Tag: Rhiannon Giddens

Rick’s Quick Takes: Summer, Part 3

On By kruekuttIn americana, art rock, blues, country, folk music, jazz, jazz rock, Neal Morse, Pink Floyd, progressive rock, punk rock, thrash metal, vernacular music1 Comment

Unless otherwise noted, title links are typically to Bandcamp for streaming and purchasing, or to Spotify/YouTube for streaming with a additional purchase link following the review.

Neal Morse, The Dreamer – Joseph, Part One: For his latest rock opera a la 2019’s Jesus Christ the Exorcist, Morse and his studio sidekicks swerve toward hard-hitting blues-rock; the usual “Overture” and the narrative tracks “Burns Like A Wheel” and “Gold Dust City” are stuffed to the brim with chunky organ and grunged-up wah-wah guitar work. Wailing vocals from the cast of Christian Progressive Rock stalwarts who play Jacob, Joseph’s brothers and his Egyptian captors slot right in; even the power ballads (“The Pit”) have more grit this time around! And while the second half of the album is stylistically slicker (complete with classical chorale “I Will Wait on the Lord”), the hooky closer “Why Have You Forsaken Me?” pulls all the musical threads together, with Morse’s emotive portrayal of Joseph setting up intriguing possibilities for Part 2 — which, given his extravagant productivity, shouldn’t be too long in coming. Order from Radiant Records here.

Tu-Ner, T-1 Contact Information: Power trio improvisation that takes no prisoners, from another eerily luminous satellite band orbiting the gravity well of King Crimson. Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto formed one of Crimson’s most ferocious rhythm sections in the early 2000s, also recording together as TU; here Mastelotto clatters away merrily on his sonic smorgasbord of drums and percussion, while Gunn unleashes the deepest, fattest bass licks known to subwoofers. Above and around the Rhythm Buddies’ brutalist bedrock, Markus Reuter (who’s worked with Mastelotto in the duo Tuner and the trio Stick Men) unleashes slashing, swooping touch guitar lines and dark, brooding soundscape clouds — and when Gunn joins him on the higher end, sparks really fly. Always arresting, intermittently galvanizing, but the track titles (or this review for that matter) can’t really give you a feel for what this sounds like. In other words, you’ve gotta hear what Tu-Ner do to believe it.

Richard Wright, Wet Dream: In case you ever wondered exactly what keyboardist Wright brought to Pink Floyd, his 1978 solo album has it in spades. On tracks like “Mediterranean C” and “Drop In from the Top” lush, floating chord progressions set up open-ended jams by guitarist Snowy White and sax legend Mel Collins; Wright’s reedy voice spins out languid vignettes of detachment and disillusion such as “Summer Elegy” and “Holiday”. All thoroughly gorgeous (especially in this immaculate new Steven Wilson remix), occasionally funky, ineffably melancholy — and not terribly urgent in isolation. Still, you can hear the breathing space that Floyd lost as Wright faded into the background and Roger Waters began repeatedly kicking his audience in the head on The Wall. Order from Rhino Records here.

Ultravox, Quartet [Deluxe Edition]: Speaking of immaculate Steven Wilson remixes: this is his third in a series for the British new wave quartet. Regrouping after early personnel changes, Ultravox struck a quirky vein of New Romantic post-punk on 1980’s Vienna, then pursued cutting-edge Krautrock on the follow-up Rage in Eden. Connecting with legendary producer/5th Beatle George Martin, frontman Midge Ure, violinist/keyboardist Billly Currie, bassist Chris Cross and drummer Warren Cann aimed straight for the charts; Quartet is as pure of a pop album as they ever achieved. The UK singles “Reap the Wild Wind,” “Hymn,” “Visions in Blue” and “We Came to Dance” have an irresistible mix of rock drive, synth-pop color and devil-may-care melody, and the album tracks slot right in; the whole thing’s overripe and melodramatic in the most appealing way. Plenty of extras in the 7-disc box too, with b-sides, rarities, rehearsal tapes, studio monitor mixes and an intense live set all included. Order from the Ultravox store here.

