Weekly Music Roundup: Ali Sethi, Kate Soper, and Yola

This week, Ringo Starr with Alison Kraus, a globetrotting song from Pakistani-American singer Ali Sethi, and a time-traveling opera by composer Kate Soper. Also, Cincinnati rock band Wussy and  British-born, US-based singer Yola. 

Ringo Starr’s New “LA Country” Song

Ringo Starr will be releasing his next album, Look Up, on January 10, and today, he put out the album’s closing track, “Thankful.” This song features Alison Kraus, the country/bluegrass singer and fiddler, helping out on vocals. He says it has an “LA country sound,” although much of the album was made in Nashville. Look Up is another example of the former Beatle’s lifelong interest in country music, and features a stellar cast of guests, with Starr himself singing and playing drums throughout, and T-Bone Burnett producing. “Thankful” is a bit of an outlier in that it’s the only song on the album that Starr co-wrote; but its message of positivity is classic Ringo. 

Ali Sethi’s Globetrotting New Single

Pakistani-American singer Ali Sethi has a large global following, and his new single “Lovely Bukhaar” reflects that. A groove-laden mix of South Asian and Western dance music, it also features a lovely flamenco guitar solo. The main feature, naturally, is Sethi’s voice, a sultry croon at the start of the song, but building to an anthemic call. After the guitar solo, a shuddering, artificial sound comes in, which turns out to be Sethi’s processed vocals.  

Wussy Returns With Tribute To Their Hometown

Cincinnati Ohio is the name of the new album by Wussy, marking the Cincinnati rock band’s first new music in six years. Much of the album has the jangly pop sound of bands like REM or Big Star, with dual lead singers Lisa Walker and Chuck Cleaver alternating lead duties and occasionally singing in harmony. (And on the track “Inhaler,” singing two separate sets of lyrics simultaneously.) This album’s leadoff track, “The Great Divide,” has dreamy vocals (by Walker) and droning open strings on the guitars, all shrouded in noise – a sound reminiscent of shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine.  

Kate Soper’s Momentous Week

Vocalist and composer Kate Soper has become known for her avantgarde operas, which may be grand in ambition but don’t use the huge orchestral and choral forces you’d hear at The Met. On Tuesday, the NY Philharmonic announced that Soper had been named the orchestra’s Kravis Emerging Composer – a post that comes with a 50K stipend and a commission to write a new work, for soprano and orchestra, that she and they will premiere next May. Today, she released her latest work, The Romance Of The Rose, featuring a cast of seven singers, Soper included, and the new music group known as the Wet Ink Ensemble. In many ways, it’s a typical Soper effort: ranging freely across styles and periods, she draws on Medieval and Renaissance music as well as the dramatic, challenging sounds of contemporary modernism. Based on a Medieval French poem, the opera presents as an allegory, following The Dreamer, who drags The Lover through a landscape populated by enigmatic characters. (Soper plays Shame, the thorniest of the cast.) This excerpt is “Lady Reason’s Symmetrical Virelai,” the virelai being a medieval French rhyming scheme (and the music that accompanies it); the influence of Minimalism is clear in the repeating marimba patterns, and the voices sound closer to pop vocalists than conventional opera singers. 

Yola Releases A New Kind Of “Symphony”

The word “symphony” literally means a group of sounds in harmony or concord with each other, although it has come to be associated with a specific kind of long-form Western classical composition. The British-born, US-based singer Yola has just released a single called “Symphony,” taken from her next EP, My Way!, which is due on January 17. Here, the sounds are those of 90s funk and R&B, and while Yola has in the past made waves with her particular mix of country and soul, on “Symphony” she lets loose and aims for the cheap seats – and when she tells us “I’ll sing like a symphony,” you better believe her voice will reach them.