Charles Lloyd’s sound on a saxophone becomes ever more rarefied,as if the man who took jazz to rock festivals in the 1960s is already seven steps up a stairway to a putative heaven. On this third of three trio albums with different groups,there are none of the blasts of fury or exultation of years past. Silence is no longer a space to be blistered with sound,but one to be courted and caressed and allowed to play its own part in making great music,as Lloyd and his colleagues contemplate and evoke a world of spirits,rather than of brawling,heaving,frantic humanity.
Charles Lloyd’s new album wafts about your ears as gently as a summer breeze.Supplied
His collaborators for this final in hisTrio of Trios series have been chosen with typical finesse. One is an old friend and colleague,the tabla master,percussionist and singer Zakir Hussain,and the other is one of the most original new voices on guitar,Julian Lage. The album,which documents a live-stream concert from 2020,opens with two shorter pieces:Desolation Sound,featuring that distinctively woody sound that Lloyd,almost alone,can extract from a tenor saxophone and which Lage signs off on with a ripple of flamenco,and then the wistful voice-and-guitarGuman.
Together,they function as preludes to the more expansiveNachekita’s Lament,on which a brief flurry from Lloyd’s flute gives way to a rubato sequence of electric guitar and intermittent tabla supporting Hussain’s haunting voice. While the singing is plaintive,the guitar that dances around it sometimes adds sharper rhythmic and harmonic edges,and at other times soars in unison. When the flute returns,Hussain establishes a groove,and one finds oneself listening to a cross between jazz and Indian classical music (vaguely reminiscent of GS Sachdev),with some spikier interjections from the guitar. Lage’s own kaleidoscopic solo beckons back Hussain’s voice to end an exotic journey.
Saraswatiis a short feature for Lloyd’s coiling,soprano saxophone-like taragato,with minimal commentary from the others – again like a prelude for the longerKuti,on which the flute,guitar and voice initially waft about your ears as gently as a summer breeze,in a game of question and answer. When Hussain sets up a chirpy rhythm,the three-way musical conversation continues,until Lage takes a solo that reinforces his reputation for finding melodic ideas on a guitar that are strikingly different to those of the zillion others who play the instrument. Flute and voice return,and the denouement is like the sigh of a lover saying goodbye.
The now 84-year-old tenor saxophonist and flautist released his Trio of Trios this year.Dorothy Darr
Tales of Rumi begins with Hussain drawing bell-like tones from the tabla to paint a melody and rhythm simultaneously,while constantly defying expectations. When the guitar and saxophone join,the mood is more playful,less layered with mystery,even though Lloyd’s tenor is never entirely devoid of enigma or profundity. They end with the tenor,guitar and shakers ofThe Blessing,which has Lage diluting the benedictive quality with a pleasantly unsettling layer of ominousness.
This album can be bought separately or as part of a three-LP vinyl set with its predecessors,Trios:Chapel (with guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan) andTrios:Ocean (with pianist Gerald Clayton and guitarist Anthony Wilson). Frisell,by the bye,has simultaneously released his first post-lockdown opus,Four,which is by turns autumnal and exuberantly swinging. He’s assembled a new quartet without a bass,his guitar joined by Greg Tardy’s saxophone,Gerald Clayton’s piano and Johnathan Blake’s drums.
- John Shand
Weyes Blood,And in the Darkness,Hearts Aglow
★★★★
Perhaps the reason we’re yet to reckon with the collective trauma of a global pandemic is because it’s,well,very boring. On a fun-scale from,say,driving a dodgem car to flossing,it’s lower than flossing. It’s gingivitis? I don’t know where I was going with this. In any case,it’s understandable why we’re all like sullen schoolkids after 3pm pick-up:yes Mum,some annoying stuff happened over the past few years;no Mum,I don’t want to talk about it.
Weyes Blood,aka Natalie Mering,cements her status as one of pop’s most interesting voices.Sub Pop
Fortunately,others are willing to do the work. Natalie Mering,better known as the LA-based folk-turned-chamber pop-via-cosmic country musician Weyes Blood,is a solid chronicler of contemporary disillusionment:climate anxiety,algorithmic isolation,bad movies. If her last album,2019’sTitanic Rising,was the “observation of doom to come”,then her new follow-up,And in the Darkness,Hearts Aglow - the second in a proposed trilogy - is about trying to navigate from within the “fully functional shit show” we find ourselves.
