Weekly Music Roundup: Bilbo Picks up the Pieces, Refugees on Video, Animal Collective at the Airport

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, a musical response to Europe’s refugee crisis, a moment in music history, and Bilbo Baggins’ favorite songwriter.

M.I.A. Video Takes On Refugee Crisis

Maya Arulpragasam, better known as M.I.A., is uniquely qualified to comment on the refugee crisis in Europe. As the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who made their way to England, she is a walking, talking (and rapping, singing) example of the artistic ferment that can result when cultures mix. This past weekend, M.I.A. released a new, self-directed video for the song “Borders,” which will appear on her next album called Matahdatah. The video features some startling imagery that evokes refugees trying to scale fences and forming a human pyramid that turns into a human boat. Several outlets have reported that the people in the video are actual refugees, but some of the choreography is precise enough to suggest otherwise. Still, both the video and the song, with its determinedly simple but pointed lyrics and its modal, Near Eastern synth melody, make a strong statement. 

Animal Collective’s New Surrealist Single

The Baltimore-based alternative pop group called Animal Collective has often been compared to the Beach Boys for its vocal harmonies, and to bands like Pink Floyd, Silver Apples, and Can for its rampant psychedelia. But the collective’s new single, “FloriDada,” sounds like the boys have been listening to the Flaming Lips, or maybe to old Doctor Demento shows. Or maybe it’s a sly reference to an infamous online review which said, “play two Beach Boys records at the same time and you have an Animal Collective album.” Because “FloriDada” has two voices singing two sets of verses almost on top of each other. This leads to an attenuated chorus propelled by a queasy synthesizer and, eventually, to a bridge whose lyrics actually are “Where’s the bridge that’s gonna take me home/the bridge that someone’s fighting over.” The song, released yesterday, comes from the band’s 11^th full-length album, Painting With, which is due on February 19. Although if you spent the day before Thanksgiving in the Baltimore airport, you would’ve heard the whole album being premiered, without any warning, fanfare, or even identification, over the loudspeakers there.  For the moment, though, check out this Dadaist, surrealist single. Click the “read more” button on the Youtube page to get the full lysergic effect of the lyrics.

The Apollo Theater’s Soulful Start To The Holidays

Maybe you don’t know who Manu Dibango is. But you probably know who Michael Jackson was, and who Eminem, Rihanna, Kanye West, and Will Smith are. All of them, and many others, have quoted from Manu Dibango’s huge – and hugely surprising – 1972 hit song, “Soul Makossa.” Dibango is from Cameroon; he is a sax player, songwriter and bandleader. Not the sort of person you’d find on top of the Billboard charts, especially in 1972. But “Soul Makossa,” with its irresistible sax hook and it’s chanted “ma-ma-ko, ma-ma-sa, mako-mako-sa,” climbed the charts steadily, and because Dibango was so obscure, dozens of bands scrambled to release covers of it. This led to a singular moment in music history when nine different versions of the song were in the pop charts at the same time, which partly accounts for Dibango’s lack of name recognition. In retrospect, it is often referred to as one of the earliest disco songs. But Dibango was not aiming to create a disco song: “Soul Makossa” was an inspired blend of American soul/funk and the Afropop dance genre called makossa. 

Dibango made his Apollo Theater debut in Harlem while the song was blaring out of American radios, and on Saturday night, that historic theater hosts Dibango again, this time as the headliner in Je Suis Soul: A Salute To French And African Jazz And Soul. The bill also includes the Grammy-nominated neo-soul/hip hop duo Les Nubians (who did a remake of “Soul Makossa,” with Dibango, a few years ago). And the auxiliary concerts on Friday and Saturday nights in the Apollo Theater’s café include the terrific Malian keyboardist/composer/arranger Cheick Tidiane Seck, among others. And for a bit of pop music history, click above for the original “Soul Makossa.”

Editors’ New Video Sails The Ocean of Night

The UK band Editors occupies a place perhaps analogous to that of The National here in the States: a band strongly inclined toward guitars but working hard to expand its palette, and fronted by a baritone whose voice lends a depth and at times a darkness to the songwriting. “Ocean of Night” has that darkness right there in the title, but it gathers steam (and guitars) and builds to become a more optimistic song, about coming through that ocean of night and into the light of day. This new video comes from the band’s latest record, In Dreams, which is a Top 5 album at home in the UK. They’ve never really gotten their due here on these shores, but the audience at Dublin’s Olympia Theater sure seemed to enjoy the performance that plays a role in this otherwise pensive video. 

Martin Freeman: Hobbit, Sherlock Enabler, and Paul Weller Fan

Paul Weller, the founder of the seminal punk band The Jam and the soul-pop band The Style Council, released his solo album Saturns Pattern this summer (and told Soundcheck that it includes one of just three "perfect" songs he's recorded). But yesterday he released a new single and video from it; the song is “Pick It Up,” and the man charged with picking up the pieces is none other than Martin Freeman. The actor, currently appearing in one of the greatest TV series ever invented in the whole history of the universe (that would be Sherlock, where he plays Dr. Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes), begins with a dustpan and broom in his hands but quickly moves on to more serious equipment. It’s all very droll and I’m not sure what it means, but clearly Freeman is a huge fan of the man they call the Modfather.