Weekly Music Roundup: The Secret To Eternal Youth Revealed

Week of May 23: This week, the RZA meets Interpol’s Paul Banks, Paul Simon is rhymin’ again, and The Casket Girls reveal the dark secret of youth. 

Paul Simon Unleashes “The Werewolf”

Paul Simon’s forthcoming album, Stranger To Stranger, will apparently be full of the world music rhythms (especially Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Latin) that have inspired him since the mid-80s; we’ve heard two tracks already, and now he’s released the album’s leadoff song, “The Werewolf.” This track is remarkable for how sparingly the band is deployed. The song galumphs along over a bed of sampled African percussion (provided by the Italian producer known as Clap! Clap!), and only half way through do we hear a snarl of electric guitar, a brief flare of horns, and finally an organ that puts the whole thing to bed. As always, the lyrics are smart, witty, and timely. “Most obits are mixed reviews” is one memorable line, and there are references to economic inequality framed in fast-food terms; so when he warns that “the werewolf is coming,” it doesn’t sound so much like a prophecy of doom as it does an inevitable and possibly even desirable outcome. The album is due on June 3.

Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and Interpol’s Paul Banks Unveil New Song

The RZA has always been the primus inter pares of hip-hop’s celebrated Wu-Tang Clan, but his career has also taken him in some surprising directions – like the time he appeared on Soundcheck during a WNYC membership drive and played some classical-influenced piano music in the background while we did our on-air fundraising. Now he’s working with Interpol’s lead singer Paul Banks; together they will release an album under the name Banks & Steelz sometime this year – title and date yet to be determined. This past weekend they put out the video for their first single.  It’s called “Love and War,” and features Banks singing the chorus while the RZA handles most of the verses – though his fellow Wu-Tang kinsman Ghostface Killah contributes a verse too.  As for the video, it is a darkly comic take on the violence of many Asian gangster films, and perhaps specifically Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. And at the very end, there’s a brief bit of music that I’m assuming/hoping is part of another song on their forthcoming album. 

The Secret To Eternal Youth Revealed

From Savannah, Georgia comes The Casket Girls, comprised of sisters Phaedra and Elsa Greene, and the improbably named Ryan Graveface. Their new album, The Night Machines, is due on June 3, but two songs have already been released: first, the definitely un-Smokey-Robinson-like “Tears of a Clown,” and now the smart but unsettling “Sixteen Forever.” In a neat twist on pop music’s eternal quest for youth, the sisters remind us that “only the dead stay sixteen forever.” 

The Casket Girls will be at the Mercury Lounge here in NY on June 12, supporting the redoubtable TW Walsh, who plays drums on their new album.

Deep Dark Blues… From Australia

CW Stoneking is from Australia’s Northern Territory, but to hear him perform you’d think he was born in the Mississippi Delta around a hundred years ago. Part of this is technical: his album Gon’ Boogaloo, due on June 3, sounds like it was recorded on a single old microphone in 1930 – if he added the snap, crackle & pop of a beat up old record you’d swear you were listening to an old 78 disc. But a big part of the timeless quality of his music has to do with the songs themselves.  Stoneking has just released the song “The Thing I Done,” which is full of weird and possibly baleful imagery – the kind of thing Robert Johnson, the King of the Delta Blues, used to sing in tunes like “Hellhound On My Trail” and “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day.” But the guitar playing is nothing like Robert Johnson – it has the choppy, rhythmic strumming of mid-century calypso or skiffle music. And then there’s the voice: Stoneking sounds like a carnival barker crossed with a sun-crazed wanderer whose been out in the desert too long. 

CW Stoneking is playing at Rough Trade this Thursday, the 26th, and at the Mercury Lounge on Friday, the 27th. 

Shabazz Palaces’ Cosmic New Video

The duo Shabazz Palaces – rapper Ishmael Butler (formerly of public radio faves Digable Planets) and multi-instrumentalist Tendai Maraire – has announced that they’ll be opening for Radiohead when that group plays in LA this summer. They haven’t released an album since 2014’s Lese Majeste, but last week they did unveil a new video for the track “Dawn In Luxor” from that record. With their blend of hip hop, jazz, and world music – not to mention occasional forays into psychedelia – the members of Shabazz Palaces have always seemed like they inhabited their own world. Now, using both NASA footage and some spacey but terrestrial-based film, they give us a chance to see it.

Clams Casino Offers A Quiet “Blast”

The producer known as Clams Casino is best known for his work with rappers A$AP Rocky and Lil B, but his own music has little in common with mainstream hip-hop. He’s been associated with the so-called “witch house” movement, but a more useful comparison might be the ambient music of Brian Eno. Clams Casino has released a number of EPs and mixtapes, plus a dance score for his cousin, the choreographer Stephen Petronio. But 32 Levels, due on July 15, is his debut full-length, and he’s released the first single, a short, brooding, atmospheric track called “Blast.” The floating quality of the video is a perfect complement.