Weekly Music Roundup: Buscabulla, Eve Owen, and Rhiannon Giddens

This week, new releases from Rhiannon Giddens, Lettuce, and Natalia Lafourcade all pay tribute to older music, and Puerto Rican duo Buscabulla greet the summer with an Afro-Brazilian beach-ready dance tune.

Buscabulla’s Long-Awaited Debut LP Is Finally Here

The Puerto Rican duo known as Buscabulla was based here in New York for many years; they appeared here in our studio in 2014, when they released the first of their two well-received EPs. But Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo Del Valle have moved back to Puerto Rico, where they co-founded the Puerto Rican Independent Musician And Artist Fund, and worked on their debut LP. That album, Regresa, is finally out. Berrios still sings like a little girl who’s getting away with something, and Del Valle still weaves in elements of soul, funk, reggaeton, and folkloric sounds in a way that somehow feels organic. The track “El Aprieto” (“The Predicament”) begins with what sounds like an electronic evocation of the Brazilian berimbau, the archery-bow-shaped instrument of Afro-Brazilian music, and continues to ride on a funky, samba-adjacent rhythm. The song’s narrator may be in a tight spot, but it sounds like she’s about to dance her way out of it.

Rhiannon Giddens Releases Cover of Bill Withers’ “Just The Two Of Us”

The Grammy-winning, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens has just released a version of one of the late Bill Withers’ biggest hits. “Just The Two Of Us” was actually recorded back in 2016 with longtime collaborator, Sxip Shirey, a producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with an ear for unusual arrangements. The song was never released; but when Withers died last month, Giddens and Shirey remembered this slightly woozy, vaguely circus-y version of the song and decided to collect photos and videos of friends quarantining around the world to make a video to go with it. Where Withers’ original vocals were smooth and cool, Giddens’ are spirited and funky. Shirey accompanies on electronics and, improbably, the harmonica.  There’s also a neat instrumental break featuring the valve trombone and the sousaphone, two instruments you might expect to hear in a circus band. (Circus music is a big part of Shirey’s musical DNA.) Giddens is first in the video. Shirey is easy to spot walking through the woods with his crazy white hair and a child in his arms. You may also catch a glimpse of Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and Cibo Matta’s Yuka Honda. 

The song is a benefit for Global Giving’s Coronavirus Relief Fund. 

Lettuce Pays Tribute to DC’s Go-go Music Scene

The 6-piece funk/jazz/rock jam-band called Lettuce were nominated for a Grammy for last year’s album Elevate; and they’ve wasted little time in making a follow-up record. Resonate came out on Friday, and comes from the same recording sessions that spawned Elevate. The first single is “Checker Wrecker,” a tribute to the Washington DC music style known as go-go, the hybrid, high-energy dance music that blended funk and blues, and later hip hop. And although go-go’s foundational leader, Chuck Brown, is no longer with us, Lettuce invited two of his musical heirs, Big Tony Fisher (from Trouble Funk) and “Jungle Boogie” Williams (of Rare Essence) to join them in this strutting dance tune. The video is perhaps inadvertently funny, as it’s a lyric video – and seeing every “ugh” on the screen seems a little silly. But that’s okay; you’ll be smiling anyway… 

London’s Eve Owen Releases A Finely-Honed Debut

Eve Owen is a London-based singer and songwriter whose debut LP is called Don’t Let The Ink Dry. It was produced by Aaron Dessner, one of the twin guitarists from The National; Owen has already sung with The National on their last record and on tour, and fans of that band will find much to like here. The album is full of rich, colorful arrangements, and some of the songs have an easy lyricism while others are more unsettled. The album’s opener, “Tudor,” almost presents like a folk song, but its headlong rush of triplet notes and multiplying layers of guitar, unidentifiable percussion, and subliminal vocal effects gives the song both a stately grandeur and an ominous undercurrent. Eve Owen was supposed to have played a set in our studio last week, but that of course was cancelled weeks ago. Still, her calendar shows sold out dates in London opening for The National on June 1 and 2. Wonder if they know something we don’t…

Natalia Lafourcade Returns With A Song For Mexico – A Specific Part Of It

The Mexican singer and songwriter Natalia Lafourcade is one of the most successful figures in Latin American pop. But her new album, Un Canto Por Mexico, leaves rock and pop behind in favor of more folkloric sounds. This isn’t totally out of the blue: she was definitely signaling a turn in this direction with her album Hasta La Raiz in 2015; but this new album focuses specifically on the sounds of son jarocho music from the state of Veracruz. Like the more familiar mariachi style, you’ll hear various sizes of guitars, horns, and occasional strings. (The song “La Bamba” is the most famous example of son jarocho music.) The track called “Mi Religion” is a celebration of Lafourcade’s belief in the power of music and love – her religion. The video sees her and her band surprising fans in plazas, restaurants, a bus, and various other places – a heartwarming, and possibly now unintentionally heartbreaking, story of bringing music to people, up close and personal. 

The album is a benefit for the Centro de Documentación del Son Jarocho, the world’s only organization dedicated to preserving and documenting this style of music; the center was badly damaged in the 2017 earthquake.