MELOMANIA rolls out the perfect 10 releases to bring fireworks to your Fourth!
Go forth and celebrate!
NAOMI ALLIGATOR - Double Knot [LP/CD](Carpark)
Corrinne James (a/k/a N.Alligator) has a voice that is equal parts classic 60's female Folkie and new-classic bedroom chanteuse. Without anything but her guitar, several of her songs would be powerful in that 90's Olympia/00's Kimya Dawson manner. However, to pigeonhole her is to sell her talents short. Several of her best hooks are the layering of her voice in the background that warms the sincere "Seasick" and makes the sublime-yet-savage "Don't Get It" feel so spritely. So before you say there are a million of these albums out there - "What makes this any different?" Naomi Alligator has a unique perspective on her bouncy lyricism. "Don't Get It" immediately sets high expectations with her brilliant opening line: "Did it hurt when you fell from the highest peak in Hell?" The slow-release promise of a caustic love song wrapped in an ebullient, almost-childlike song then uses two patterns of repetition (usually a turn-off) that accelerate in a Sarah Mary Chadwick-ian emotional pull. "Blue For You" takes an effective look at "love as an anchor" and even shows Alligator's macabre Robyn Hitchcock-ian lyrics. "Double Knot" is so simple at its roots, Alligator's sweet voice, guitar, and plucked banjo. With her original writing, Naomi Alligator just put herself well out in front of all the others.
GWENNO - Tresor [LP](Heavenly UK)
Welsh singer/songwriter has won tons of praise awards for her beautiful lush Pop albums sung in her native tongues. 2015’s “Y Dydd Olaf” set a very high standard which she continues to meet on her latest “Tresor.” Like her 2018 Cornish album “Le Kov,” she wraps this language in some beautiful melodies. With her musical collaborator/husband Rhys Edwards, “Tresor” is as dreamy and diaphanous as its predecessors too - just cloaked in a veil of sadness. The title cut is a mystery of Sixties pop motifs (the vibraphone) and an implied haunting loneliness that shifts into hope during the Stereolab-ish chorus. While “An Stevel Nowydh” translates its Fleetwood Mac-ish pulse to SynthPop and those Eighties guitar accents. Despite mostly being in Cornish, given the newfound interest in beautiful, emotional, and moving Pop - either one could be a single here as it is.
ISLAND OF LOVE - Songs of Love [7"](Third Man/The Orchard)
The first signing from Third Man London is this blazing Dinosaur Jr.-esque guitar Pop. With the fuzz layer of The Jesus and Mary Chain and bright '60s hooks (those harmonies on "At Home,"!) Island of Love burst through the gate with four awesome and repeatable songs. The best hope for a single is probably the moody 70's epic four minutes of "Songs of Love." While its vocals are well in the background of the mix, the inventive guitar parts ring out, especially the repeating verse, slinky pre-chorus, and a thrilling solo. Like Kids on A Crime Spree, Island of Love prove they have sugar-coated hooks to burn.
HATER - Sincere [LP](Fire Recordings/Redeye)
Chilly Swedish Shoegazer-y Rock that is at its absolute best when they up the distortion and tempo (the Sonic Youth-esque Post-Punk dream of "Far From A Mind.") The mixture of Caroline Landahl's dreamy vocals and the terse, sharp guitar figures needs to be explored more. The single "Something" features a nice reverb-drenched guitar call on her high singing, while the mood piece "Brave Blood" almost leaves behind their overt My Bloody Valentine-isms for a Bettie Serveert-esque chorus. "Sincere" works great as a darkly-tinted dream.
SABABA 5 - "Pur/Baksheesh" and "Rosenzweig/Smilansky" [7"](Batov ISR)
Turkish Jazz is not a hard sell. The mixture of sinuous grooves and exotic instruments likely makes you salivate just from reading about it. Sababa 5 join Russia's Diasonics as the most promising purveyors of "World Instrumental Funk." Sababa 5's "Rosenzweig" is a bit like Shadows-meet-Jimmy Smith-meet an otherworldly Farfisa. As musicians, Sababa 5 are on point in both their Middle Eastern melodies (those guitar trills from Ilan Smilan) and classic Funk vibe. The more subdued and melodic "Smilansky" features a hot psychedelic organ solo from Eltan Drabkin. However, it is the searing "Pur" that is their standout single. Hearing drummer Raz Man work against the driving groove with an almost Meters style would be thrilling enough. But the guitar and organ working together on its hypnotic melody in tacet and then backing each other with chords make "Pur" a go-to single for setting the mix/party off in a wildly different direction.