That she shares her catastrophic message through swooning orchestral anthems and gloriously warm ’70s production - songs that sound like the Carpenters doing post-pandemic despair - is central to Mering’s appeal. For Weyes Blood,there’s always beauty somewhere amid the bedlam:the “dance in the sand” while the world is crumbling.And in the Darkness picks up the expansive instrumentation ofTitanic Rising but stretches the ambition even further,with most of the songs pushing the six-minute mark and luxuriating in their escalating fullness.
Of course,there’s also that remarkable voice;she sounds like Joni Mitchell and Judee Sill at once. Mering might be relaying brutal imagery like,“California’s my body and the fire runs over me” (Grapevine),or a cold couplet like,“They say the worst is done,but I think it’s only just begun” (The Worst is Done),but you’ll still feel cosy.
The Elliott Smith-does-Pets Sounds-y dynamics ofChildren of the Empire might be the album’s sonic highpoint,an evocative portrait of a world in insatiable disarray,but openerIt’s Not Just Me,It’s Everybody is peak-Weyes Blood,scratching for hope amid the pervading gloom. “Sitting at this party,wondering if anyone knows me,” she sings over a loping piano beat and soaring strings,setting the scene for a generation’s timid social re-emergence. Mering’s described the song as a “Buddhist anthem”,and there’s both despondency and comfort (opportunity,even?) in the titular refrain. We might be on a trip to nowhere,but let’s not forget we’re all here on the same doomed boat.
- Robert Moran
Christine and the Queens presents Redcar,Redcar les adorables étoiles
★★★★
It’s extremely rare that a non-Anglo musician will hit the big time in markets where English is the native language (most crucially,in North America and the UK) – unless they sing almost exclusively in English. Swedish pop star Robyn,who sings in English,is an exception. The French singer born Héloïse Letissier is another rare example.
Redcar les adorables étoiles,the new album by Christine and the Queens.Supplied
As Christine and the Queens,Letissier’s affecting 2014 art-pop debut connected so powerfully at home that the self-titled album was re-released in English the following year,winning fans including Madonna,who invited Letissier to dance with her on stage in Paris in 2015,and fellow pop auteur and British singer-songwriter Charli XCX,with whom Letissier has collaborated on several excellent pop tracks. In 2018,Christine and the Queens named their biggest album to dateChris as Letissier moved further away from a feminine identity,acknowledging a bolder,stronger persona and new haircut via infectious pop songs.
A few months ago,Letissier adopted he/him pronouns,and on his latest album he has assumed yet another pseudonym,Redcar,named after the red cars he saw while creating this album – at the same time that he was searching for signs of his mother,who died suddenly in 2019 – that quickly came to symbolise hope.Redcar les adorables étoiles is Letissier’s first album sung almost entirely in French,a sign that international success was not prioritised by the artist,and also perhaps a product of how it was written – in just 14 days in 2021,while Letissier was still processing his grief. Musically,it’s also the most avant-garde of his albums to date,styled as a kind of rock opera and heavy with romanticism,longing and literary references.
The production is pristine throughout,from the soupy hi-hats and slap bass on moody,scene-setting openerMa bien aimée bye bye (My Beloved Bye-Bye),to the epic power ballad chords onTu sais ce qu’il me faut (You Know What I Need) and airy synths ofRien dire (Say Nothing),which sounds like an Enya track made with modern software. Letissier has always favoured an ’80s-inspired sonic palette,and the preference is keenly felt on this album’s crisp drum programming,ethereal synthesisers and huge,unfettered emotion.
The only stylistic anomaly,My birdman,is an impressive change of pace;a sultry quiet storm cut about “the moment a man showed me how cared for I could be”,Letissier wrote in the album’s notes. Big feelings expressed unapologetically have characterised his oeuvre from the beginning but never quite as dramatically as on this record,where his background studying theatre is palpable,and where evocative references abound (Looking for Love is,he says,“an ’80s-inspired jam in the textural approach of what Bryan Ferry could be if he smoked red angel dust and was born in a body that did not truly align”).
