Weekly Music Roundup: Brittany Howard, Heems, and The Smile
Week of Jan. 29: This week, new singles from Brittany Howard and Heems, returns for The Smile and The Staves, and a bass summit with a sense of humor.
Brittany Howard Hits The Dance Floor In New Single
Singer and guitarist Brittany Howard made her reputation, and earned the first of her five Grammys, fronting the Alabama Shakes. Now well into a solo career marked by her expansive mix of blues, soul, funk, and rock, Howard is about to release an album called What Now. The album comes out on February 9, and this new single, “Prove It To You,” shows that she’s still moving into new territory. The song rides along on a four-on-the-floor dance beat, first created by Howard using a virtual drum machine, and then played “for real” by her band. Howard sings about proving her love, and while we didn’t really need more proof about her guitar chops, they are very much in evidence here.
Rapper Heems Makes A Surprise Return
“It’s easier to make a meme than to have a dream,” raps Himanshu “Heems” Suri on his new single, called “Accent.” Heems knows all about memes – he was part of the hip hop group Das Racist, whose underground hit “Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell” in 2008 has recently spawned the TV ad for Instacart called “Combination Football Game and Grocery Store.” (An ad that has provoked an almost comical amount of vitriol, presumably from people who don’t understand that it’s a riff on that earlier, genuinely comical song.) But Heems has also had a dream, to support the South Asian community here in New York, especially in Queens, and his new single is part of an album done with Indian-American producer Lapgan, full of sampled and manipulated samples of Bollywood film scores and other South Asian sounds. Heems fans can expect to hear lots of witty wordplay when the album drops on February 16, but the single, “Accent,” is a serious look at othering and violence, based on a verse Heems wrote after the killing of George Floyd. It begins with the voice of poet/musician Saul Williams before Heems’ own brassy vocals enter. The song doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it’s a welcome return for a New York original.
The Smile Release Second Album – Should Radiohead Fans Be Worried?
The Smile is an odd name for a band whose music skews towards the melancholy or the nervous. The band features Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, and drummer Tom Skinner, formerly of Sons Of Kemet. Their new album, Wall of Eyes, has a title much more suggestive of the tone of the band’s songs, full of anxiety and dread. Many of the tracks take unexpected turns – early single “Bending Hectic” explodes in a burst of metal towards the end, for example. “Teleharmonic,” while not quite as dramatic, sees Yorke singing about payback, wondering if he’ll make it to morning, and asking “where are you taking me?” An almost weightless, downtempo beginning steadily builds up to the song’s enigmatic chorus (“Soon you’ll be there/so long”), backed with flights of synthesizer and clouds of backing vocals. Love might save the narrator, or it might be his downfall. As for the future of Radiohead, The Smile’s assured sophomore effort might have some Radiohead fans wondering when Yorke and Greenwood will feel like returning to that band’s arena-sized world again.
The Staves, Now Smaller But Possibly Bigger Too
From the start, in 2010, the English group The Staves has been a trio, consisting of sisters Emily, Camilla, and Jess Staveley-Taylor, and drawing on the sounds of indie-folk and folk rock. But Emily left the group a few years back after becoming a mom, and now The Staves are a duo. But their new single, “I Don’t Say It, But I Feel It,” has a big, bright sound. Not at first – the song begins with a strummed acoustic guitar and the two voices in harmony. But quickly the bass, drums, and keyboards come in, and the song takes on a glossy 1980s vibe, and by the end, the two voices have exploded into a multi-layered chorus.
Bassists Christian McBride and Edgar Meyer Ask, Who’s Gonna Play The Melody?
Bassist Christian McBride is one of the leading jazz musicians of our time. Bassist Edgar Meyer is a bluegrass master who is also a fixture on the classical music scene, as a composer and as a collaborator with Yo Yo Ma and many others. But both have deep roots in the blues and a love of improvisation, and that was enough for them to squeeze past their 13 combined Grammy awards and meet in the studio to record an album of bass duets. Almost inevitably, the album will be called But Who’s Gonna Play The Melody? It comes out on March 22, but the duo has released this single, a version of one of Meyer’s favorite old tunes, “Barnyard Disturbance.” Full of quicksilver changes between bowed and plucked strings, this bustling, good-natured tune is a clever reply to the album’s title.
