Week of June 6: This week, Maxwell returns, the triumph and trials of Sharon Jones, and Leila Adu bridges the classical/pop divide.
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings’ Free Event In Prospect Park
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival is back, starting on Wednesday, June 8, with a free performance by the electrifying soul singer Sharon Jones and her band, the mighty Dap-Kings. (They are the band that Amy Winehouse borrowed for her Back To Black album and tour.) In case you have somehow missed it, Sharon Jones’s story is one of determination and resolve; an unlikely mid-life triumph as she and her band became concert headliners when she was in her 50s; and a much-publicized battle with bile duct cancer. Her illness delayed the release of her 2014 album, the Grammy-nominated Give The People What They Want. Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple followed Sharon for a year as she went through the grueling process of fighting the disease, and the resulting film, Miss Sharon Jones, opens on July 29 in NY and August 5 in LA. (The opening sounds of the film are from the band’s live performance on Soundcheck in WNYC's Greene Space in 2010.) So this should be summer to celebrate for Sharon Jones and her fans… but she revealed late last year that her cancer had returned and she was undergoing chemo again. So the free concert at Prospect Park’s bandshell this Wednesday is not just a guaranteed sonic heatwave – it is also a statement of will and purpose from this diminutive but outsized personality. Expect to hear a lot of Give The People What They Want (like “Stranger To My Happiness” here, with Sharon’s head shorn after her chemo treatments), but what the people really want is for this singing, dancing, shouting dynamo to be with us for a long time.
Maxwell’s Anticipated (And Confusing) Trilogy Continues
Brooklyn soul singer Maxwell will release his new album called blackSUMMERS’night on July 1. It is a followup to his chart-busting, Grammy-winning album of 7 years ago, called – watch closely now – BLACKsummers’night. We can assume the third album will be called blacksummer’sNIGHT, but I think we can also assume that after 7 years, some people may think the new album is simply a reissue. Rest assured, it’s not. The album’s first single, “Lake By The Ocean,” now has a sultry, languorous video, shot apparently in Haiti. (Maxwell is part Haitian.) There seems to be a trend recently towards making videos with long introductions before you actually get to the song, and I admit to being a little tired of it now; but Maxwell’s 2-minute-plus intro is beautifully shot, and while the song is clearly the album version with the band miming to it, the sonic transition from the filming site to the recorded track is really well done. Okay, audio engineering nerd alert there.
Maxwell plays at the Coney Island Amphitheatre in Brooklyn on July 9.
Genuine Art Pop From Leila Adu
When Lady Gaga released ARTPOP in 2013, she gave us a fusion of art (in the form of the visual artist Jeff Koons’ cover) and pop music. But the term “art pop” more closely describes the music of Leila Adu. A New Zealand composer of Ghanaian descent, Adu is combining both “art music” (i.e, classical composition) with pop in her two new EPs. She pulls it off because she is a genuinely good singer, with a velvety, soulful voice, and because she is an accomplished composer who’s written music for symphony orchestras, string quartets, and the like. Scary Love Monster and Love Cells (collectively, The Love EPs) are full of songs that masquerade as R&B. But pay attention and you’ll find unusual twists of harmony or rhythm that betray a composer’s hand. In the song “Love Cells,” the title itself a clever pun, listen to the unexpected falling figure on the word “cells,” and the sudden but subtle change in the keyboard accompaniment.
A New Anthem From Augustines
The band Augustines doesn’t shy away from asking big questions in their music. Their first album, Rise Ye Sunken Ships, written after the death of singer William McCarthys’ brother, remains a defining example of how rock music, created and played with commitment and abandon and emotion, can become something triumphant. Since then the band has been asking, so, here we are. Alive. What are we gonna do about it? The trio has dipped into East and West African music on occasion, and their new album, their third, includes a couple of songs featuring Senegalese singers. But McCarthy’s raw, anthemic singing remains the band’s calling card. Their single, “When Things Fall Apart,” is a celebration of passion and perseverance – given an unexpected twist in this simple documentary video starring the 17-year old champion of Britain’s 1300cc stock car racing circuit.
A Dark And Charming Debut From Banta
The LA band called Banta is basically the work of singer/songwriter Sharaya Mikael. And she sounds like she might be a fan of the Cure. “Someday,” a track from the band’s debut album, Dark Charms, which came out on Friday, begins with an organ oscillating quietly between two chords while the bass and drums set up a midtempo groove – an opening that (for me, at least) immediately recalls the Cure’s “Love Song.” Other tracks on the album may recall Fleetwood Mac, or Neko Case, but many of them share a certain downcast mood that old, unrepentant Cure fans will find darkly charming.