Weekly Music Roundup: Amythyst Kiah, Shungudzo, Yves Tumor

Week of June 21: This week, Tennessee-based songwriter Amythyst Kiah's bluesy-Americana, new music band Wild Up records the outsider art of Julius Eastman, a glam-dance track by Yves Tumor, and Shungudzo's debut. 

Patrick Watson’s “Mermaid In Lisbon” Brings Musical Worlds Together

Montreal art-pop singer and songwriter Patrick Watson has just released a 3-song EP called A Mermaid In Lisbon. The title track is a beautiful, languorous walk through the Portuguese capital, and halfway through we’re joined by the unmistakable voice of Teresa Salgueiro, the singer from the great Portuguese band Madredeus. She adds just the right tinge of melancholy to the song, and the remarkable Attacca Quartet, one of classical music’s most progressive and socially-conscious ensembles, provides the sweeping string accompaniment to the voices and Watson’s own electronics. 

Amythyst Kiah Takes On Race, Death, and Hangovers

Everyone knows a hangover is nothing to sing about (because, you know, the noise). Everyone, that is, except Amythyst Kiah.  The singer, guitarist, banjo player, and member of the formidable quartet called Our Native Daughters has just released her solo album Wary + Strange. This track, “Hangover Blues,” uses some pretty direct lyrics to paint a picture of someone waking up the morning after without a single regret for the previous night’s misbehavior. The blues-rock accompaniment is delightfully undermined by the rickety jalopy of percussion that drives the song. It’s a worthy followup to the album’s first two singles, the defiant “Black Myself” and the shattering “Wild Turkey.” 

Angelique Kidjo and Burna Boy Join Forces On “Do Yourself”

On Friday the famed African singer Angelique Kidjo released her new album, Mother Nature, a multilingual, polystylistic West African music party that tackles big issues like climate change and racial injustice by dancing through them. Reliably upbeat music and positive attitude have long been a characteristic of Kidjo’s work, and on Mother Nature she brings in a series of guests to sing (and presumably dance) with her. Foremost among them is Nigerian superstar Burna Boy, who won the award for Best World Music Album at this year’s Grammys – an award that has been Kidjo’s personal fiefdom over the years. Their collaborative song is called “Do Yourself,” a celebration of African identity, both on an individual and communal basis, and featuring a funky blend of Afrobeats, dancehall, and R&B.  

Shungudzo’s Debut LP Was A Long Time Coming

This was a big week for the Zimbabwean-raised, American-based songwriter, singer, and former gymnast (on the Zimbabwean National Team) Shungudzo. She is one of the guests on the aforementioned album by Angelique Kidjo; and she has released a fine debut album called I’m not a mother, but I have children. Shungudzo has been writing songs for other musicians like Jessie Ware and releasing the occasional single for the past several years (back in 2017 she was going by the name Shun), but the renewed calls for social justice last summer seems to have sparked a major step in her career. The album features 13 songs and 3 poems, and fans of 80s-period Peter Gabriel will find much to like here. She draws on both traditional Zimbabwean and American songs at times (“Fatherless Child” is a nod to the great American spiritual “Motherless Child”), and her productions range from the totally a cappella “Already Free” to the soulful dance rock of “There’s Only So Much A Soul Can Take.” The title track, “I’m not a mother, but I have children,” is a plea to look beyond self-interest and take a wider view of what kind of planet we’ll leave to the next generation. Singing through a guitar amp, Shungudzo’s voice has a strangely compelling aura around it, and the song hovers and floats until the end, when the percussion and southeast African marimba kick in and offer a sense of forward motion. 

Torres Releases An Excellent Song About… Lunch

Mackenzie Scott, who records under the name Torres, has generally made songs that have a serrated edge to them – as a guitarist she favors heavy distortion, and as a songwriter, even her most intimate songs can feel angsty and uneasy. It’s true that she used a lighter, subtler touch to great effect in last year’s superb LP Silver Tongue, but still, I was unprepared for the outright buoyancy of her new single, “Hug From A Dinosaur.” Yes, the guitars still churn through their crunchy chord progressions, but the poppy synth and chiming vocals all suggest a light – and maybe even light-headed – mood. Don’t be fooled by the title; Scott says the song is about “bringing my girlfriend lunch so she can keep painting.” 

This is the second single from the upcoming Torres album Thirstier, after last month’s almost equally exuberant “Don’t Go Putting Wishes In My Head.” The full album comes out on July 30. 

Julius Eastman’s Long Lost Music Is Recovered by Wild Up

The story of Julius Eastman has been told in numerous magazine and newspaper articles in recent years, as people have belatedly discovered his music. Eastman was part of the incredibly fertile new music scene in downtown Manhattan in the late 70s/early 80s, as a performer and also a composer. His compositions were a startling blend of Minimalism, improvisation, and performance art; you could call them outsider art, since Eastman, gay and Black and suffering from mental health issues, saw himself as the ultimate outsider. When he died in 1990, at 49, his passing was not noticed for 8 months. Many of his scores were lost during one of his periods of homelessness. And yet, his music has proven to be remarkably durable, surviving two decades of neglect before ensembles started to take notice of it. Now, the LA new music band Wild Up has released a version of Eastman’s Femenine, an hourlong piece in 10 parts. And when I say “version,” it’s because every performance of an Eastman composition involves a lot of decision-making on the part of the performers. Eastman often left behind minimal written scores – sometimes just fragments of music and written instructions, or recordings of his own, occasionally wildly divergent, performances – and he often used “open scoring,” where the composer does not specific what instruments should be used.  In Wild Up’s new recording, the insistent, hypnotic rhythms of Femenine and the almost spiritual cast of the backing percussion are totally convincing. The band, led by Christopher Rountree, also decided to take a series of solos during the piece, which feels right too. In this section, marked “Hold And Return,” it’s the sax leading the way.  

Yves Tumor Returns With Warped Dance Track

The artist known as Yves Tumor (born Sean Bowie) has said they don’t want their gender or sexuality to define their music.  They don’t seem to be too concerned with genre either, as the new single “Jackie” suggests. A strutting mix of glam rock, industrial, and dance music, “Jackie” has some relatively straightforward singing and a video, full of fever dream/acid trip imagery, that would be straightforward for no one other than Yves Tumor.