Weekly Music Roundup: Arca, Quinquis, Silvana Estrada
Week of Dec. 6: This week, Arca “queering the void,” Tom Morello still raging, and a Nina Simone cover. Plus, French keyboardist/singer Quinquis, roots singer, Aoife O’Donovan, and Mexican folk singer Silvana Estrada.
A Dystopian Epic From Arca
Arca (aka Alejandra Ghersi Rodriguez) is a Venezuelan singer/producer/multimedia artist who started her career as a typical heteronormative pop singer before pivoting to a more challenging, and way more interesting, musical identity. “Queering the void” is one of the ways she’s described her recent set of albums in a series called kick, several volumes of which were released last week. Her cover art often presents Arca’s body as a dystopian, Borg-like mix of human and machine. Similarly, her music often presents songs that seem to be stitched together from different parts – each recognizable on its own as pop, or electronic, or found sound – that when put together create something unsettled and unsettling. “Boquifloja” is a track from kick iiii that might be the closest to a standard song form as Arca gets; it sets up an indie-rock guitar riff and then layers Arca’s ethereal singing over the top. Keyboards flesh out the sound as Arca’s vocals, leaving words behind, begin to spiral higher and higher. But the song doesn’t so much end as disintegrate.
More Songs from the Apocalypse by Tom Morello
In October, Grammy-winning guitarist Tom Morello (co-founder of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave) released The Atlas Underground Fire, a series of collaborative tracks. Morello, inspired by The Clash’s epochal 2-LP set London Calling, has now followed up in relatively short order with The Atlas Underground Flood. It’s another set of songs from a world on fire – some angry, some consoling; and it sports an impressive guest list. British punks IDLES, singer Ben Harper, and rock band Manchester Orchestra each take a turn; the latter’s song sounds very much like a track from their own catalog. The one that might be closest to the rap-rock sound Morello helped develop is “Hard Times,” which features Nathaniel Rateliff (without his band the Night Sweats) and two rappers, the veteran Jim Jones and newcomer Chipotle Joe. It’s got heavy guitars and barbed lyrics (“try to make America great again? I think you’re trying to make America hate again”), all driven by M.A.Cash’s pulsating production.
Goose Release A Rockin’ Cover of Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman”
As part of its 25th anniversary, the record label Secretly Canadian is issuing a series of benefit singles that help fund New Hope, which fights homelessness in the label’s hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. The newest track in this effort is from the Connecticut rock band Goose. They’ve created a cover of Nina Simone’s epic “Sinnerman” that sticks closely to Simone’s original vocal line (lead singer Rick Mitarotonda sounds a bit like Nina Simone in fact), but completely recasts the original’s urgent piano vamp with a steadily building rock groove. This new version keeps Simone’s call-and-response incantation in the middle, but adds a wailing guitar solo because, you know, it’s a rock band.
A Brooding, Unsettling Track from Quinquis
Emilie Tiersen is a singer and keyboardist from Brittany, in northwestern France. She made a few records under the name Tiny Feet but has now reinvented herself as Quinquis, which is her maiden name. Like her husband, the well-known composer/keyboardist Yann Tiersen, she is inspired by nature. But where Yann’s music tends to celebrate the outdoors with melodic keyboards and pastoral electronics, Emilie’s song “Adkrog” (“start again” in Breton) proceeds from the viewpoint of someone stuck indoors who needs, perhaps desperately, to get outside. The electronics are dark and brooding, which just offsets her own tranquil vocals all the more effectively.
For now, this single is all we have from Quinquis, but more music is in the works for 2022.
Aoife O’Donovan’s Haunted Trip Through New England
Grammy-winning singer Aoife (pronounced EE-fuh) O’Donovan has fronted the roots string band Crooked Still, performed Americana-chamber music with Yo Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo project, and formed a trio with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz called I’m With Her. But in January she’ll release a solo album, her first in six years, and she’s just put out the title track. “Age of Apathy” follows a trip up the Taconic into New England – a trip that seems to provoke memories of a relationship, a tragedy (“the day the towers fell”), and other music. She briefly quotes Joni Mitchell’s “My Old Man,” and alludes to a song called “Yellow Moon On The Rise” – Pearl Jam’s “Yellow Moon,” perhaps? Or more likely, Neil Young’s “Helpless”? It’s a good example of the storytelling in “Age of Apathy” – a series of images and gestures rather than straightahead narrative; and the orchestration is similarly beautiful and elusive.
A New Single From Mexican Folk Singer Silvana Estrada
Silvana Estrada is a 24-year old Mexican folk singer who hasn’t yet released her debut album, but who has already amassed a sizable reputation through her own performances and her work with established stars like Natalia Lafourcade and Jorge Drexler. She’s just released a new single, “La Corriente,” or “the current,” which is a song about facing uncertainties, in love and in life. But the quietly relentless guitar-like accompaniment (actually the 4-string Venezuelan cuatro) suggests the narrator squaring her shoulders and meeting those uncertainties head on. The arrangement is filled out with painterly touches of piano, cello, and at the end, a backing voice – none of which takes the focus away from Estrada’s intimate yet wide-ranging vocals.
Silvana Estrada will be performing January 14-16 at the annual Prototype Festival; her debut album Marchita comes out later that month.
Bonobo’s Tribute to Detroit Techno
The British-born, LA-based producer Bonobo (aka Simon Green) just racked up two more Grammy nominations and released a new track from his next album, Fragments, due on January 14. The song is called “Shadows,” and features the London-based singer Jordan Rakei. Rakei’s flowing vocals are a good match for Bonobo’s serene, downtempo sound, a sound that here is specifically driven by echoes of classic techno. Green describes the track as “old school, Detroity,” and he matches that older style with some older instruments, like modular synthesizers.
