via GIPHY

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 buy music for the CD & Vinyl collections, and also run the Libraries’ Wellington Music Facebook page). My Music Specialist colleague Sam, and Fiction Specialist (and avid music fan) Neil, join me every month to cast an 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? [Ed. This is more than likely]. Read on to find out…

Careful of your keepers / This is the Kit
Mark says: Essentially the moniker of UK folkie Kate Stable, This Is The Kit are a band with an ever evolving series of musicians, and ‘Careful of your keepers’ is their 6th album overall & 3rd on the Rough Trade label. Produced by Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, this has no problems in dispensing with the musical boundaries usually associated around the term ‘folk’, and instead uses the low key acoustic guitar and banjo sound as a mere jumping of point, mixing in skittery drums, Jazz horns and rhythms, free-form playing and impressionistic lyrics, yet impressively manages to keep all of it together in a classicist song form.

Neil says: Throughout her career This is the kit, AKA Kate Stables, has constantly reinvented herself. Her work can very loosely be described as alternative folk-rock, but is always so much more than those rigid labels. And so it is with ‘Careful of your Keepers’ her latest album, written and constructed very much from Kate’s own unique perspective. The music feels loose and free, but contains a tightness that she seemingly effortlessly imposes on the song’s forms and structures. The album is meditative and trance like in feel, sentimental in parts, and flows in a beautiful and occasionally brooding fashion.

Everyone’s crushed / Water From Your Eyes
Mark says: Water from Your Eyes are an experimental-pop duo from Brooklyn, and ‘Everyone’s crushed’ is their 5th full length album, and first on major label Matador. They very much put the ‘art’ in Art-pop, with this album of experimental tracks, that balance noise and melody on a fine edge. Full of squally guitars, harsh digital noise, 80s pop stylings and quirky prosaic lyrics, they come off as a glitch-pop noise version of Liz Phair in places. Worth checking out if you enjoy more leftfield pop, like last year’s I love you Jennifer B from Jockstrap.

Neil says: Everyone’s crushed is an intriguing release. The album is very deliberately ramshackle and detached in structure and form, both within single tracks and overall. Reportedly the duo didn’t do anything on this release without getting thoroughly stoned first. And you can tell that while the album contains its own fuzzy logic, it also boasts loads of catchy loops and has melodic elements sprinkled throughout. The lyrics are a kind of personal and global state of the nation summary, and display a deep undercurrent of murky fatalism. This combination of glitchy samples, art pop aesthetic lyrics, loose structure and experimental and melodic components makes for a mesmerizing and potent mix. Well worth checking out.

Continue reading “July’s New Music for Te Awe” →

Here is part two of our new music picks for June. You can catch up with Part 1 here. 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.

[Note: We welcome a new addition to our review team, with Sam who is the new other half of the WCL Music Customer Specialist team].

Tubular bells : 50th anniversary edition / Oldfield, Mike
Sam says: When ‘Tubular Bells’ was released in 1973, it left a sizeable impact on the field of popular music. It was a tremendous artistic achievement, with the entirety of the writing process and majority of the vast instrumental performances undertaken by Oldfield himself, who was a mere teenager at the time! The compositions are colourful and endlessly inventive, driven by an epic, odyssey-like structure weaving through many varied musical movements. Over the decades since its release, it has played a significant role within numerous pieces of media (such as its iconic usage in the legendary horror film ‘The Exorcist’). It has also seen numerous reissues, and it has even garnered a number of musical sequels created by Mike Oldfield himself. Needless to say, 50 years later, the impact of this monumental piece of music is still clearly apparent.

Neil says: ‘Tubular bells’ was the first ever release on the Virgin label. It’s creator, the then, 19-year-old musician Mike Oldfield, incredibly plays every instrument on the album. Much of Virgin’s fate depended on the success or otherwise of the release, as no expense had been spared on the recording, and at the time Virgin enterprises was in its infancy. Initially the albums sales were sluggish, but the use of music from the album in William Friedkin’s visceral horror classic The Exorcist changed that and propelled it high into the charts. The rest, as they say, is history. It is a pastoral, progressive rock album with folk and classical elements, and one of the most iconic and popular albums of the 70’s. This 50th anniversary release features a new master of the original album “the gem in this rerelease” plus music recorded by Oldfield for the London Olympics and excerpts from an abandoned Tubular Bells 4 project. Arguably Oldfield would never quite reach the heights he reached in his first outing.

O monolith / Squid (Musical group)
Mark says: More post-punk, Krautrock, and post-rock aesthetics from this London based band, following on from 2021’s acclaimed Bright Green Field. Squid are definitely a band at the forefront of the ‘post genre’ style of music that is the template for many young bands now. Cool grooves and intense tracks, where it seems that anything could happen at any musical moment. Produced by Dan Carey (who also produced everyone from Black Midi to Fontaines D.C, Wet Leg and Goat Girl). There’s a maximalist/Minimalist juxtaposition at play, as tracks surge with a synthy, distorted noise before collapsing back into softer aesthetics. Radiohead seem a stronger influence than on their debut album, with more obtuse melodies and esoteric lyrics.