In a recentGuardian interview,Letissier expressed frustration with howRedcar was being released and marketed by his record label. Another album is apparently imminent early next year,produced by the esteemed Mike Dean (Kanye West,The Weeknd,Beyonce,Madonna),who Letissier received an invitation to work with after releasing his stellarLa Vita Nuova EP in 2020. It would appear that Letissier’s label doesn’t want to dilute the impact of the coming,likely more accessible (read:sung in English) album,hence only a couple of shows have been announced to supportRedcar. This seems such a shame when the tracks onRedcar are up there with the best music Letissier has released,with melodies and hooks undeniable enough to thrill fans and transcend language barriers.
- Annabel Ross
Phoenix,Alpha Zulu
★★★
The upper echelons of France’s indie and electronic music scenes are intimately connected. Four-piece band Phoenix would become the backing band for fellow indie darlings and Versailles natives Air on several UK TV appearances in the late ’90s,while one member of Phoenix,Laurent Brancowitz,was previously in a band with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo,who would go on to become Daft Punk.
Phoenix made their own splash early with their 2000 debut albumUnited,featuring cult indie classicsToo Young andIf I Ever Feel Better,but it wasn’t until the release of their fourth LPWolfgang Amadeus Phoenix in 2009 that the band began filling stadiums and scored a Grammy for best alternative music album. When Phoenix released the follow-up four years later,however,it was clear they weren’t chasing further commercial success.
Bankrupt! was still enjoyable in the way that all Phoenix albums are,but it saw the four-piece return to a more experimental sound (still within the bounds of indie-pop,but less concerned with huge hooks and singalong choruses).Ti Amo,released in 2017,while not quite as ecstatic asWolfgang,was relentlessly fun and as easily digestible as the food that apparently served as inspiration:gelato.
Phoenix’s seventh studio album,Alpha Zulu,was created during the pandemic,and according to the band,hews most closely to the stylistic variety that characterisedUnited. This might be,as the band has suggested,the result of recording their album in a custom-built studio in the Louvre (this is how highly regarded they are in France) and taking their cues from the diverse surrounding splendour.
Alpha Zulu,by French indie-pop faves Phoenix,was recorded in the Louvre.Supplied
It might be thatAlpha Zulu is their first album crafted without the guiding hand of the late Philippe Zdar,who producedWolfgang. It might also be that,due to lockdown,this was the first time the album was largely written without all four members in the same room (lead singer Thomas Mars was stuck in the US),resulting in a record that’s slightly less consistent than their earlier efforts and not quite as adventurous asUnited,but still plenty charming.
Alpha Zulu,the lead single and opening track,is a quirky piece of electro-pop that makes a bold statement,though likely a divisive one (personally,I could have done without the “whoo-ha,singing Hallelujah!” chorus,but the bridge is very pretty).Tonight is catchy ’80s-esque pastel pop,but the presence of guest vocalist Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend,whose voice is not all that dissimilar to Mars’,doesn’t add much to the song.
The first few tracks on the album,in fact,are not as immediate as the back end,but become more appealing with subsequent listens,threaded with the kind of intricate details (and lots of winning bridges) that elevate Phoenix far above your average indie band. The running beat and shimmering synths onAfter Midnight make it fit for a modern-day John Hughes movie,whileWinter Solstice follows the band’s tradition of a gear-changing album centrepiece,this time a lovely synth ballad and the only track that wasn’t put together in the studio (a long loop was sent to Mars who overlaid the music with stream of consciousness vocals).
OnSeason 2,Mars,as he does throughout the album,plays around with cadence and intonation,adopting a sing-song delivery to terrific effect,especially when layered with his own harmonies at the song’s end. If anything,some of these playful,charming details are frustratingly short-lived;but the amount of them is testament to the band’s still fertile imagination,impressively preserved along with their friendship 25 years after forming.
- Annabel Ross
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