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kruekutt’s 2019 Favorites: New Music

On By kruekuttIn progressive rock1 Comment

Here are the albums of new music from 2019 that grabbed me on first listen, then compelled repeated plays. I’m not gonna rank them except for my Top Favorite status, which I’ll save for the very end. The others are listed alphabetically by artist. (Old school style, that is — last names first where necessary!) Links to previous reviews or purchase sites are embedded in the album titles.  But first, a graphic tease …

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Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi, There Is No Other

On By kruekuttIn americana, classical, folk music, jazz, vernacular music2 Comments

If you haven’t heard Rhiannon Giddens yet … well, just listen:

Gifted with a glorious, classically trained voice plus extraordinary skills on banjo and fiddle, equally at home with African-American spirituals, Celtic “mouth music” and opera, Giddens is the kind of protean musician that comes along once in a generation.

Founding “postmodern string band” the Carolina Chocolate Drops, writing music for Bob Dylan’s words on The New Basement Tapes, winning a MacArthur Genius fellowship, acting in CMT’s Nashville series — Giddens has gone from strength to strength in a remarkably short time, earning every step up in her meteoric rise.  Seeing her live in the summer of 2015, I walked away giddy, as she and her band effortlessly filled a Cape Cod town hall with irresistible rhythms, utterly committed performances that ran the gamut from a tear-inducing take on Dolly Parton to funked-up Appalachian folk tunes  —  and that powerful, powerful voice.

For her third solo album (after 2015’s Tomorrow Is My Turn and 2017’s Freedom Highway), Giddens has teamed with Italian pianist/percussionist Francesco Turrisi, who  filters early Mediterranean folk music through the prism of jazz.  Recorded in Dublin, Ireland in five days with minimal preparation and few overdubs, There Is No Other soars, sears and astonishes — breaking your heart one instant, healing it and setting off fireworks of exhilaration the next, commanding your attention throughout.

Words can only approximate the sweep of traditions and times woven together here.  Folk ballads from Appalachia, Italy and England, jazz via Hermeto Pascoal (a Brazilian collaborator with Miles Davis) and vocalese pioneer Oscar Brown, classical arias by Carlisle Floyd and Samuel Barber — they’re all subsumed into the spell that Giddens (on banjo, violin and viola) and Turrisi (on piano, accordion, lute, banjo, and percussion) conjure up.  This music is warm, determined, melancholy, driven and delighted by turns, seamlessly flowing from one track to track, each its own thing, each part of a greater unity.

And Giddens’ singing — again, gorgeous beyond words.  On “Gonna Write Me A Letter” and her own “I’m On My Way”, she’s an unstoppable force of nature; on “Pizzica di San Vito” and “Briggs’ Forro”, a rippling vocal breeze above dancing beds of rhythm; on “Wayfaring Stranger” and “The Trees on the Mountains”, the cry of a broken heart devastated by life and love; on “Brown Baby” and her gospel-tinged “He Will See You Through”, the voice of maturity, determination and hard-won belief.  Nothing human is foreign to her — the wisdom of generations and the optimism of youth come together to devastating effect.

I recommend There Is No Other without hesitation — it’s one of those albums that Duke Ellington might have termed “beyond category”, resonating deeply with the core of our shared humanity.  As Giddens and Turrisi put in in their liner notes,

From the beginning of our musical partnership we have been struck with the commonality of the human experience through music; how instruments, modes, and the very functions of songs and tunes are universal from culture to culture.  There are very real and documented yet unheralded historical links between many of the instruments we play; and yet others of the connections we have here arise solely from our artistic instinct; but either way, the overwhelming feeling we have is that there is no Other.

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi tour North America from September to November; tour dates are here.  In the meantime, listen to There Is No Other for yourself:

— Rick Krueger