Week of April 4: This week, gifted British singer Emeli Sandé, Pastor Champion’s posthumous debut, Hannah Peel meets the Paraorchestra, and Adrian Quesada reinvents Mexican Psychedelia   

A Startling – and Posthumous – Debut For Pastor Champion

At the very end of last year, Pastor Champion died at the age of 75.  You will be forgiven for not having noticed.  The good pastor was not well-known, at least not in media circles, although he’d spent decades traveling alone between Louisiana and California as a pastor and carpenter, playing electric guitar and singing in people’s homes and local churches.  He never made a record.  But in 2018, Luaka Bop Records visited him at the 37^th Street Baptist Church in Oakland, where they recorded Pastor Champion and a makeshift band that were learning Champion’s songs as they went along.  More like a field recording than a polished studio project, the resulting album, I Just Want To Be A Good Man, was finally released on Friday.  Although he fit the mold of an “outsider artist,” Pastor Champion’s music is not inaccessible or avant-garde; it’s a personal blend of gospel, blues, funk, and gritty American attitude.  Or, as the label itself puts it, “Pastor Champion was a badass.”  This song called “Storm of Life” was recorded live as the video cameras rolled. 

Emeli Sandé Releases a New Power Ballad

Emeli Sandé, the gifted British singer, has just released a new song called “There Isn’t Much,” a throwback to 80s soul and R&B from her upcoming album Let’s Say For Instance. Sandé grew up biracial in Scotland but became a hit practically right out of the gate in London in 2011 – she dropped her given name, Adele, and began performing under her middle name to avoid confusion with a certain other British pop star at the time. This song is about hitting life’s highs (Sandé is a multiple Brit Award winner and played at the Obama White House) but not enjoying it if you don’t have the right person to share it with. Its release comes just a week or so after she announced she was in a same-sex relationship after divorcing her husband several years ago. “Now that I’ve found true love,” she writes, “and finally the right life partner, I could really put genuine emotion into the song.”  

The album comes out on May 6. 

A Remarkable Collaboration: Hannah Peel and Paraorchestra

The Unfolding is a new album by Hannah Peel, a British composer of contemporary classical music who is also a singer and electronic musician in an indie rock band, and the Paraorchestra, a virtuoso group of disabled and non-disabled musicians. The Paraorchestra is based in Bristol, England, and uses a mix of traditional acoustic instruments and electronic ones. Now, that’s no longer so unusual, but Paraorchestra also uses assistive instruments, like tablets and an instrument controlled by breath and head movements to enable a now-quadriplegic musician to continue playing. They’ve played for the Paraolympics, and are justifiably proud of their mixed lineup, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about the group is that you’d never guess from the sound that the ensemble spans such a range of physical abilities. “We Are Part Mineral” is a great example of this inspiring collaboration, recorded in spurts during the pandemic at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio.  

Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada Offers A Fresh Look At An Old Latin American Sound

Guitarist and producer Adrian Quesada co-founded the Grammy-nominated soul band Black Pumas, but he’s a lifelong fan of the balada music of the late 60s/early 70s. Combining the arch romanticism of the Mexican bolero with the psychedelic sounds of 60s rock, balada was a strange brew of the lovelorn and the sultry, and Quesada apparently decided that the covid lockdown was as good a time as any to start resurrecting that style for today’s strange world. So he’s preparing to release Boleros Psicodélicos on June 3, and to whet your appetite, here’s the first single, “Mentiras Con Cariño.” The guest singer is iLe, the fabulous Puerto Rican vocalist who began with her brothers in the rap group Calle 13 and has now embarked on her own reclamation project of earlier Latin American song forms. With its strutting piano, insinuating vibes, flute solos, and silky smooth vocals, the song has a sound you can easily get lost in. 

Peter Coccoma Blends Medieval Mysticism And Ambient Music

We’ve met Peter Coccoma before – he was a member of the arty dream-pop band Pavo Pavo. But his forthcoming debut album A Place To Begin is something quite different: made on an island in the frozen Lake Superior during the winter, it is a series of musical meditations, for electronics and strings, inspired by the stillness of the winter landscape and the Buddhist practice of maranasati, which contemplates death within the routine of daily life. This idea is not so far removed from the anonymous 14^th century English tract known as The Cloud of Unknowing, an important mystical text that has inspired musicians ranging from Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams (whose influence can be felt here) to the experimental rock band Swans. Coccoma seems to reference the book in several of his titles, including this single from the album, called “clouds of understanding.” It features cellist/composer Clarice Jensen, playing multiple layers that offer a sense of solitude but also hint at constant motion beneath the stillness.  

A First Look at Patrick Watson’s New LP

Montreal’s Patrick Watson is known for arty, quasi-orchestral pop songs – in fact, his concerts have occasionally ditched the “quasi” and actually incorporated an orchestra. Whether grand, or intimate - and Watson’s music can be both - it’s always created with an interesting sonic palette. His new single is “Height Of The Feeling,” written with Ariel Engle, the Canadian indie pop singer who records as La Force. Their paired vocals have an easy rapport, but the immediately striking sound of the song is its rubbery modular synthesizer, which provides the track’s pulsing yet uncertain heartbeat. Not inappropriate for a song about feeling unmoored by a lack of personal connection. 

Patrick Watson’s new album, Better In The Shade, comes out on April 22. 

Katy J Pearson Makes Something New Out Of Older Sounds

Singer and guitarist Katy J Pearson will be releasing her sophomore album in July, and she’s just put out the record’s first single, called “Talk Over Town.” Pearson is English, but the song has a hint of Nashville, or maybe Austin, in the vocals; meanwhile the steady beat and grand arrangement in the chorus show the influence of 1980's synthpop and 2000's indie rock. The album, Sound of the Morning, is co-produced by the suddenly ubiquitous Dan Carey (Kae Tempest, Black Midi, Geese), and comes out on July 8.