Weekly Music Roundup: Nathalie Joachim, Erick the Architect, Sprints
Week of Jan. 8: This week, previews of 2024 releases by Nathalie Joachim and Erick the Architect, plus Bela Fleck’s Rhapsody in Blue(grass). Also, Sprints’ debut LP and an Anne Briggs cover.
Nathalie Joachim Explores Haitian Roots and Electronic Samples On New Single
Singer, composer, and flutist Nathalie Joachim began exploring her family’s history in Haiti with her remarkable 2019 album, Fanm d’Ayiti (“Women of Haiti”). On February 16, she’ll continue that story with a record called Ki moun ou ye (“Who are you”), and she’s just released the first single, the title track. Joachim has been a fixture on the contemporary classical scene, and the first album, featuring string quartet, reflected that. This new song moves into glitchy electronic territory, with violinist Yvonne Lam (Joachim’s bandmate in the new music group Eighth Blackbird) and drummer Jason Treuting of So Percussion helping out. Joachim’s vocal textures, both sampled and sung, blend beautifully, and when the glitchy bits come together, the band arrangement is equally melodic.
Erick The Architect Enlists George Clinton For New Single
After ten years with the Brooklyn hip hop trio Flatbush Zombies, Erick the Architect is about to release his debut solo LP, I’ve Never Been Here Before, on February 23. He’s just put out a new single, “Ezekiel’s Wheel,” which features the one and only George Clinton, the starship captain who piloted Parliament-Funkadelic into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Over a soulful production with a bassline that has that slightly elastic funk sound, Erick raps about growing up in Brooklyn and rising to the point where he can – well, share a track with George Clinton. The latter’s contribution is just a couple of spoken sentences, but they are pure Clinton gold: “do the best you can, then funk it and fly on.”
Bela Fleck’s “Rhapsody In Blue(grass)” Marks Two Centennials
February 12 is the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and as we’ve already heard, the tributes, arrangements, and new takes on this iconic American composition have already begun. Saturday, meanwhile, marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary banjo player Earl Scruggs. These dueling centennials hit Bela Fleck right between the eyes. The banjo wiz, his shelves sagging under the weight of his many Grammys, has released “Rhapsody in Blue(grass),” a version of Gershwin’s classic that features his bluegrass band. It’s not such a big leap from the Dixieland jazz bands that inspired Gershwin to the sounds of vintage bluegrass, so while this is definitely the Rhapsody like you’ve never heard it before, it not only works as a(nother) display of Fleck’s creativity and virtuosity, it also somehow makes perfect sense.
Fleck’s new album will be called Rhapsody In Blue, and will include the orchestral version of the piece with banjo instead of piano. It comes out, of course, on February 12.
Dublin Band Sprints Make A Loud, Buzzy Debut
Irish punk band Sprints has just released its debut LP, but the quartet has been amassing a reputation on their side of the Atlantic for their explosive live shows and two EPs that were critic’s faves. Letter To Self is a collection of songs that roar with anger, frustration, vulnerability and, ultimately, catharsis. And when I say roar, that applies both to the guitars and singer/songwriter Karla Chubb’s vocals. But she cuts the songs’ weighty, and potentially wearying, themes with moments of sardonic humor and deadpan delivery. “Up And Comer” is one such track – a kind of deflating look at the sort of thing critics may well have written about her own music, as Chubb sings, “they say she’s good… for an up and comer.”
A Year’s End Cover Of An Anne Briggs Classic
Chris Brain is a singer/guitarist who runs a couple of folk clubs and festival in Leeds, England. He’s recorded two albums but I discovered him through his YouTube videos. In this one, done at the end of 2023, Brain settles down in a path in an evergreen wood in North Yorkshire with his guitar and a microphone and delivers a lovely version of “Go Your Way,” a song of farewell by the extraordinary English folk singer Anne Briggs (actually a song she co-wrote with her longtime collaborator, the late Bert Jansch). The song’s mix of tenderness and regret is meant for a lover who’s gone away and will not return, but it somehow fits the mood as we turn another page on the calendar.
