Weekly Music Roundup: Gregory Porter and Death Valley Girls

This week, Gregory Porter takes flight; Matthew Dear takes a test drive; Death Valley Girls get airborne on Earth, and Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah's live record, Axiom.

Gregory Porter Takes Flight On His New Album

Grammy winner Gregory Porter is usually referred to as a jazz singer, but his voice and his songs are infused with classic soul and gospel. For proof, listen to the killer track “Revival” from his new LP, called All Rise. It’s a song about perseverance, justice and uplift. But the song I wanted to point out is the new record’s leadoff track, which looks at a different kind of uplift. “Concorde” was written for NASA, for their Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission. Porter is a big fan of the space agency, and the lyrics are full of references to flight and rising above – so it doesn’t feel out of place with the rest of the record. NASA, meanwhile, are apparently fans in return: Porter was the first artist ever invited to perform at a NASA mission launch when he sang “America The Beautiful” at the July 30 takeoff. The song has a bit of Bill Withers’ soul to it, and grows into a stirring big band arrangement. The video is similarly both space-themed and earth-bound, as we see a young boy and the grown Porter dreaming of space flight; Porter is donning a flight suit as the song progresses, and longtime fans of the Brooklyn-cook-turned-star-vocalist will watch in suspense, wondering – will he take off his trademark Kangol hat so he can put on the helmet? You’ll just have to reach the end of the song to find out. 

Death Valley Girls Reach For The Stars With “The Universe”

The garage-rock quartet Death Valley Girls (only three of whom are women) is not following Gregory Porter into space, but they are aiming for something higher, and perhaps even transcendent, with their single “The Universe.” It’s one of two tracks available from their forthcoming LP Under The Spell Of Joy, which is due on October 2 and which the band says was inspired by the Ethiopian funk records they were listening to while on tour last year. That doesn’t mean you’ll hear the exotic scales and ecstatic rhythms of those old Ethio-pop albums of the 70s, but the guest organ and sax players on “The Universe” at least seem to be a distant, lo-fi echo of that sound. The keyboards move hypnotically back and forth, while lead singer Bonnie Bloomgarden sings comforting, cosmic lines like “dream bigger than the things that lift you up.” The sax floats overhead, and the grungy guitars that have defined Death Valley Girls’ sound are notably absent here. 

Matthew Dear Makes Music With The Sounds Of A New Electric Car

It’s been a good summer for cars in music. If you haven’t seen Future Islands’ beautiful, post-apocalyptic video for their single “For Sure” yet, please take 3 minutes and do that next. But right now, check out the latest single from Detroit-based electronic music composer Matthew Dear; it’s called “New Breed” and it is built on the sounds made by Ford’s new electric car, the Mustang Mach-E. It’s obviously more earthbound than Gregory Porter’s collaboration with NASA, but this song, released by Ford Motor Company, is a journey of its own. For one thing, fully electric cars don’t actually make noise, and that is apparently a disconcerting experience for people, so Ford worked with sound designers to give the car a repertoire of electronic sounds, both inside and outside the vehicle. Dear, who has often built compelling textures out of small, unexpected sources, says the car’s sounds were “cinematic and sci-fi.” That was all he needed to put together a typically propulsive piece of synth-laden dance music – or driving music, as the case may be. 

Molly Tuttle Releases Quarantine Album – Of Covers

The gifted guitarist, singer and songwriter Molly Tuttle found herself doing what everyone else was doing this spring – quarantining at home. This was made more difficult by the fact that Tuttle lives in Nashville, where a tornado compounded the misery. In order to keep sane, and, she says, “remind myself why I love music,” she began playing some of her favorite songs. Not her songs, mind you, but a wide variety of songs that meant something to her. The album is called …but I’d rather be with you.  And the songs range from The National to fka Twigs, from Cat Stevens to Rancid. There’s a lovely arrangement of “She’s A Rainbow” by the Rolling Stones. I’m partial to this cover of “Something On Your Mind,” originally from the Greenwich Village folk singer Karen Dalton. Tuttle’s arrangement is beautifully atmospheric, with distantly groaning or wailing electric guitars, a barely-glimpsed string quartet at the edge of the stereo mix, and gauzy electronic processing. 

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Releases Live Album Recorded Just Before Quarantine

Cast your mind back to the Before Times: The week of March 10 saw trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah and his band playing at the Blue Note in New York, in what would turn out to be one of the last live concerts before everything shut down. The tapes were rolling, and now that set has been released as an album called Axiom. The Blue Note is a jazz club, but this music is not so easily labeled: Christian himself calls what he does Stretch Music – a musical gumbo that draws on jazz, hip hop, electronic music, and the African roots of New Orleans.Nor is the musician easily named: when he first joined us, he was using his birth name, Christian Scott.  But in 2012 he took the name aTunde Adjuah to honor his family’s West African ancestry; and now, he’s Chief Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, as he’s been named the Big Chief of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian tribe known as Xodokan Nation. The sounds of West African drumming and New Orleans jazz and funk are never far from his music, and one of the signature sounds of his band is the mix of trumpet, often electronically altered, with Elena Pinderhughes’s flute. This song, called “Diaspora,” is a good example.