Weekly Music Roundup: Monsieur Periné, Guitar from Botswana, and Archival Prince
Week of April 23: This week, a gem from the Prince archives, a throaty tale from Okkervil River, and guitar music from Botswana that has to be seen to be believed.
From Prince’s Archives, A New/Old Version Of “Nothing Compares 2 U”
Saturday was the second anniversary of Prince’s untimely death. Fans knew that there were untold hours of sound and video in his archives – but they also knew that the wrangling over his estate would complicate efforts to release any of it. So on Friday, when the Prince Estate put out the previously unreleased, original studio version of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” it was a welcome surprise and a bittersweet reminder of what we lost when he died. The song is best known in the hit version by Sinead O’Connor, but Prince’s own version has some subtle differences. Electric guitars wander in and out, sometimes pushing the song towards power ballad territory, but for me, the most striking moment passes quickly: at the end of the first chorus, the chord seems to resolve, to actually end the musical line; this is a contrast to the other choruses, which, like the Sinead version, have an open-ended feel – a question rather than a statement.
Confusingly, the estate paired the recording with some previously unseen rehearsal footage, of what is clearly a much faster, funkier song. Prince displays some serious dance moves (this was obviously well before his hips began troubling him), and the band looks to be in great form. Makes me wish we could hear that music sometime…
Okkervil River’s New Song Is Kinda Disgusting, But Kinda Great
Shortly after human beings began to sing, they probably started making “list songs.” You probably know more of them than you realize – “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one, Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse” (the ending of Dark Side of the Moon) is another – and one of the oldest surviving song texts, the “Hymn to Inanna” from the ancient Sumerians, is just a list of that goddess’s many possessions. Well, add Okkervil River to the list of list song purveyors, but this might be the most unusual list song yet. It’s called “Famous Tracheotomies,” and it delivers exactly what the title promises. Frontman Will Sheff had an emergency tracheotomy when he was a toddler (he has alluded to this before, in the band’s brilliant 2013 album The Silver Gymnasium), and he begins the song with a briefly gruesome description of the procedure. But then the band kicks in and Sheff is off and running, detailing the laryngeal woes of actor Gary Coleman, Motown star Mary Wells, pickled poet Dylan Thomas, and best of all, Ray Davies. I don’t mean that Davies had the best tracheotomy – it’s just that his procedure occasioned the best part of the song, wherein Sheff explains how the young musician’s tracheotomy led directly to the writing of The Kinks’ early hit, “Waterloo Sunset” – whose melody the band then duly quotes.
The new Okkervil River album, In the Rainbow Rain, comes out this Friday. Last Friday, Will Sheff performed this and two other new songs in the Soundcheck studio – that podcast will be available on Monday, April 30.
The Incredible “Guitar” Music Of Botswana
There’s a reason I’ve put quotation marks around the word “guitar” in that headline. The musicians in Botswana, in southwestern Africa, play the guitar – but they turn it into a completely different instrument. Just watch this video, which has been circulating on Youtube and astonishing guitarists for almost 10 years: the first thing you’ll probably notice is that “Ronnie” (only name given) plays the guitar with his left hand on the fingerboard as if were a piano. Watch as he rolls his palm down the frets at one point. But then look at the strings themselves; the first (highest) string is missing, and so is the fifth (second-lowest). This leaves three strings close together for melody and chords; and the low E string (here tuned to an F) functions as a standalone bassline. A simple but brilliantly effective way of turning the guitar into essentially two instruments.
Among the people who fell in love with this video years ago was record producer David Aglow. He ultimately went to Botswana determined to bring some of these amazing desert-blues guitarists to a wider audience. This Friday, he’ll release a compilation called I’m Not Here To Hunt Rabbits: Botswana Guitar Music. Find out what Ronnie’s real name is; hear some of the bluesy, raspy vocals of these local musicians; and discover a style of music that developed on the edge of the Kalahari Desert that is unlike anything else you’ll hear.
The Mouse Outfit Is Back In The House
The Mouse Outfit is essentially a live hip hop band that works with a rotating cast of emerging rappers and producers in and around Manchester, England. The band was founded by keyboardist Chini and bassist Defty, and their music is built on a mix of jazzy riffs and classic soul. Their first two albums were massive in the UK, and they’re about to release a new effort called Jagged Tooth Crook. The first single, called “Repeat,” features guest rapper Dubbul O as well as regular Mouse Outfitters Ellis Meade (who also edited the video) and Sparkz. The song is a good indication of the album’s overall mood: laid-back, breezy, and soulful.
The album comes out on May 4.
Colombian Band Monsieur Periné Wants To Dance With You
In 2015, Monsieur Periné won the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist, although as often happens in “new artist” categories, they’d been plying their trade for a few years already. That trade is a mix of traditional Colombian rhythm, mid-20th-century gypsy jazz, and modern Latin pop. And winning the award seems to have been a tough act to follow, because it’s taken three years for the band to return to the studio. Once again, they invited Eduardo Cabra (half of the all-conquering Puerto Rican band Calle 13) to produce, and the new album, to be called Encanto Tropical, is due later this spring. For now, they’ve released the first single, called “Bailar Contigo” (“Dance with You”), and while it skews more to the pop side, it still uses some traditional string and percussion instruments and has strong roots in tipico Latin music – as the video, of the band members cavorting in a lush tropical jungle, suggests.
Monsieur Periné plays the Highline Ballroom on Saturday, June 16.
A Song For Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Fans, From A Perfect Circle
“So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish” is the new single from A Perfect Circle, the on-again, off-again musical project that features musicians from Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, and Ashes Divide. The album came out on Friday and this track’s title will be familiar to anyone who’s read the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series by the late Douglas Adams. It’s the title of the fourth book in the series, and it’s how the dolphins – now revealed to be the most intelligent life-forms on planet Earth – say goodbye to the humans who’ve been cast aside in the name of Galactic Progress. The song has suitably apocalyptic imagery, bemoaning the time and money we spend on things that don’t really matter (a list that includes both plastic surgery and politicians), and nods to the Adams book with the line “all the dolphins have moved on.” But that line is just an alternate version of a line in the rest of choruses that bids farewell to Gene Wilder (“Willy Wonka”), David Bowie (“Major Tom”), Prince, and others. The band is known for more of a hard rock sound, but this song (despite its valedictory mood) has more of an upbeat 80s/alternative rock feel.
