Weekly Music Roundup: Digawolf and CocoRosie
Week of Feb. 17: This week, the return of CocoRosie, an indigenous voice from the Arctic, and a sci-fi requiem for humanity.
CocoRosie Release New Song And A Self-Directed Video
Sierra and Bianca Casady have been sisters their whole lives, but they’ve been CocoRosie for the past 17 years, during which time they’ve made six albums and created a weirdly compelling sound world that combines child-like wonder and vulnerability with the eerie and the dark. They’ve worked with Chance The Rapper, the Kronos Quartet, and the renowned theater director Robert Wilson; and they’ve made no secret about their desire to be seen as more than musicians. So they’ve been doing a fair amount of visual and theatrical work too, and their latest effort is both the song “Restless” and its video, which the sisters directed. “Restless” is set in a skating rink, and the music has strong echoes of 50s and 60s pop – all of which sounds like great fun. But the lyrics tell a different story, of a woman who has “lost her way.” Sierra sings in a surprisingly straightforward way here, though we get a brief hint of her opera training near the end; she also seems to be singing into a hairbrush. Bianca does some of her typically low-key rapping while rocking an Oakland Raiders hoodie and a pencil moustache.
CocoRosie release their new album, Put The Shine On, on March 14. They play at Elsewhere on April 7.
Lee Ranaldo & Raul Refree Collaborate with Jonathan Lethem
Lee Ranaldo, whose work in the band Sonic Youth has made him a fixture on all those Greatest Guitarists lists, has been collaborating lately with Raul Refree, who has been remaking the sound of flamenco guitar – most visibly in his work with international pop star Rosalia. They’re about to release a record called Names of North End Women, which contains a number of surprises. First, there are whole stretches without guitars. The album was inspired by working with old, sometimes faulty, samplers and cassette machines. Then, there is the lyricist on this new song, called “Words Out Of The Haze.” It’s bestselling novelist Jonathan Lethem, of Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude fame, who has made no secret in his past visits to our studio of his lifelong desire to write songs. This one, starting with a fat synth-bass, takes about two minutes to fully build from its moody opening to its richly harmonized chorus. Meanwhile, the video uses excerpts, samples really, from a 1938 abstract animated film called “An Optical Poem” by Oscar Fischinger, who worked with Fritz Lang and Walt Disney, among others.
Canadian Indigenous Band Digawolf Releases Arctic-Themed Song
The band Digawolf is led by singer and comic strip author Diga, who is based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territorities. The group has been nominated for a Juno award (the Canadian Grammys) in the category of Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year. Now, they’ve released a single called “High Arctic,” which blends Diga’s Tlicho culture with distortion-heavy rock. The song has an almost ritualistic, pounding rhythm, while Diga’s bilingual lyrics – delivered in a distinctive singing-growl – celebrate Arctic culture and urge a younger generation to keep it alive. “Learn to paddle that canoe” is one line from the song, and the choruses are chanted in Tlicho. Ultimately, though, the song couldn’t be more Canadian: it was written to mark… wait for it… Hockey Day 2020 in Canada.
The HamilTones Step Out With A Bunch of “B Sides”
The soul trio known as The HamilTones started out as the backing singers for Anthony Hamilton, the Grammy-winning R&B singer. But a backstage video of them clowning around with a gospel-flavored version of Drake’s mega-hit “Hotline Bling” became a viral sensation and launched the group into its own musical orbit. Last summer they released Watch The Ton3s, and on Friday they dropped Watch The Ton3s, The B Side. The title suggests musical leftovers, which may or may not be the case but either way is a bit unfortunate; but there’s no arguing with what seems to be a homemade video that they just released for the killer track from the first Ton3s record, “Gotta Be Lovin’ Me.” The song has an infectious beat and a sunny disposition that makes it hard to listen to without a smile. And the video shows the guys traveling from small rooms to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, so it’s essentially doubling down on the song’s good time vibe.
From the Late Jóhann Jóhannsson, A Requiem For Us All
The Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson will always be best remembered for his award-winning soundtracks (The Theory of Everything, Sicario, Arrival, etc.), but he was a restless artist who also wrote many electronic and electroacoustic works, string quartets and more. His sudden death in Berlin in early 2018 came just as he was finishing what some thought would be his masterpiece – a multimedia work called Last And First Men. It was based on a 1930 science fiction novel of the same name which follows the rises and falls and eventual extinction of humanity over two billion years. Jóhannsson shot footage of isolated war memorials in the former Yugoslavia, and composed music that featured his colleague Hildur Gudnadottir, who has herself won awards for her soundtracks to HBO’s Chernobyl and the film The Joker, on cello, voice and percussion. The final version of First And Last Men will come out on February 28, and will feature narration by Tilda Swinton. But this instrumental excerpt has been released to give a sense of what Jóhannsson was going for. “Childhood/Land Of The Young” is dark and brooding to start; as usual, it is hard to tell where the acoustic leaves off and the electronic begins. And as the piece builds, half-heard voices swirl through a growing orchestral sound; but he lets us down gently with some pastoral woodwinds at the very end.
