Weekly Music Roundup: Agua Viva, Mark Ronson, and Daptone Records' 100th Single
Week of June 24: This week, a new track from two late soul legends Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, and a pair of dark summer songs from Agua Viva and Shards.
Mark Ronson and Angel Olsen Collaborate On New Single
Super producer Mark Ronson, best known for his globe-dominating hit with Bruno Mars called “Uptown Funk” and his work with the late Amy Winehouse, released an album Friday called Late Night Feelings. To call it a solo album would be totally missing the point; on it, Ronson collaborates with Miley Cyrus, Camila Cabello, Alicia Keys, and others. These are some of the biggest names in pop, and Ronson himself has had a big hand in shaping what modern pop sounds like, but he has shown an affinity for older musical styles as well. And in the track “True Blue,” he finds a musical soulmate in Angel Olsen, the singer and songwriter whose work can be folky but can sometimes sound like something out of a skating rink from 1962. Or maybe a David Lynch movie set in a skating rink in 1962. Together they’ve crafted a song that flits between decades - the teen tragedies of the girl group era (“Leader Of The Pack,” etc.), and the edgy production and late-night mopey dance floor songs, or “sad bangers” as Ronson calls them, of today. It’s an odd fit on paper, but on this track it works.
The Late Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley Lead Daptone’s 100th Single Release
Daptone Records, the musical home of the late, great soul revivalists Sharon Jones (and her band the Dap-Kings) and Charles Bradley, has always done things the old-fashioned way. They record to analog tape; they make it their mission to find and support overlooked talents in fields like soul, Cuban, and garage rock; they release 45 rpm singles. On June 28, they’ll release their 100th single, and it is a pretty special event. Not because of the nice round number, but because it features Sharon Jones, and Charles Bradley, and some of the label’s other top vocalists (Lee Fields, Duke Amayo of Antibalas, Naomi Shelton, etc.), all recorded back in 2016. The song, “Hey Brother (Do Unto Others),” was originally written and recorded by the label’s retro-reggae band The Frightnrs, whose lead singer, Dan Klein, died of ALS just before the release. The label originally intended this soul ballad version of the song as a tribute to Klein, but with the loss since then of both Bradley and Jones, the song now carries an even heavier load. But it’s one that it carries lightly.
Argentina’s Agua Viva Casts a Musical Spell
Agua Viva is the work of Argentine post-punk singer and songwriter Josi Arias, who is now based in New York. She has just released an album called El Hechizo de la Luna, which means The Spell of the Moon, done with the New York producer Hara Kiri. It sounds as if these two women had just discovered the pop song and were trying it out – and not getting it quite right. (I mean that as a compliment.) In spirit, if not in sound, it reminds me of Brian Eno’s early work. The songs have a dreamy, almost magical quality, and you’ll hear echoes of South American folk, Brazilian pop, and something a bit more gothic. The track “Maracas” is a good example, with its easy rhythms, catchy melody, and unexpected chord changes. The vocals seem to have been layered to an almost Enya-like extent, but underneath the feathery singing lurks a darker-hued keyboard, a reminder perhaps that a spell can be cast by us, or upon us.
Vocal Group Shards Makes a Startling Debut
The British producer Kieran Brunt is also a singer, and his new project called Shards is a celebration of the many colors of the human voice - especially when different voices are blended together. Consisting of 12 voices, electronics and percussion, Shards is preparing to release its debut album, Find Sound, on August 30, but they’ve just put out their first single, and it’s an arresting sound. “Summer Sickness” offers a blend of voices that seems to hover above a repeating, rhythmic synthesizer figure. But the mood is not one of idyllic summer afternoons - Brunt says he wanted to write a song that sounds like something out a teen movie, undercut by dark and unsettled imagery.
Brooklyn Composer Christopher Cerrone’s Beautiful New Art Song
Composer Christopher Cerrone has collaborated with the LA-based new music group called Wild Up on a trio of song cycles - musical settings of poems by three different American writers. They will appear together on the album The Pieces That Fall To Earth, all featuring Wild Up conducted by Christopher Rountree; but each of the three collections has a different lead vocalist. In The Branch Will Not Break, set to the poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winner James Wright, Cerrone calls for a “composite” lead singer – a vocal octet. Right now, only the opening song is available to hear: it’s called “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,” and features some absolutely ravishing vocal harmonies, shot through with streaks of sonic light and shadow, often from instrumental sources that are hard to identify. (I’m guessing bowed vibes, at least towards the end.) Wright’s poem is a kind of timeless portrait of a pastoral, summer evening – until the final line, “I have wasted my life.” Cerrone’s setting, featuring male voices, has an almost weightless quality that suits the poem, but when that last line comes, he finally adds in the female voices, and “I have wasted my life” becomes a kind of repeated prayer, sung with a stunning, twilit glow.
The track cuts off at the very end – presumably this song leads directly to the next one. We’ll find out for sure when The Pieces That Fall To Earth comes out on July 26.
