Weekly Music Roundup: The Weeknd, Adia Victoria, RZA

This week, new songs from some of the usual suspects (The Weeknd, RZA) and some unexpected ones (Adam Driver? Marion Cotillard?).

An Unreleased Album By Sparks Became A Hit Film At Cannes

For over 50 years, the duo known as Sparks have been shapeshifting art-pop renegades, finding occasional chart success in the UK but remaining very much a cult phenomenon here in their native America.  They were planning to release and tour a concept album/rock opera called Annette, when they met director Leos Carax and gave him the music.  Lo and behold, Carax decided that Annette should be a movie.  Not only that, it should star Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, both of whom can really sing.  The film opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival and hit theaters on Friday.  The soundtrack features Sparks as well as the two stars, and runs the gamut from a genuine operatic aria to pulsing synth-pop.  “So May We Start” both opens and closes the soundtrack, and is a catchy tune with just a hint of darkness.  

Adia Victoria Revisits The South With “Magnolia Blues”

Singer and guitarist Adia Victoria is preparing to release her third album in September, called A Southern Gothic.  Victoria has a complex relationship with the South – “South Gotta Change” is the telling name of a song she released last year. Her first single from the new LP is called “Magnolia Blues,” and it features some of her typically precise blues guitar, along with banjo, and percussion while she sings of a Black woman who’s gone North, only to find that she’s lost her roots in the process. A Southern Gothic comes out on September 17.

RZA Releases New Album Produced By DJ Scratch

As hip hop beefs go, this one is pretty good-natured: on Friday, the RZA released his solo album called RZA vs Bobby Digital, a track by track series of boasts and putdowns. But since Bobby Digital is RZA’s alter ego (or to be more precise, one of his alter egos), it’s all in good fun, and we’re all in on the joke. The de facto leader of the Wu Tang Clan will surprise no one with his choice of musical material here – namely, excerpts of kung fu movies, an enduring part of the Wu Tang universe. The veteran DJ Scratch produced the record, and this track is a good example of the two hip hop legends playing nicely together; it’s called “Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater.” 

PREMIERE: Julie Fowlis and Hawktail Present A Transatlantic Celtic Collaboration

Scottish singer Julie Fowlis is well known among Gaelic music fans, but a far wider audience will know her as the voice of the songs in Disney/Pixar’s 2012 movie Brave (set in an animated Scotland). She and the Nashville band Hawktail, who play a blend of bluegrass, jazz, and other roots music, were put together by the Folk Alliance International's Village Fund, which provides financial aid to musicians in need. Fowlis sent the band a lovely drone-based song called “Till an crodh Dhòmhnaill (The Good Mallett)” and let the quartet have at it. The resulting song builds to something that is earthy and danceable while never losing the mysterious feeling that Fowlis creates all on her own at the very start.  

The Weeknd Releases First Song From His Next Album

Equating sex and death is not new. Just ask Shakespeare or Richard Wagner. Now The Weeknd has released a new single called “Take My Breath” that sounds like a seduction story until it takes a dark turn. Musically, “Take My Breath” combines a pulsating dance groove that almost sounds formulaic with The Weeknd’s high-pitched, Michael Jackson-inflected vocals. But the lyrics veer off a predictable course, one charted by phrases about “her fantasy” and “the heat between your thighs,” when The Weeknd sings “you’re way too young to end your life/girl I don’t wanna be the one to pay the price.” Suddenly the missing “away” from the song title makes you wonder what exactly he’s on about here. The video, as videos are wont to do, takes the whole air/breathing/asphyxiation metaphor literally.