Weekly Music Roundup: The Smiths Go Acoustic; Franz Schubert Celebrates Freedom
Weekly Roundup | Aug 25, 2015
Rescue your Tuesdays with our weekly roundup of music news, videos and songs that just might help you get through the rest of the week. This week, meet the Wizard of Oz-tralia and celebrate "free" in more ways than one.
A Super Catchy Song From The Wizard Of Oz-tralia
The first thing I heard from Royal Headache, the punk rockers from Sydney, Australia, was their song “High.” It’s a full-speed-ahead, almost Pogues-like romp through bad language and bad behavior. The album High came out this past Friday, and the band marked the release with a new video for the song “Carolina,” which I guess I’ll call a punk ballad. With its bedrock acoustic guitar and an irresistible, jangly chorus, it may actually evoke an older, pre-punk song – in fact, at the very end, lead singer Shogun (nice) refers to the girl he’s been singing about as “sweet Caroline.” As for the video, it starts off as a boring old band-in-a-room shot, until Shogun flips out and takes us on a pell-mell tour of Sydney’s Inner West, a rapidly gentrifying area of the city that plays Oz to the cramped studio’s Kansas.
Celebrating Freedom – Both Personal and Musical
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. It also marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the influential, Chicago-based group known as AACM -- the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. It would be hard to imagine American jazz today without the AACM: pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, sax player Anthony Braxton, drummer Jack DeJohnette, all of the members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago…the list has gone on and on for decades. Pianist Adegoke Steve Colson joined as a college student in 1972, and he is now issuing a 2-record set of solo piano works called Tones For, which marks both anniversaries. The pieces trace the fight for African-American rights from Harriet Tubman to the shooting of Michael Brown. The musical language can be gnarly and challenging, or lyrical and heartfelt. The album is due November 20, but you can hear the lovely “A Thousand More, If Only They Knew” now. And if you’re not familiar with that phrase, look it up.
Celebrating Free Music, With Franz Schubert
The Miro String Quartet is a top-shelf chamber music ensemble from Austin, TX. On September 1, they are leaving their longtime record label and self-releasing their new album, Transcendence, featuring Franz Schubert’s masterful, late String Quartet #15. No big deal -- half the indie rock bands in Austin self-release their music. BUT, the Miro are offering a new business model: they are giving the record away. During the month of September, you can visit their new website and download the music for free. The quartet owns the rights to four of its other albums too, and if you want all five, you pay $10 -- and then you can pick an educator or school music program to get a free download. As cellist Joshua Gindele puts it, “like the other internationally touring quartets out there, we found ourselves in the record/tour/sell-latest-CD cycle and we wondered if there was another way.” Looks like they found it with this “play it forward” plan. Wait till September 1, then go here for details and free music.
A Mountain Goat, A Wolf, and Maria Callas
As the singer/songwriter behind The Mountain Goats, John Darnielle is in the front rank of musical storytellers. But last year we also learned he’s a great storyteller, period. His novel Wolf In White Van was on the long list of nominees for the National Book Award in Fiction, and deservedly so. The book is just out in paperback, and John is coming to the Film Society of Lincoln Center Monday, Aug 31 to do a book signing and to present a screening of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1969 film Medea. The film is notable for many things, but perhaps chief among them is that it is the only dramatic film role for the legendary opera singer Maria Callas -- who bestrode the opera stage like a colossus, or a fury, and therefore seems, in retrospect at least, to be perfectly cast as the vengeful figure from Euripides’ tragedy. Read what John Darnielle has to say about the movie and get details on the event here.
The Folky, Acoustic Sound Of... The Smiths
In May of this year, at our annual Radiolovefest at BAM, we found out just how malleable the songs of The Smiths could be. The band Mexrrissey, led by Mexican Institute of Sound’s Camilo Lara, played songs from both The Smiths and their mercurial lead singer Morrissey in various Mexican styles. Well now the duo acoustic guitar team of James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg have released their folky, John-Fahey-tinged version of The Smiths’ early song “Reel Around The Fountain.” Elkington is best-known for his work with Richard Thompson and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. Salsburg, as Soundcheck listeners may know, is a gifted folk guitarist and curator of the essential Alan Lomax Archive of American music. Together, they’re about to release a duo album called Ambsace on September 18, most of which will be tangy, hypnotic original work; but a Duke Ellington song and this Smiths number will be there too.
John Schaefer
WNYC is funded by sponsors and member donations
