound can be sustained over time, something a piano can’t do. In addition to the Steinocaster, this piece sports contributions from several of the redoubtable Bang On A Can All-Stars (Brooks has been a longtime associate of the Bang On A Can new music organization), and as it progresses, it seems to say something about the fragility, and ultimately perhaps, the unreliability, of memory.
