Statler: Well, it was good.
Waldorf: Ah, it was very bad.
Statler: Well, it was average.
Waldorf: Ah, it was in the middle there.
Statler: Ah, it wasn’t that great.
Waldorf: I kind of liked it.”
-‘The Muppet Show’.
I’m Mark, the Music & Film Specialist at Wellington City Libraries (I also run the Libraries’ Wellington Music Facebook page). Every month my colleague Neil and I cast our eye over the new material we have been buying for the Music collection at our CBD Te Awe library. We pick out some interesting titles across a range of music genres, and try to limit our reviews to a few lines only. Can we encapsulate an entire album in just a couple of lines? [Ed. This is probably unlikely at this point]. Do we actually know anything about new music? Or, are we just too old to understand what most of this is banging on about? Read on to find out…
Here is part three of our new music picks for January. You can catch up with Part 1 here & Part 2 here.
Wrap it up : the Isaac Hayes and David Porter songbook
Mark: What can you say about the songwriting genius of Isaac Hayes & David Porter. The architects of Stax Soul, they created a sound that still sounds fresh and inspiring today, creating classic tracks that are continually covered by black & white artists and frequently crop up on modern movie soundtracks. Like most entries in the Ace Songwriters series, this presents some familiar songs in versions by different artists and some some rarer less familiar tracks. The mix of races, decades, & musical styles on display here is really a testament to the universal truths of these timeless songs.
Neil: If you are a fan of soul music, or indeed want to just dive into its many splendored past, then this lovingly curated compilation of classic soul anthems is a great place to start. There is one unifying link that joins all the tracks on the release, and that is they were written by the legendary writing partnership of Isaac Hayes and David Porter over an incredibly productive four-year period between 1965-1969. Many of the songs were huge hits at the time, and some remain on the core soul tunes canon to this day. A total treat.
The hardest part / Cyrus, Noah
Mark: The name may make you think…hang on, and you’d be right as Noah Cyrus is Miley Cyrus’ youngest sister, and ‘The hardest part’ is her debut full-length album following 3 EPs. This is very different from the music her sister makes, full of shades of pedal steel & banjo’s, and the strong songwriting of someone forging their own path and musical identity after overcoming a battle with substance abuse. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but the songs dig into the emotional complexities of heartbreak, recovery & family bonds with sincerity, she has a lovely expressive voice. Just an impeccably executed set of acoustic country/pop songs.
Neil: ‘The Hardest part’ is the debut album release from actress/ singer Noah Cyrus ( She started her acting career at the age of two and voiced Ponyo in its English version). It’s an album of focussed, mellow, acoustic guitar-pop, often in places evoking the Laurel-Canyon singer songwriter tradition. You can, from listening to the album, tell that Noah extends a vigorous attention to detail in both her lyrics and musical delivery. The songs deal with a raft of subjects and emotions, and are often tender and vulnerable . It is a fully formed work in all aspects and went on to earn her a Best New Artist nomination at the 2021 Grammy’s.
Devotional / Lord (Musician)
Mark: Vocalist and violinist Petra Haden (one of the daughters of late Jazz-bassist Charlie Haden) has had a remarkably eclectic musical career, from early days as a member of cult LA pop band That Dog, to an all-vocals tribute to a classic Who album, to collaborations with Bill Frisell & Mark Kozelek (Sun Kill Moon). Her latest collaboration is with The Lord, the Doom-metal project of Greg Anderson of Sunn O))) & Goatsnake. Just when you think there is nothing that you haven’t heard before, something like this will come along. A stunning suite of wordless, swirling, ethereal vocals, set to doom metal laced with heavy Indian classical influences. Intense, terrifying, meditative, hypnotic, gruelling yet life affirming. Music that almost impossible to describe, but achieves a lasting emotional response.
Neil: So, ‘Devotional’ by The Lord is not a Christian rock album, as the cover and title might suggest. It’s by the musicians who previously released Forest Nocturne an album inspired by Horror film soundtracks, so inspirational Christian album it is not. ‘Devotional’ is also very unlike its predecessor ‘Forest Nocturne’, though it does share a common widescreen, almost polymesmeric, quality. ‘Devotional’ is symphonic doom metal created from interwoven drone guitar and trance like chanting. It has an almost ritual Buddhist quality, in its slowly unwinding repetitive quality and you can also detect the influence of Indian music too. A strange and unusual piece that in its own way is compelling.
She said / Starcrawler
Mark: The 3rd album from these L.A retro-rockers, following 2019’s Devour You. Starcrawler obviously decided that what was lacking in modern music was a band who were dedicated to recreating the sound of Hole, circa Celebrity Skin. If that sounds like a criticism, its not, as this is just awesome fun all round. Huge riffs & catchy songs pay homage to Hole, Kiss, Joan Jett’s Runaways, and lead singer Arrow de Wilde (actually her real name) seems to be having so much fun channelling these glam influences that it becomes something a little better than just pastiche.
Neil: Starcrawler unashamedly channel the dual spirits of 70’s hard rock, and the back to basics 80’s punk of bands like the Runaways. ‘She said’ is their third album, and it’s full of catchy, anthemic, chant songs and glam-rock inspired guitar hooks. There’s definitely a couple of pages from the Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper guitar riff manual in there. Great fun. think Suzi Quatro as channelled by modern day heavy-rock L.A. musical YOOF.