Neil says: Squid’s second album sees them building, and carefully expanding, on their critically acclaimed first album Bright Green Field. There is a new spectral, spacey opened ended sound to much of this latest release. Their core sound is still present, but they let the structure of the songs slowly evolve, rather than go for the previous ‘short-sharp-shock’ angular approach of Bright Green Field. The lyrics again are dense and multi-layered touching on many themes, and it is sure to win them even more fans and, one suspects, a lot of attention and nominations to feature on best of 2023 lists. I, for one, can’t wait to hear where they head to next.

Sam says: Hailing from Brighton, England, Squid burst onto the scene a couple of years back with Bright Green Field, which of itself was an impressive debut that, while not particularly original, displayed a highly developed level of musicianship for such a young act. With their sophomore effort ‘O Monolith’, they have stepped their game up notably. All the aspects that were so impressive on the previous album have been articulated in a stronger and more compelling way. The progressive elements that creeped through before are now much more fully-formed and confidently executed, whereas the more aggressive post-punk tendencies, whilst perhaps a little more sparse in their utilisation, are just as powerful as ever when they do come through. Most notably, the songs themselves feel more potent and memorable, making for a consistently engaging and rewarding listen. Similarly-minded new British groups such as Black Midi and Black Country, New Road really hit their stride with their respective follow-up albums over the past couple of years, with O Monolith it feels like Squid’s turn to show the world what they are really capable of.

Continue reading “June’s New Music for Te Awe: Part 2” →

via GIPHY

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? [Ed. This is more than likely]. Read on to find out…

Savoy / Mahal, Taj
Mark: Blues legend Taj Mahal’s new album delivers a funky personal take on the Classic American Jazz songbook. On the opening track, ‘Stompin at the Savoy’, he recounts how his parents met at an Ella Fitzgerald/Chick Webb gig at the Savoy Ballroom, and how Jazz was the sound of his upbringing. He livens up these swing-jazz-Big Band era standards with a warm bluesy phrasing and energy that is sure to bring a smile to your face. Iconic folk-Blues singer Maria Muldaur duets on a fun take of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
Neil: Taj Mahal, the American blues legend, releases an album of covers of 20’s, 30’s and 40’s classic old-school swing dance covers. Featuring tracks originally made famous by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Louis Jordan. Taj Mahal’s distinctive, elegant, smooth and smoky voice gives the tracks a new feel, and the resulting release is both very reverential to the original source material whilst also breathing new life and vitality into them.

Linger awhile / Samara Joy
Mark: More Jazz, if somewhat more traditional interpretations, with this 2022 album (reissued in 2023 with bonus tracks). A winner of the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition ‘Linger awhile’, her sophomore album, won her a double Grammy in 2022 for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best New Artist. An amazing voice with a timbre compared to Sarah Vaughan & Dinah Washington, and a huge TikTok following, she brings classic Jazz to zoomers with these tasteful and classy interpretations of well known and obscure standards. A great acoustic band backs her and she mixes things up with the alternate lyrics to the classic ‘Round Midnight’, a vocalese take on trumpeter Fats Navarro’s “Nostalgia – for which she wrote the lyrics, and a lovely closing duet with guitarist Pasquale Grasso. Definitely the next big Jazz star.
Neil: This is the second studio release from the American jazz singer Samara Joy, who already has two Grammy’s to her name at the age of twenty-two. Her vocal stylings and phrasings, as well as her song selections remind the listener of jazz legends like Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald and their works. A pitch perfect homage to the timeless golden age of jazz.

Aperture / Jadagu, Hannah
Mark: Hannah Jadagu is a Texan indie-pop singer clearly destined for big success. She gained attention for a series of singles released while she was at high school, which led to her being signed to Sub Pop and a 2021 EP recorded entirely on her iPhone 7 with GarageBand iOS, an iRig, a microphone, and a guitar. Her full length debut has a crisper and cleaner productions, but still retains that casual air of fizzy bedroom pop. A set of super catchy, warm, synthy, indie-shoegaze songs showcase her gift of hooky melodies and bouncy instrumentation, while the later half of the album captures a more reflective take on emerging adulthood. A really impressive debut.
Neil: Hannah Jadagu’s debut album ‘Aperture’ is a assured hybrid outing, mashing up indie-alternative pop & R&B, and there’s even a touch of punk in the mix. It’s a spectacular debut, made even more impressive by the fact that Hannah created it whilst still studying at college. And, despite its largely D.I.Y. roots, the production is sleek and highly polished. The songs are liberally sprinkled with memorable riffs and catchy hooks and often build up to warm and crisp multi layered crescendos. For reference it reminded me in parts of Arlo Parks. A confident and assured debut.

Continue reading “June’s new music for Te Awe: Part 1” →