Weekly Music Roundup: Stormzy, Kelly Moran, and The Oddysy
Week of April 29: This week – musical returns for Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and Stormzy. Plus new music by The Oddysy and Chuck D, Kelly Moran, and The Mystery Lights.
Bruce Springsteen’s New Direction: West
Now that he’s finished his historic one-man Broadway show, Bruce Springsteen is back in familiar territory: making records. But the territory isn’t completely familiar. The album will be called Western Stars, and on Friday Springsteen released the single, “Hello Sunshine,” which seems to recall the big, orchestral songs that Jimmy Webb wrote for Glen Campbell back in the late 60s/early 70s (think “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” and other western-looking songs). Like those earlier works, “Hello Sunshine” steadily builds as it goes, adding piano, pedal steel, and finally string orchestra to Springsteen’s guitar and vocals. When he’s not in raspy road warrior mode, Springsteen’s voice can be somewhat reminiscent of another hitmaker from that time period, Gordon Lightfoot, and his now-weathered croon on this track is a good case in point.
Western Stars comes out on June 14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJjlg5e6l8
A Stunning Video Return For UK’s Stormzy
The British rapper (and writer/philanthropist/political activist) Stormzy has just released his first single and video since 2017, signalling a return for a musician who has transcended the UK grime scene to become a major cultural figure there. In fact, he’ll be headlining the Glastonbury Festival, the world’s largest music festival, this June – the first British rapper to do so. He’s big enough that the actor Idris Elba was willing to sneak into his new video – see if you can spot him. The new song is called “Vossi Bop” and rides along on a typical grime soundtrack of minimalist electronics; it also features some intricate wordplay that at one point takes aim at Conservative politician Boris Johnson and at another point seems to dis all the rappers who feel they need to be draped in gold chains to make a mark. The title refers to a dance that became a Twitter meme in 2015, and the video, a celebration of Stormzy’s hometown of London, sports some increasingly impressive choreography – most of it by people, but some of it by cars.
Did you find him? Idris Elba is the guy standing next to Stormzy while they do the “Vossi Bop” head-nodding thing at the 1:42 mark of the video.
Taylor Swift’s New Video Sets A Record
Taylor Swift’s new song and video, “ME!,” debuted on Friday, and within 24 hours was viewed approximately 65 million times, breaking the record previously held by Ariana Grande, and before her, by Taylor Swift (twice). The video, predictably, is a big budget, colorful affair; the song, somewhat less predictably, is largely colorless. This is odd for someone who’s among the most canny pop artists out there, but “ME!” lacks her usual sass and snark, opting instead for the simply anodyne. “I’m the only one of me,” she sings, and given that the English language contains a gazillion words that rhyme with “me,” you expect a clever turn of phrase that offers a message of self-actualization or empowerment. But instead you get “that’s the fun of me,” which feels limp. Or possibly just lazy. “You can’t spell awesome without me” is another line that clangs on the ear. The song is duet with Brandon Urie, lead singer of Panic! At The Disco, whose voice at its best sounds like David Byrne touching a hot stove. But here, he’s so tamped down he’s barely recognizable. I guess it’s all meant to be a celebration of the individual, but it feels strangely generic.
Open Mike Eagle and MF Doom Collaborate On Darkly Comic New Song
Rapper and comedian Open Mike Eagle (real name, Mike Eagle) has created a Comedy Central show called The New Negroes with Baron Vaughn and Open Mike Eagle, which uses sketch comedy and music to explore the Black American experience. The show title refers back to the Harlem Renaissance, and Eagle’s work is full of smart allusions and wordplay. His new single is “Police Myself,” featuring a verse by rapper MF Doom, whose arch-villain character plays into the song’s topic: how racial profiling has forced on young black men the need to constantly monitor where they go and how they look to others. It’s a big, heavy topic, tackled here with a light, assured touch.
A New Yet Old Song from Sons Of An Illustrious Father
Sons Of An Illustrious Father is a trio of equal partners. That’s important to say when one of the three is a famous actor. That would be Ezra Miller, who plays The Flash in the DC Comics universe of movies, and stars in the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts movies. But he’s serious about his long-term musical endeavor with Josh Aubin and Lilah Larson, and collectively the trio have created an idiosyncratic body of work that celebrates non-conformity, especially in terms of gender and genre. Their new single, also called “Sons Of An Illustrious Father,” is something Lilah wrote originally back in 2013, and which the band performed as an intimate, acoustic song – almost like a diary of people they’d met in their early years of touring. Now, though, the song has grown up, with expansive vocal harmonies, a grand layering of keyboards (piano and a synth that evokes the vintage sounds of a mellotron), and a tellingly-deployed string arrangement by Murray Lightburn of The Dears. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the psychedelic folk-rock of early 70s England, or maybe The Beatles, and builds up to cinematic climax before its rather abrupt ending.
Echoes of Public Enemy Ringing in The New Song by The Oddysy
The Oddysy is a funk/rock/hip hop duo comprised of KJ (Kevin Jacoby, formerly of the fine psychedelic salsa band La Mecanica Popular) and DJ Johnny Juice, a Rock N Roll Hall of Famer best known for his work with Public Enemy and Rob Swift. They’ve just released a single called “Bang Bang” which features a verse by Public Enemy’s legendary Chuck D. On their Bandcamp page the duo says “Bang Bang is frustration and anger, protest and resistance.” The song is also dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., and his refusal to meet violence with violence. This welter of emotion, and of values under tremendous pressure, informs the song’s lyrics. Meanwhile the sound is a neat layering of Golden Age hip hop scratching and sampling over a classic funk groove.
The Oddysy and Chuck D are apparently preparing to make a video for this song; also, the band is playing a residency series at Nurse Bettie on the first Monday of each month through July. Next one is Monday, May 6.
Kelly Moran’s Dark Night Of The Piano
Composer Kelly Moran writes mostly for the prepared piano, a grand piano whose strings have been altered with bits of metal, wood, paper, or other materials so that the instrument becomes a kind of one-person percussion ensemble. She’s about to release a new EP called Origin, and has put out a single called “Night Music.” But this is not some sleepy, dreamy little nocturne. Moran’s piece, with its tolling bell-like sounds, is closer to the unsettled, unquiet night music of the 20th century Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, or to the eerie, phantasmagorical world of George Crumb – a hero to Moran and most anyone else working with the innards of the piano. The tone of each key is determined by what’s put on the strings, and where along the length of the strings it’s placed. It can be a painstaking process, but “Night Music” shows off Moran’s keen ear by treating the extreme ends of the piano as deep gongs or tiny bells, while the middle strings have an almost percussive, zither-like sound.
Origin comes out on May 17. Kelly Moran plays in Brooklyn at Roulette on May 20.
The Mystery Lights Revive 60s Garage Punk
The good folks at Daptone Records, who made their name with soul revivalists like Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, and then brought back classic mid-century Latin sounds with Orquesta Akokan, have now turned their retro-gaze to late 60s rock. On May 10 they’ll release a new album by The Mystery Lights, a band that will appeal to anyone who has fond memories of Question Mark and the Mysterians, or The Stooges, or any of a number of other proto-punk bands that we now term “garage rock.” (Fans of Arcade Fire’s Funeral may also be reminded of some of that album’s garage-y moments.) With yelping vocals, slashing guitar chords, and a sound that is unapologetically pre-digital, the band’s new single “Traces” is a high-octane blast, and a hint of what’s to come on their album Too Much Tension!
The Mystery Lights play at Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 18.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9UHcKlBvsA