Alpha Zulu / Phoenix (Musical group)
Mark: The well reviewed ‘Alpha Zulu’ has been seen as a late career highpoint for the French synth-rockers. Their 7th album is a super slick affair that also retains an emotional core, being both a post Covid album and also a response to the 2019 death of the band’s frequent collaborator and producer, Cassius member Philippe Zdar. Full of pulsing synths, disco-tinged bangers and plenty of pop hooks, the band deliver their most consistent set of tracks in years in an album that easily sits next to their 2009 Grammy winning breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Super danceable & catchy. A great return.
Neil: French Indie pop band Phoenix have been on the go for a while, and ‘Alpha Zulu’ is their seventh album release. When they first broke through in France they were hailed as the band that’s going to save French pop music, and to a large extent this has proved to be the case, as they’ve won the Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammy Awards and had a string of hit albums and huge critical and commercial success. To fire up their creative energies for this album, they hired a studio in the Musée des Arts décoratifs, in a wing of the Louvre during the Covid pandemic of 2020, stating that they ‘wanted to create something beautiful in a deserted museum’. The resultant album is euphoric pop outing, deceptively simple, with lush production and a fizzy synth pop vibe, with the lyrics providing a supporting role in creating the overall atmosphere rather than being at the fore.
Pigments / Richard, Dawn
Mark: New Orleans singer Dawn Richard was formerly a member of projects helmed by P.Diddy, before moving on to become a leading figure in the alternative R&B/Electronica scene, and Spencer Zahn is an NY multi-instrumental Jazz musician. They have collaborated previously, but this is their first full length album. Intimate, slow, floaty minimalist chamber Jazz that occupies a similar meditative space as Nala Sinephro’s Space 1.8. The low register bass, string washes, lush orchestration and subtle electronics all give the music a dreamy reflective tone, as it transitions from vocal sections to mellow ambience.
Neil: ‘Pigments’ by Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn is a beautiful and relaxing meditative work, that weaves Dawn’s flexible and evocative voice in and out of the surrounding music like the ebb and flow of a spring tide. The supporting music is neo classical in tone, with strong modern mellow Jazz elements. There are sparkling moments, moments of vulnerability, and a lot of very subtle, nuanced and delicate transitions amongst the washes of synths, voices and Saxophones. A very atmospheric release.
1969 / Driscoll, Julie
Mark: Julie Driscoll is an iconic English singer who worked with Blues-pop act Brian Auger and the Trinity in the late 60s. In the 1970s she married Jazz musician Keith Tippett, and her vocal work became more experimental & avant-garde. Two of her albums have been reissued recently, ‘1969’, which came out of the late 60’s Canterbury music scene, and 1976’s more experimental Sunset Glow (under the name Julie Tippett). This is firmly in the folk-Jazz-rock mould, but performed within a more stricter ‘pop’ format, aligning with the then current wave of female singer-songwriters. Her voice is quite soulful and the songs represent the themes of the time, revolving around the quest for social, political & personal freedoms. Like a lot of the spiritual, freedom & protest music of that time it has held up surprisingly well & still resonates today.
Neil: Julie Driscoll is perhaps best known for her cover of Wheels on fire, which became one of the defining tracks of the British psychedelic-era in rock music. And also, the theme tune to ‘Absolutely Fabulous’. Julie Driscoll’s ‘1969’ was originally released in 1971, and whilst there are trappings of the flower-power scene to be heard here, the album is much more expansive, experimental and varied to be so easily pigeonholed. Despite its age and genesis, the album stands up remarkably well, and not just in a historical context, but also in a modern one. Some of the reasons for this include the experimental folk-jazz, played by many leading musicians of the Canterbury scene of that time, as well as the quality of the song writing both lyrically and musically. And one of the key factors in this is Driscoll’s voice itself, which is powerfully full of emotion at one point, and wistfully nuanced the next.
Roya / Liraz
Mark: Liraz is musician and actor Liraz Charhi, an award-winning Israeli-Persian singer & actress and ‘Roya’ is her 3rd album. 2020 predecessor Zan (Woman), involved online collaborations with Iranian musicians, but this time she risked recording together live in a secret studio space in Istanbul with female musicians from Tehran. The album serves as a tribute to the women of Iran and the ongoing power of their struggle, mixing six Israeli musicians with five Iranian performers in a melange Middle-East grooves, meets 70s funk, sophisticated 80s pop, analogue synths, orchestration & traditional Iranian lute, tar, violin, viola and guitars.
Neil: ‘Roya’ by Liraz largely is a dialog on many levels between the artist and her sisters (in the widest sense) in Iran. The album would be deemed controversial and banned by the ruling authorities in her homeland for a whole host of reasons, such as recording it in the neutral territory of Istanbul to allow her to use six Israeli musicians and five Iranian ones. Not to mention the lyrics are about solidarity and empowerment. That said, the music isn’t heavy in any way, it’s more a joyous and upbeat celebration of what this movement stands for. An up tempo mix of infectious seventies disco, crossed with modern psychedelic sounds, and all created through the lens of Iranian and the Middle-eastern sounds using instruments such as the Tar and the Lute mixed in with the drum machines and synths.
