Weekly Music Roundup: Wolf Alice, Firas Zreik, and Shearwater
Shaboozey’s Big New Concept Album
The massive 2024 hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” made Shaboozey a household name, and also set a challenge to the young hip hop/country singer: what do you do for an encore? Today he released The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales, a concept album that tells the story of a wronged woman who heads out to seek her revenge. The first thing to say about this record is that it leans a lot more into classic country – like, Marty Robbins-style storytelling – and the hip hop elements are for the most part dialed down. There are also lots of short interludes where various actors (Jamie Foxx among them) keep us posted on where we are in the storyline. As for the songs, they range from a lovely ballad with guest singer Kehlani to this hit single, “Cowgirl,” in which Shaboozey offers a winking reference to his own breakout hit (“got another bar song for you and all your friends”). The song aims for the same sweet spot between country line dance and arena pop that “Tipsy” inhabited, but along the way he drops lines like “Charlie said it best/We both got a lot of pride, why not put it to the test?” that show his respect for past Black country artists like Charlie Pride.
Seun Kuti Collaborates With Reggae Singer Kabaka Pyramid
As a son of the legendary Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti, the founder of the Afrobeat style and subject of the Broadway musical Fela!, Seun Kuti has inherited a tradition of groove-based, horn-forward, socially-conscious dance music with a distinctly African vibe. Along with his band, Egypt 80 (an extension of his father’s band Africa 70), Seun Kuti has expanded that sound to include its cross-Atlantic cousin, reggae. This week Kuti released the single “Problems,” a duet with Jamaican reggae singer Kabaka Pyramid. The rhythm is pure Afrobeat, but Kabaka Pyramid’s voice slots easily into it, reminding us near the end of the song about the connection between Africa and the Caribbean, and the need across the diaspora for change.
Wolf Alice Cover The Roches’ “Hammond Song”
The UK rock band Wolf Alice has just released a cover of “Hammond Song,” a 1979 track from the New York folk trio The Roches. Normally, my feeling about covers is that you should have something new to add to the song instead of just doing the same tune in basically the same way. But here I’ll make an exception. “Hammond Song” is Maggie, Suzzy, and Terry Roches’ finest song. I know that sounds like an unsupportable opinion, but I’m telling you, it’s an objective and irrefutable fact. The original sported two sinuous electric guitar solos by King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, who produced that first Roches album, and some of the finest, most plangent harmonies the three sisters ever committed to disc. So Wolf Alice enlisted singers Bria Salmena and Julia Cumming (of Sunflower Bean) to join lead singer Ellie Rowsell in recreating those harmonies. There are a few tweaks – the first guitar solo is slightly shorter, and drums appear in the second half of the song; but for the most part it’s a faithful cover, and if it introduces a new generation of listeners to The Roches and this song, that is just fine by me.
Science And Art Meet In Shearwater’s Stunning The New World
Singer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg’s band Shearwater has consistently been one of indie rock’s most curious groups. Curious in the sense of being unpredictable, with unexpected lyrical twists or instrumental choices… but also curious in the sense that the band’s music has increasingly reflected Meiburg’s own deep interest in the natural world. He’s an ornithologist and author of the improbably entertaining book A Most Remarkable Creature, about the super-intelligent birds of prey known as caracara; and some of his new videos are made of footage he shot and edited while on board a ship full of scientists studying life on the ocean floor around Antarctica. The band’s album, The New World, came out today, and is full of soaring vocals, cinematic sonic landscapes, and musings on humanity, human-ness (not the same thing), and the planet we live on and often don’t think twice about. It also features Laurie Anderson on the album’s quietly stunning closer, “You And Your Dog.” Meiburg sets up a cascading series of pianos (at least one has the softly metallic clank of a prepared piano), and a lone clarinet plays a melancholy melody over the top. Then Laurie Anderson tells a story about an empty beach, a departure, and a realization: “I wish I’d paid more attention.” It is, in the context of this album, a haunting way to end.
Firas Zreik Offers Ecstatic East-West Fusion
Palestinian-American musician Firas Zreik plays the kanun – the hammered dulcimer used in classical Arab music. Based in New York, Zreik has played the instrument in a lot of non-Arab settings… including a track on that new Shearwater album. So he comes by his blend of Arab and Western music quite organically. His new album is called Tarabesque, a portmanteau of arabesque and tarab, the state of heightened emotion and even ecstasy brought on by the power of music. Zreik spends much of the album leading what is essentially an Arab-inflected jazz band, but as this track “Hangala” shows, the kanun can still recall the traditional and popular music of the Near East even in this context.
