Weekly Music Roundup: Dollshot & Shabazz Palaces
Week of July 10: This week, Ke$sha Becomes Kesha; and Webster Hall Is About To Become History
Introducing Kesha – Not Ke$ha
Perhaps you’ve been following the ugly fight, played out in the courts and in the news, between the pop singer formerly known as Ke$ha and her producer, Dr. Luke, whom she has accused of emotional and physical/sexual abuse. (He has responded with a countersuit alleging defamation.) The legal wrangling effectively kept her out of the music business for almost four years – until last week. After Sony Music declined to renew Dr. Luke’s contract as CEO of his hit-making imprint Kemosabe Records, Kesha has returned with a new single called “Praying.” You may or may not notice the change in spelling, dropping the dollar sign and going with the actual spelling of her first name. You will certainly notice the difference in sound. Gone is the druggy party girl of such monster hits as “Tik Tok,” and in her place is an anguished gospel singer. The song manages to sound defiant and angry (“you brought the flames and you put me through hell/I had to learn how to fight for myself/And we both know all the truth I could tell”), while searching for redemption for her unnamed adversary (“I hope you find your peace/falling on your knees, praying”).
“Praying” is Kesha’s first single from the forthcoming album called Rainbow, which is due on August 11.
PREMIERE: Dollshot’s New Video Is Cinematic For A Reason
Dollshot is built around the vocals of Rosie Kaplan and the keening sax of her husband, Noah. But the band also has a lush, dream-pop sound, shot through with streaks of contemporary classical music (Kevin McFarland of the renowned JACK Quartet plays cello, both tuned and detuned, with the band). Today we premiere the title track from Dollshot’s forthcoming album Lalande. Apparently, the album grew out of work the Kaplans were doing with Hampton Fancher on the screenplay for the new Blade Runner 2049 movie, due in October; so the album in general, and this video in particular, directed by Matt Mahurin, has a noir-ish, futuristic quality. And Rosie Kaplan’s almost child-like, innocent voice provides an eerie counterpoint to the musical darkness that surrounds it.
The single, “Lalande,” is out on July 14 and the album will follow in the Fall.
Shabazz Palaces Will Release Two Related Albums
The experimental hip hop band Shabazz Palaces will release not one but two albums on Friday. Both tell the tale of an alien named Quazarz, who comes to the land of Amurderca “in the time of Kanye” and falls down the rabbit hole of a dystopian culture of “brutality and alt facts.” Quazarz Born On A Gangster Star tells the story of the character’s arrival, and Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines is the followup that fleshes out his own story. For the most part, both records are spare and somewhat downtempo, featuring the voice of lead rapper Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler. The song “Moon Whip Quäz (Feat. Darrius)” is the closest thing the first album has to a title track. Shabazz Palaces has always featured a moody, idiosyncratic mix of hip hop, funk, electronica, jazz, and world music; this song owes a pretty clear debt to Kraftwerk, with its motorik rhythm and short repeated hook.
Both albums come out on Friday, July 14. The band plays in Brooklyn on September 6 at Warsaw.
Stream Quazarz: Born On A Gangster Star at NPR Music
Public Service Broadcasting’s New Album Is About Underground Rock – Namely, Coal.
The London based group Public Service Broadcasting makes records that are as much about documenting bits of history as they are about music. Generally eschewing sung vocals in favor of sampled sounds from the past, PSB have written danceable, often emotionally potent songs about airplane travel, World War II, and on their last album, the space race of the 1960s. Now, they’ve come back to Earth. In fact, they’ve gone under the earth, with a new album called Every Valley, built around documentary voices and sounds of the coal mining communities of South Wales. The jobs and the culture that grew up around the industry are fading fast, and PSB uses this as a kind of metaphor for working class communities everywhere that have been left behind in the name of progress. Some of the songs actually feature guest vocalists, but most of the album is classic PSB – thought-provoking, groovy, fun, and surprisingly poignant. Check out “The Pit,” a rockin’ tune that describes the dirty, dangerous business of coal mining as a regular part of the working day.
Balmorhea’s “Clear Language” Uses No Language At All. Is That Clear?
Balmorhea is a duo, comprised of multi-instrumentalists Rob Lowe and Michael Muller, from Austin, Texas. While both men play many instruments, the voice is not one of them, and the duo has focused instead on making expansive, cinematic, but still quiet and restrained instrumental music. You might call it post-rock, but that term tends to apply mostly to louder bands, like Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Stars Of The Lid, who create processional works that build to huge, guitar-and-drum-filled climaxes. Balmorhea offers something closer to the sounds of Minimalism, or the simplicity of Brian Eno’s collaborations with the German duo Cluster back in the 70s. The duo is going to release its latest album, Clear Language, this fall – its first in five years. The title track is online now, and offers lyrical, repeating riffs on piano, with a soft sweep of electronics underneath and layers of twangy guitar over the top. Because it’s instrumental, it’s not at all clear what they’re evoking here, which is part of what makes music like this so effective. Does it remind you of the wide-open spaces of the American West? Is the mood serene and nocturnal, or plaintive and elegiac? And is that a spaceship landing at the very end?
Balmorhea is planning a fall tour with a much-expanded lineup and an immersive light/video projection. The album Clear Language comes out on September 22.
Webster Hall To Close In August
Another venue is about to vanish from the New York City concert scene. Webster Hall has been sold to Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, which runs the Barclays Center, and the powerhouse concert booking group called The Bowery Presents – which actually booked Webster Hall for many years until the hall decided to go independent in 2014. It is a landmark building, and the venue in its current incarnation (since 1992) has played host to bands like U2, Green Day and Metallica, as well as being a regular nightclub for fans of electronica. The new owners will close the place for a couple of years to completely renovate the space, and are promising to reopen it as Spectrum Hall, a new venue focused on music and sporting events. So when does the hall actually close? Well, the Webster Hall website announced that their last night will be August 5, a Saturday. But their calendar shows Michelle Branch performing the last of “the final concerts” on August 8, and as of today, tickets were still for sale for that event on both the artist’s and the hall’s websites.
