Weekly Music Roundup: Sun Ra, Norah Jones, Daisy Press
Week of Sept. 12: This week, 8 centuries of covers: Sun Ra Arkestra covers Chopin; Norah Jones sings Leonard Cohen; Daisy Press reinvents Hildegard of Bingen.
Sun Ra Arkestra Riffs On Chopin
Sun Ra, the legendary creator of some of the most cosmic jazz ever made, has been gone since 1993; but his band, the Arkestra, has continued under the direction of sax player Marshall Allen ever since. Many years ago, Sun Ra had taken the Chopin Prelude in A, Op. 28 #7 for piano and arranged it for his band, with Allen’s sax in the featured role. Now the Sun Ra Arkestra has issued a first-ever studio version of the tune, called simply “Chopin.” It’s a lilting, elegant dance number that features some increasingly insistent sax soloing from Allen. Oh - did I mention that Marshall Allen is now 98?
“Chopin” will appear on the band’s new album, Living Sky, out on October 7.
Norah Jones Covers Leonard Cohen’s “Steer Your Way”
“Steer Your Way” is not one of Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits, but it is a haunted, brooding song from his valedictory album You Want It Darker. Now, Norah Jones has done a new version of the song for a forthcoming tribute album that features Peter Gabriel, Mavis Staples, Iggy Pop, and other luminaries all singing some of Cohen’s songs. Instead of the almost Americana-sounding fiddle of the original, this version has the distinctive, appropriately spectral guitar playing of the incomparable Bill Frisell – the band also includes the great pedal steel player Greg Leisz, breakout sax star Immanuel Wilkins, and a number of other heavy hitters. Tribute albums like this can often be less than the sum of their parts, but this one, Here It Is: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, is off to a promising start, and I for one will be waiting eagerly to hear Iggy Pop do “You Want It Darker” when the full album comes out on October 14.
Daisy Press Offers a 21st Century Take On 12th Century Music
Hildegard von Bingen was a German abbess, composer, mystic, and writer who wrote unusually florid, sensual melodies in the mid-to-late 1100s. New York singer Daisy Press has joined the long list of musicians shaping Hildegard’s melodies to their own devices – a list that includes some of the finest early music vocal ensembles but also electronic music and dance-rock producers. Press, though, has found a way to stand out from the crowd. The arrangements on You Are The Flower – Music From Hildegard von Bingen, Vol. 1 are built on a drone… or rather, a slowly shifting set of drones, which suits the music, reflects her interest in Indian raga, and keeps the longer songs from getting stuck in one sonic place. Some of Hildegard’s “hits” are here – “Favus Distillans” and “O viridissima virga,” for instance – but as the album goes on, Press sings lesser known works, like this “Ave Maria O Auctrix Vitae” which concludes the album. A Norwegian Hardanger fiddle complements and sometimes comments on the vocal line, which features some of Press’s most impressive singing.
Santigold Returns With “Spirituals”
Santi White, the NY-based singer/songwriter who records as Santigold, is a musically restless type – she burst on the scene in 2008 with a head-spinning mix of indie rock, pop, and hip hop, and hasn’t settled down since. On Friday she released her new album, Spirituals, which begins with this tune called “My Horror.” The title is a bit of a head-fake: the song is a bouncy, almost carnivalesque affair, with girl group harmony vocals from the early 60s and an arrangement that seems to echo the psychedelic South American pop of the early 70s. And like some of those songs, “My Horror” has an interesting creative tension between the catchy music and the anxious (“Me in my horror/A day in my horror”) lyrics.
The Bad Plus V.2
Twenty-one years ago, The Bad Plus began dismantling what you thought a piano trio should sound like. Using the standard jazz lineup of piano, double bass, and drums, The Bad Plus explored instrumental rock, avant-garde classical music, and their own indefinable original tunes. Now, the group is about to debut its new lineup – as a quartet of sax, electric guitar, bass and drums. “Not Even Close To Far Off” is the new single, and it shows sax player Chris Speed at his most melodic – at least, until he starts wailing halfway through. Meanwhile Ben Monder provides a heavy curtain of fuzzed-out guitar. But this is still recognizably a Bad Plus song, mainly because of founding drummer Dave King’s thumping rhythmic sensibility and cofounder Reid Anderson’s rock-steady bass.
The new version of The Bad Plus releases its self-titled debut on September 30.
Marlon Williams Looks Back To The 80s
New Zealander Marlon Williams has just issued his third album, My Boy. Some of the songs will be familiar to fans of his earlier, mostly acoustic, almost country-tinged work, but other tracks borrow from earlier pop sounds, from the Bee Gees to the 80s style known as New Romanticism. (They’re all sung in English, but there is the occasional phrase in Maori.) This song, “Thinking of Nina,” takes a sonic page from the playbook of 80s groups like Simply Red or Duran Duran, with a steady midtempo beat and lyrics that take a wry look at love. “I believe in love,” Williams croons, “under certain conditions.” He’s also accompanied by a Greek chorus of backing voices; “trouble, trouble,” they warn after he sings about making out. It’s clever, playful, and catchy.
