Weekly Music Roundup: Sirintip, SZA and Kendrick, David Byrne
This week, womens’ voices take over, Justin Timberlake returns, and David Byrne is back with a solo record.
PREMIERE: Debut single from Thai/Swedish Singer Sirintip
Sirintip was born in Thailand, but she grew up partly in Sweden and is now based here in New York. She writes catchy left-of-center pop songs that, upon closer inspection, reflect a love of electronic music and jazz. (A meeting with legendary jazz sax player Wayne Shorter features prominently on her Facebook page.) She’ll release her debut album, Tribus, on February 2, and today we’re premiering the album’s lead single, called “Shut It Up.” I don’t know whether Sirintip is a Kate Bush fan, but it would not surprise me at all to learn that she is; here, her pitch-shifted vocals recall some of that English art-rocker’s many vocal characters in her classic albums of the 80s. The album is produced by multiple Grammy winner Michael League of Snarky Puppy, and together, they somehow make music that’s upbeat and irresistibly dance-y, but also with a hint of something darker and edgier.
Sirintip is playing at the Rockwood Music Hall on Saturday, January 13, at 7pm on Stage 3; watch for a Soundcheck session with her in the coming month.
Just In Case You Haven’t Seen It Yet, Here’s Justin Timberlake’s New Video
Justin Timberlake’s new album will be called Man Of The Woods, and comes out on February 2. On Friday, JT dropped his first single, and a stunning video to accompany it. (Or maybe it’s the other way around… ) The song is called “Filthy,” and sonically, it’s got elements of Timberlake’s now-classic R&B sound married to some darkly pulsing, very contemporary electronics, all of it exploding in the chorus into an anthem that reaches all the way to the cheap seats. Of course, Timberlake isn’t just a singer; he’s an actor and a dancer, and the video takes full advantage of that. His appearances on Saturday Night Live have always suggested to me that Timberlake is, somewhat improbably for a guy who grew up in the hot glare of the public eye, a good sport; and in this video he cedes the limelight (and possibly, at the end, quite a bit more) to a remarkable CGI creation.
You’d think Justin Timberlake would be a headliner most anywhere on earth, but on February 4 he’s doing a little set between the halves of some football game. Don’t know about tickets – maybe you can watch it on TV?
Instant Love – A Compilation Of Love Songs For And From Women
On Friday, January 19, the first volume of a project called Instant Love will be released. It’s a collection of love songs originally sung by men to women, but all of them have now been covered by female singers without changing the songs’ gender. Volume 1 will include, for example, Erika Spring of the band Au Revoir Simone doing a version of Donovan’s “Colours,” and the great soul singer Irma Thomas singing Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love.” Several of the songs have been released as singles during the course of 2017, and while this was always going to be a good idea, the recent groundswell of women’s voices in opposition to sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement have made the project seem prescient. Personal faves include Nicole Atkins doing Ryan Adams’ song “Amy” and this moody version of Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man,” sung by Holly Miranda.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA Release New Collaboration
2017 was a good year for Kendrick Lamar, whose album DAMN. scored a pile of Grammy nominations, including Best Album, and for the R&B singer SZA, whose debut album CTRL also received lots of Grammy love; she’s up for Best New Artist. But neither one seems to be in the mood for waiting around to see what hardware they’ll take home, as they’ve just released a collaborative song called “All The Stars.” It was done for the upcoming Marvel comics movie Black Panther, so there may be some imagery and references in the lyrics that mean something to fans of that comic book series, but for the rest of us, it’s a lush, appropriately cinematic track that rides atop a bleeping electronic groove. Lamar has a defiant and dismissive verse and a highly processed sung pre-chorus; SZA sings the simple but catchy chorus and provides a second verse. The film could go either way – several of these comic book franchises have disappointed at the box office; others have been big hits. But the song seems destined for the Top 10.
First Aid Kit’s New Video: What If David Lynch Had Directed Your High School Prom?
The Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg have been making music as First Aid Kit for about 10 years now, and while they were initially seen as a kind of folk-rock duo, they have branched out into various forms of pop in recent years. Their new single, and video, is a track called “Fireworks,” and it has a strong echo of the pop music of the late 50s/early 60s. The sisters’ vocal harmonies are as strong as ever, and the song turns out to be a great slow-dance tune. As for the video, it’s set at an 80s prom (in Chicago, according to the lyrics), which is weird enough, but there’s something off about this prom. A briefly glimpsed poster of a UFO with the caption “I want to believe” early in the video might have something to do with the mysterious ending…
David Byrne Announces New Album, Releases Song Written With Brian Eno
David Byrne has been so busy over the years with various collaborations, including albums with St. Vincent, Brian Eno, and Fatboy Slim, as well as theatrical productions like "Here Lies Love" and "Contemporary Color," that it comes as a bit of a shock to think that we haven’t had a solo album from him since 2004. Today, he announced that he’ll be releasing a new record, called American Utopia, on March 9, and he released the first single from it. The song is called “Everybody’s Coming To My House,” and it was co-written with Brian Eno – another chapter in a groundbreaking collaboration that goes back to the late 70s, when Eno served as the producer for Byrne and the rest of Talking Heads, and which produced the brilliant Byrne/Eno album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts in 1981. I dredge up all this ancient history because the track seems to recall those days: Byrne sings largely in that yelping high register he favored in the early band days; the lyrics are deliberately quotidian (“a house and a garden, there are; there’s plants and trees…”); and most of all, he revisits a theme that he sang about – rather caustically – in Talking Heads songs like “The Big Country” and “Once In A Lifetime.” That theme is the attainment of the American dream – the house and the garden; but instead of singing “I wouldn’t live there, if you paid me,” or crying “my God, what have I done,” as in those two earlier songs, here he acknowledges the simple pleasure of looking at a picture, or driving in a car with the window rolled down. Meanwhile, interlocking horns ride an Afro-futurist beat. Lyrics like “everybody’s coming to my house/and we’re never gonna go back home” suggest that the track, and the album, are neither ironic nor merely utopian; there’s a suggestion that something is off… but also a determination to do something, even something small, to fix it.
