Weekly Music Roundup: Meklit, Mavis Staples, and Taylor Swift
This week, Mavis Staples, Meklit, and Say She She all escape from Taylor Swift’s shadow.
Mavis Staples Releases Title Track To Her Next LP
One of the great voices in American popular music since the 60s, Mavis Staples is still making records, and her new one, Sad And Beautiful World, doesn’t come out on November 7. But this week she released the title track, which is indeed both sad and beautiful. Originally written by the late Mark Linkous, who recorded as Sparklehorse, it is an almost koan-like collection of spare, brief couplets, framed by the simple chorus, “It’s a sad and beautiful world.” Mavis’s version, produced by Brad Cook of Megafaun, naturally centers her restrained, comforting vocals, but the pedal steel adds an essential layer of both sadness and beauty.
Meklit Celebrates Her Ethiopian Heritage On New LP
Singer/songwriter Meklit Hadero, who uses only her first name professionally, was born in Ethiopia but is based in the Bay Area. Her new album, A Piece Of Infinity, is a tribute to the great Ethiopian pop of the late 60s/early 70s, when Addis Ababa was known as Swingin’ Addis. Most of the album is sung in Amharic, and mixes the exotic modal scales and rhythms of Ethiopian music with her own jazz-inflected arrangements and her rich, R&B vocals. This song, “Era Mela Mela,” recalls the title of one of the great Ethiopop albums of the mid-70s, Mahmoud Ahmed’s Ere Mela Mela, although this original song goes for more of a sultry, keyboard-based groove rather than imitating Ahmed’s sweaty, horn-forward record.
Taylor Swift Starts A New Era
Once again, Taylor Swift has sucked all the oxygen out of the room by releasing her new album The Life Of A Showgirl. For this record, Swift returned to the sonic embrace of Sweden’s Max Martin and Shellback, the team that produced her all-conquering albums Red, 1989, and Reputation during the teens. So expectations were high that getting that band back together would result in more inescapable bangers – expectations so high that whatever Swift released was likely to be seen as a disappointment. Even recognizing that, though, Showgirl is disappointing. It’s not bad, mostly, although “Wood” is a single entendre song that seems beneath her, but it is tepid. There are few massive hooks, or singalong choruses; maybe the trio decided not to pretend they were all ten years younger and recreate their hit-making highs, but this more… I was gonna say “mature” but then, “Wood” – this more easy-listening version of Taylor Swift seems like just another album of competent, if generic and surprisingly soft pop. At least the leadoff track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” attempts to reach a dynamic, dramatic chorus, although even here, it seems to pull back from full-on arena pop at the last moment.
Indigenous Latin-Jazz-Ambient-Soul from Cochemea
Cochemea is a sax player, composer and arranger who spent some years playing vintage-style soul with Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, as well as stints with Amy Winehouse, David Byrne, hip hop duo Run The Jewels and dozens more. Born Cochemea Gastelum into an Indigenous Yaqui family in California, he’s found time over the past few years to release three albums of his own music, the latest being Ancestros Futuros. These albums don’t attempt to untangle the knot of Indigenous, Spanish, and American cultural interactions over the centuries, instead using them as musical source material. With a lightly processed alto sax sound and lots of percussion, Cochemea and his band create songs that usually don’t have words, although wordless vocals, chanted or sung, are part of the sonic tapestry. The result is music that is not only beyond category, it almost seems beyond time, as the album title implies. And if this all makes it sound very abstract, well, try this title track, whose melody is catchy enough to get stuck in your head. And I speak from personal experience.
Cochemea is doing a record release show with his band at National Sawdust in Williamsburg on Saturday, October 11.
Say She She Return, As Discodelic As Ever
The trio Say She She wasted little time in claiming their sonic territory – when they first joined us back in 2022, they had just released their debut album and already their “discodelic soul” sound was in place. Anchored by the three voices of Piya Malik, Nya Gazelle Brown, and Sabrina Cunningham, Say She She have continued to make music that draws heavily on the highly produced, almost orchestral disco of bands like Chic. That continues in today’s release, Cut And Rewind, full of songs that I’ll call post-disco because they’ve successfully avoided sounding like a retread of 1978 dance music. Some of this is not the sound, but the meaning – a feminist streak runs through many of their songs. “Under The Sun” is a track that has a bright, sunny sound – but underneath, the lyrics deal with power imbalances and reflect current anxieties, like “Living in the sunshine/Under the gun.”
