Weekly Music Roundup: The Hold Steady, Helado Negro, and The Comet Is Coming
The Sale of the Century: Bob Dylan Sells His Song Catalog
The Hold Steady Release New Single From Forthcoming LP
Brooklyn indie rock veterans The Hold Steady have announced that they’ll release their eighth studio record, Open Door Policy, on February 19. In the meantime, they’ve put out a single called “Family Farm,” which has all the earmarks of The Hold Steady’s best work: driving guitars, incisive horns, and a song that is also a story by frontman Craig Finn. Oh, and a chorus that fans will be keen to shout along with, when the band is able to play in front of them again. (They just finished a three night live streaming concert series at Brooklyn Bowl.) A tale of looking for one’s self, apparently set in and possibly just outside a mental health facility, “Family Farm” is both uptempo and somewhat wry, and if you listen closely, you’ll hear a quick reference to one of Eddie Van Halen’s songs – recorded well before the guitarist’s recent passing.
Phoebe Bridgers and Phoebe Waller-Bridge Collaborate on a New Video
It’s been quite a year for California singer and songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, what with the release of her gripping album Punisher, the four subsequent Grammy nominations (including Best New Artist), and her cover of the Goo Goo Dolls song “Iris” with Maggie Rogers topping the digital sales charts. (The latter was a benefit for Stacy Abrams’ Fair Fight Action in Georgia.) Bridgers is a fan of British actor, director, and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve, etc.), and now the two similarly-named artists have collaborated on a beautiful, stylish, and perhaps inevitably puzzling video for Bridger’s song “Savior Complex.” Shot in black and white, it stars Irish actor Paul Mescal, although Bridger is easy to spot towards the end. The mood is uncertain and sad – an accurate reflection of the mood, if not the actual lyrics, of the song itself.
Helado Negro Releases Video For “I Fell In Love,” Featuring Xenia Rubinos
Like Phoebe Bridgers, Helado Negro has also done a cover (Neil Young’s “Lotta Love”) tied to the recent election, and like her, he had also collaborated on a new video. Working with Bad Bunny’s creative director Stillz (who apparently heard Helado Negro’s music on the tour bus with Bad Bunny), he’s released this new video for the lovely, gently pulsing song “I Fell In Love,” which features additional vocals by Xenia Rubinos. Rubinos is a longtime friend and colleague on the Brooklyn indie music scene, and her vocals perfectly fit with the song’s floating, almost spacey mood.
Calexico Releases A Bilingual Collaboration with Bombino
Last week’s roundup included a new song by the Tuareg singer and guitarist Bombino and a new song by the Arizona band Xixa featuring Sergio Mendoza. I mentioned then that these artists brought us the sounds of two very different deserts: the Sahara and the Sonoran. It didn’t take long for Calexico – the band that includes Sergio Mendoza – to prove that the two deserts are closer together than I thought. “Heart of Downtown” is a bilingual song that features Bombino. Now, usually when you say “bilingual” and Calexico together, you mean English and Spanish. But this song is partially in French, which Bombino speaks (and sings). Actually, it’s trilingual, since he also sings in Tamasheq. Calexico’s distinctive blend of ambient desert rock, Latin rhythms, and catchy choruses turns out to be very accommodating to Bombino’s snaky electric guitar and loping Saharan rhythm. The song has a celebratory mood, and comes from a holiday season album called Seasonal Shift, which has two or three Christmas songs but is mostly just an album about reflecting on the end of one year and hoping for better things in the new one. That’s an idea that sounds good in any language.
An Uncategorizable New Single From The Comet Is Coming
Like many of the bands on London’s vibrant jazz scene, The Comet Is Coming draws heavily on other musical styles. In their case, electronic music, hip hop, and an occasional hint of Jamaican dub make the trio’s sound vastly different from what you might expect when you see the words “jazz band.” On Friday the group released a new single called “Imminent,” in which they collaborate once again with the London rapper and poet Joshua Idehen. “Imminent” is an almost breathless rush of a song, with Idehen offering a sobering tale of violence on the streets of East London in the first half, and then, after a heavily reverbed solo from sax player and scene leader Shabaka Hutchings, moving to a defiant statement of Black identity. “This Black pain is dance/This Black sorrow is dance/This Black praise is dance/This Black struggle is dance,” Idehen chants, while Hutchings’ sax sounds a cry of alarm and the electronics swirl in a way that suggests that spiritual jazz and psychedelic rock are not so far apart.
