Week of Dec. 25: This week, a new video from Southern Italy, another from Kendrick Lamar, & a holiday gift from vocal octet Roomful of Teeth.
PREMIERE: Beautiful New Video From Italy’s CGS
In Southern Italy, the group known as Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS for short) has kept alive the local folk dances and folk music traditions by playing them with the infectious energy and enthusiasm of a rock band. They often sing in the local language, Grica, which reflects the area’s original Greek inhabitants; and their rhythms show the influence of North Africa as well. I’ve been a big fan of this band for years, and now we have the chance to premiere their new video, called “Moi,” from their new album Canzoniere. That album was recorded in part here in New York, and is full of global dance-pop rhythms which blend quite readily with the tarantella rhythm at the heart of so much southern Italian music. The song “Moi” (“Now”) has verses in a trance-y triple meter beat, which then explode into joyful choruses (still with that triple meter underneath.) Meanwhile, the video shows the band’s home town of Salento, and the beautiful, ancient landscape that surrounds it. It’s a wonderful but somewhat poignant little journey – since it was shot after the end of beach season and all the waterfront homes are empty and shuttered. But the song never loses momentum.
Kendrick Lamar Releases LOVE. Video
Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. will be on almost every list of the best albums of 2017, and his video for the song “HUMBLE.” is certainly one of the year’s most memorable. But he waited until Christmas week to release a video for “LOVE.”; and like the song, the video is an unhurried exploration of just how complicated love can be. In three minutes, we see a relationship form and fall apart; we see arresting images of women of color that are strangely erotic without the usual twerking and booty popping; and we see a homecoming. But the enduring image might be Kendrick in a silver hoodie with the word “Lovely” on it… I can’t help thinking someone’s gonna make a pile of money selling those things after Christmas.
Christmas Gift from Roomful Of Teeth
Roomful of Teeth is an astonishing vocal octet based in NY that works closely with lots of contemporary composers and incorporates all manner of unusual vocal techniques – overtone singing, for example, and traditional sounds from places as varied as East Asia and Appalachia. They’ve just released a luminous new single for Christmas: an arrangement (by Teeth tenor Eric Dudley) of the Renaissance German hymn “Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen,” usually translated as “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming” but which they’ve re-titled “How A Rose.” There are no unusual effects needed, because Roomful Of Teeth recorded this song (in the heat of the summer) at the Tank Center For Sonic Arts in Colorado. The Tank was probably a water tower for a proposed rail line, but is now a super-reverberant place for music and other art projects. The circular metal tower bounces sound for up to 45 seconds, meaning that when you’re singing verse #2, you might still be accompanied by your performance of verse #1. Such a venue rewards slow, spare music-making, and that’s what Roomful Of Teeth provide. Their reward is a glowing, floating recording that will clear a space in your busy holiday.
Celebrate The Crazy With UK’s The Wombats
The Liverpool trio known as The Wombats make catchy, guitar-driven indie rock peppered with some of the more interesting turns of phrase you’ll hear. The band’s new album, due for release on February 9, will be called Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, and last month they released the single “Lemon To A Knife Fight,” which laments making bad choices (like, for example, “I brought a lemon to a knife fight”). Now the band has issued a second single, called “Turn,” which, at least in theory, is a much more upbeat song, about things lead singer/guitarist Matthew Murphy likes. “I like the way your brain works/I like the way you try/to run with the wolfpack when your legs are tired,” he sings in the chorus, though the line that rings most true is “maybe it’s the crazy I like.”
The Wombats play at Brooklyn Steel on January 10.
England’s Red River Dialect Releases Tibetan-Themed Song
Red River Dialect is essentially the work of singer/songwriter David Morris, who is originally from Cornwall, the old Celtic area of southwestern England. His songs have a quintessentially English quality to them – the quavery vocals, the often haunted folk/rock arrangements, the influence of bell-ringing (considered by many practitioners to be a form of mathematics as opposed to music-making). The forthcoming Red River Dialect album, due on February 2, is called Broken Stay Open Sky. In bell-ringing, the “stay” is the piece of wood that the heaviest bell rests on when the changes have been rung; a broken stay can be a disaster. And that duality, of natural beauty and looming trouble, colors much of the band’s music. In their new single, “Kukkuripa,” filigreed guitars provide a lilting, and occasionally limping background to Morris’ lyrics, full of quotidian but somehow evocative imagery. The title character is a figure from Tibetan mythology who gives up the pleasures of paradise to return to his earthly cave and the dog he has left behind (don’t worry - he is suitably rewarded). You’ll hear Kukkuripa and his dog mentioned in the final verse.