WINSTON "MANKUNKU" NGOZI QUARTET - Yakhal' Inkomo [LP](Mr. Bongo)
Like a South African equivalent to John Coltrane, Ngozi brilliantly leads his quartet through a set of mid-60s style Blue Note Jazz. Ngozi is often the star overcoming the limitations of the recording (listen to how he grinds the 'Trane-like solo on the title cut which sounds like he knew he had one chance and wanted to use ALL his skill.) However, the Wayne Shorter-ish arrangements as Ngozi plays with his group in tandem and through lots of clever stops and fills really make you want to give this a deep listen. His piano player Lionel Pillay does McCoy Tyner-ish wonders on "Dedication (To Daddy Trane and Brother Silver)" as they work together to maintain the slow boil as a classic live Jazz quartet would do. Their interplay becomes even more evident on the pair of covers that comprise the second side. Horace Silver's "Doodlin'" is just as light and playful as you would expect and Ngozi steps into the solo changing the mood like a good leader. The more swingin' Coltrane cover of "Bessie's Blues" is a great showcase for the skills of his drummer Early Mabuza who plays the snare accents so subtly and favors Kenny Clarke more than Elvin Jones. "Yakhal' Inkomo" is often mentioned in a lot of conversations with the classic Sixties Jazz. Recorded in South Africa in 1968, while our Jazzers were exploring Free Jazz and the blooming Afrofuturistic movement, one can see how this import would have been very welcome.
JONAS REINHARDT - A Ragged Ghost [LP/CD](Trouble In Mind)
Synthesist Jonas Reinhardt has your classic Klaus Schulze/late-Seventies Tangerine Dream sound at full percolation on his eighth album. "A Ragged Ghost" works best because it remains fairly minimal in the amount of synth sounds Reinhardt is using, but he is so adept at layering them ("Earthshaking Patsy") and at times letting them drift (the beautiful sequencer-driven "Oxus" that ends side one.) Reinhardt seems to be composing with more melody in mind than more modern Synth types, so "A Ragged Ghost" feels very human. "The Wretched Orchestra of Armistice" could be under a scene in "Stranger Things" as the treated saxophones mingle well with the bubbling drum machine/sequencer loop and how Reinhardt blends all his sounds together in a massive effects cloud. Like the scores to "Sorcerer" and "Thief," Reinhardt's composition pass slowly from either one movement to another or one track to another all leaving you in a state of bliss for its eleven tracks.
CONJURER - Pathos [LP/CD](Nuclear Blast)
Honestly, the double growling voice-Metal band can be a little daunting. Unlike their more commercial counterparts, when done right - TWO grim reaper voices bellowing at you from some interminable depths below can scare the daylights out of you. Like Amenra and the like, Conjurer is out to vault between the uncomfortable fear of quiet (the beginning of the masterful closer “Cracks In The Pyre”) and the explosion of grief that paints the walls black ( “All You Will Remember.”) Still, these are no “big, dumb” riffs on their songs. The thunderous chugs come quickly - but rarely like you are being ambushed. This is a bleak album with no real ray of hope. In its more placid moments, Conjurer knows just how to shatter the silence with cacophonous guitar strums. “Those Years, Condemned” starts out with an almost Soundgarden-esque beauty (that you can just hear lesser acts springing to borrow) before those vocal attacks almost completely overtake the melody. By the time Conjurer reaches the blastbeat-driven peak, that melody is the ladder to climb out of their doomed chasm.
BAYWITCH - Apocatropica [LP](Halfshell/Light In The Attic)
Seattle's (mostly) instrumental Surf trio takes on a less typical version of twangy, mysterious music on this consistent EP. "Hellfog" is a suitable announcement for the band. The rhythm section of Jake Meierdierck and Sicily Robinson works those toms and low strings to propel the slinky groove. However, it is the restless switching between melody and her own style of "warped" soloing that makes guitarist Lila Burns one to watch. "Netherwhirl" starts in those tenuous Eastern frequencies before, Burns cranks out the melody with double-stop chords and vicious bends. Her midpoint solo shows how well she can use her phrases in repetition to keep the song going to reach her truly distorted solo. However, it is the epic closer "Doomsday" that shows Baywitch and Burns to be capable of making Surf music like no one else. Her best vocal performance winds the energy on this lengthy exploration up tight. The band and Burns switch through small changes in style in between verses like the song was constructed with each chorus of "never-ending Tuesday my friends" as a signal to take an offramp. The second solo could honestly go on forever as far as we are concerned. "Doomsday" is a stellar interstellar trip from these promising Surf Rockers.
CARLOS TRULY - Not Mine [CS](Bayonet)
Carlos Truly’s skewed view of Prince-meets-Cleaners From Venus bedroom Pop/R&B is both infectious and clever. A Truly track can sometimes feel like it has no real organization. In our mind’s eye, we think he is writing a lot of these jams in hot pursuit of capturing the feeling of it. Then on a cut like the slow jam “Vessel” puts the parts back together in some form resembling a song. “Not Mine” is one of those over-before-you-know-it journeys. Truly breathily sings but never his phalanx of Steve Lacy-ish guitar and wild lo-fi synth fun(k.). Honestly, all the songs bleed into each other so elegantly when it finishes, it is a bit like waking up from a dream. Just put it on again and try to drift back into this funky wonderland.
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