Weekly Music Roundup: Jim Keller, Bombino, Tori Amos

Week of Nov. 30: This week, veteran songwriter Jim Keller returns, and new recordings by Bombino and Xixa take us to the deserts of West Africa and the American Southwest, respectively. 

PREMIERE: Jim Keller’s New Song Benefits The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund

Jim Keller may have had one of the strangest careers in music (which is saying something). He was half of the pop band Tommy Tutone in the early 80s – you may have trouble getting his song “867-5309/Jenny” out of your head now that I’ve mentioned his inescapable hit of 1981. But then he moved on to manage the career of Philip Glass, possibly the most famous composer of our time. While doing that, he ran a regular jam session on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and did occasional solo projects. In February, he’ll release By No Means, his first album in seven years, and now, for Giving Tuesday, he’s putting out the album’s leadoff track, called “Easy Rider,” which we’re getting a bit of a jump on with today’s premiere. Both the title and the sound of the tune (midtempo boogie, low growling vocals) will recall War’s 1970s hit “Low Rider” as well as perhaps the early music of ZZ Top and Tom Waits. (Waits, by the way, has offered this memorable quote about Keller: “makes me feel like I have big plans, no worries, and all my hair.”) Keller is donating all proceeds from the single to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, which helps people in the music industry with health care and which has been a lifeline to many during the pandemic.

Keller’s album By No Means comes out on February 12. 

Tori Amos Offers A Seasonal Song For A Crazy Year

“Oh what a year to be here,” sings the songwriter/keyboardist/author Tori Amos at the start of her new single, “Better Angels.” The song comes from an EP called Christmastide that comes out on Friday, but this song isn’t really a holiday tune. It’s more about the hope that we can in fact overcome the obstacles that have made 2020 a year unlike any other in recent memory. Perhaps appropriately for a year that has been full of turbulence, the song couches its lyrics of uplift (“our better angels are singing… dream they exist”) in a proggy musical setting, with shifting meters and highly effected guitars and percussion.  

West African Desert Rock, Live In Amsterdam, From Bombino

Guitarist and singer Bombino is a Tuareg musician from Niger, who grew up absorbing the so-called desert rock sounds of earlier Tuareg bands, like Tinariwen and Etran Finatawa. So for him, the electric guitar is not an instrument borrowed from the West and adapted to Saharan music; it is a traditional Tuareg instrument. His earlier records have gained considerable acclaim, both for his flying fingers and the incendiary sound of his band; but anyone who’s heard him play live knows that Bombino shines most brightly on stage. Obviously that hasn’t happened in a while, but last year the tapes were rolling when Bombino performed in Amsterdam, and that album came out on Friday. The track “Azamane Tiliade,” an old favorite from 2013, comes with a video of the band’s performance and will give you an idea of the energy that has made Bombino a star on the global music scene.  

Mystical Latin Desert Rock, From Xixa

A very different desert inspires a very different sounding band here. Xixa is a sextet based near the Arizona/Mexico border. That’s important to know, because Xixa’s music is a sonic depiction of the deserts of the Southwest – deserts full of ancient peyote rituals, languid Latin rhythms, and nights full of overhead stars and distant, unidentifiable sounds. They’re preparing to release a new album, Genesis, in 2021, and have just put out a single called “Nights Plutonian Shore.” Lead singer Gabriel Sullivan sings in his usual hoarse whisper, with his repeated rasping “nevermore” calling to mind Edgar Allen Poe’s “Raven.” Meanwhile co-bandleader Brian Lopez and the rest of the band play a slow montuno rhythm; lurking in the band, for the first time, is the acoustic piano, played here by the redoubtable Sergio Mendoza (of Calexico and Orquesta Mendoza). 

Alaska Reid Turns Up The Fuzz Pedal on “Big Bunny”

Singer/guitarist Alaska Reid has spent several years leading the loud pop band Alyeska, and doing occasional solo projects. This year, she was quarantining like the rest of us, except that unlike most of us, she was quarantining with A. G. Cook, the noted producer who has helped shape Charli XCX’s sound, and worked with Jonsi and others. She added vocals to some of the albums he worked on, and he in turn produced her solo EP called Big Bunny, which comes out next Friday. For now, she’s released the title track, a song that has Reid’s signature blend of melody and fuzzed-out noise. Each time the chorus comes around, the guitar sounds a little crunchier, a little grungier; Reid’s vocals, though, remain wistful and nostalgic as she remembers a Montana childhood spent chasing rabbits with her sister, the actress Lilliya Scarlett Reid.