Weekly Music Roundup: The Mountain Goats, George Riley, and Cautious Clay

This week, The Mountain Goats meet Lin-Manuel Miranda; Ed Sheeran goes to India; and George Riley aims to make her name known on our side of the pond. 

The Mountain Goats Unveil A New Single, And New Collaborator

The Mountain Goats, led as ever by singer, songwriter, and novelist John Darnielle, have announced a new album, called Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan. “There were sixteen men on a fishing boat but only three survived the storm, and one of those went missing, and is presumed dead. That leaves me & Peter Balkan, whose health is failing as his apocalyptic visions dissipate in the spray at the shore,” Darnielle writes in a press release. So this will be a concept album – a story told, however elliptically, through a dozen new songs. You may well ask, well, how is that different from a musical? The answer is, it’s not. The album is a musical, and if you need proof, look no further than the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it backing vocals in the first single, “Armies Of The Lord.” They are sung by Lin-Manuel Miranda. While much of the sound is classic Mountain Goats, the appearance of American musical theater’s most recognizable personality, and a lush, orchestral arrangement, signify that the Mountain Goats are perhaps climbing a new peak.  

Meet London’s George Riley

Her name is George Riley. She’s a London singer who makes smart pop music with more than a hint of that city’s experimental electronic and progressive R&B scenes. And she’s had a busy week. Today she released her new album (mixtape?) called More Is More, while also appearing on the new album by Verses GT (the new collaboration between producers Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene), also out today. Riley seems poised to become better known on this side of the Atlantic, with her strong pop instincts and unusual instrumental touches. Just listen to this track, “More,” with its sitar-like twang, skittering drums, and breakbeat ending all packed into less than three minutes; and when she sings about having “shoes and bags and hats” and wanting more and more, it becomes apparent that she has a lot to say about the way women are expected to behave (and consume).  

Cautious Clay, After Hours

The indie-soul singer Cautious Clay released an album earlier this year called The Hours: Morning. Each track had a title and an hour of the morning associated with it, and he made it clear that other parts of the day would be coming. Now, he’s announced The Hours: Nights, which comes out on October 24, and released this single, called “Art Museum (2am).” His smokey vocals are nicely supported by a steady but unhurried R&B beat, and gently nocturnal keyboards. Bits of guitar and bass come  and go, as the song walks a fine line between nighttime languor and romantic alertness.  

Ed Sheeran Goes Back To Pop, And To India

Ed Sheeran seems to like series, rather than individual albums. First came his all-conquering series of albums titled after mathematical symbols (and those symbols, + - = x ÷, now adorn the team jerseys of Ipswich Town, the English soccer team Sheeran is a minority owner of). With today’s album Play, Sheeran has begun a new set of records whose titles will refer to the buttons on electronic devices, so Pause, Fast Forward, Rewind, and Stop are still to come. Play is unabashedly pop, although as Sheeran showed in at least one or two of the singles, it is pop viewed through a global lens. “Sapphire” is one of those singles, with its South Asian rhythms, its repeated Punjabi line “cham-cham chamke sitare wargi” (“shine brightly like the stars”), and its head-spinning video tour of the Indian state of Goa, famous for its dance/rave scene.  

Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer Bring Back Audio Souvenirs From the Baltic Sea

Synth player Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer have made several albums together that grow out of improvisations that are collaged into works that sound composed. Now they’ve finally released their 2022 album Recordings From The Åland Island on vinyl LP for the first time.  The album marries their electroacoustic soundscapes to actual field recordings from that group of islands in the Baltic Sea. (The Åland Islands are a largely Swedish-speaking part of Finland.) So in addition to the keyboards and layers of strings and occasional bells, we hear birds, a church organ, and voices of the tiny village where the musicians largely stayed. It’s as much a musical postcard as an album, and this track, “Snåcko,” has a peaceful, pastoral sound, thanks to both the human musicians and their avian accompaniment.