By Will McGuirk
Lovely new album from Caroline Marie Brooks; get real with Bob Vylan cos its time to get up and shit is real; Mom Jeans still fit well; Rowan skids into his roots, and Alison Wonderland melts the EDMs.
Radio Zeitgeist: Best upcoming vinyls include Slow Crush, Etran de L’Air, Hurray for the Riff Raff
By Will McGuirk
Oh man I could listen to this Belgian metalgaze act, Slow Crush, new album “Hush” all day long, and all night. Pummelling Thor hammer like beats stomp and swashes of ethereal guitars, its a bloodied My Bloody Valentine, a deafening Deafheaven, a Portishead smashed in. Powerful stuff. Dig out their debut ‘Aurora.’
Mdou Moctar, Altin Gun, Orions Belte, Somali Yacht Club, and of course Khruangbin, are some of the bands bringing some width to the rock ’n roll. Etran de L’Air are another act I’m digging into. Such celebration and optimism to their sound, known as it is as ‘Desert Blues’. Etran de L’Air (the Stars of the Air) are from Northern Niger and the music they play is strongly associated with weddings, baptisms etc, all occasions of joy and the tunes bring it all.
A working class hero is something to be so Hurray for the Riff Raff. The HRR aka Alynda Segarra are a collage of influences, nips and tucks of references, some Bowie, some New Order, some Leonard Cohen, some Kate Bush, but as is the way with fragments, step further away not closer to see the picture, and you get all of this. Go macro not micro.
Radio Zeitgeist: Best of new vinyls include Fazer, Holy Hive, Silas Short, Haiku Hands, and more
By Will McGuirk
Fazer, on ‘Plex’, their third album, manage to hold the centre even as elements take flight. The German group tie all the jazz meanderings to a core held in place by their rhythm section. While the restraint can be binding the results are spellbinding - there is something to be said for returning home again before taking off again.
Holy Hive are OG Dap-tones drummer Homer Steinweiss and singer-songwriter Paul Spring. Their self-titled album is what the Brooklyn duo term Folk Soul. The folk and the soul in question are not a marriage between the rural and the urban traditions of America but the two draw from a diverse global base and a soul which is as local as each of us.
Silas Short blends soul and jazz on his debut ‘ Drawing’ - a gathering of lockdown conversations with himself laid over some deft grooves and a voice with a drop like a waterfall. Something of Bahamas and also Daniel Caesar to this 24 year old resident of Milwaukee.
Aussies Haiku Hands may be what one could get if Peaches had joined the Spice Girls, less Wannabe, more WAP.
Radio Zetgeist: best of new vinyls include Charlotte Cornfield, Lady Blackbird, Charlotte Day Wilson, Yard Act and more
By Will McGuirk
The world has been walking this tightrope between hyper-local and hyper-global for over two years, its been a time of contempt and contemplation and all of it is explored in ‘Highs in the Minuses’, the new album from Charlotte Cornfield due out on vinyl January 28.
“We are not supposed to go outside/ the stores are all closed/ Never seen this city so dead and so morose/ its a crisis but we haven’t got the words” she sings on ‘“Headlines” which kicks of this week’s showcase.
Fortunately Charlotte has the words and the chords to put this earthly experience in to some sort of context.
‘Black Acid Soul’ - Experience, colour, sound, chemistry - its all here in the debut album from Lady Blackbird. From the psyche of Nina Simone to the psychedelia of Alice Coltrane, its a swirling sorrowful, mesmerizing trip with the voice of Marley Munroe holding the centre.
There’s an acid burn to the voice of TO R&B artist Charlotte Day Wilson. that gets straight but so deliciously slowly to the heart. Her debut ‘Alpa’ drops this week and wrapping these songs up in the even warmer tones of wax may just be the tonic this winter needs.
Across the pond Leeds band Yard Act join the accented chorus of the speak-easys Dry Cleaning, Wet Leg, Billy Nomates; angular jocular gong songs going for the jugular. More than three’s a crowd in any scene but Yard Act are defo no pretenders to the new Brit home grown, they are of it. Line them up with Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, and yips Sleaford Mods.
Radio Zeitgeist: Hear tracks by Auf Togo, Dry Ice, Fur, Gabriels, Joanna Sternberg, Lionlimb, and Scott Lavene
By Will McGuirk
Radio Zeitgeist spotlights the best of this week’s vinyl releases. This week we spotlight tracks by Auf Togo, Dry Ice, Fur, Gabriels, Joanna Sternberg, Lionlimb, and Scott Lavene, plus a whole lot more. Dig in. It is available on the Spotify platform. Subscribe, Follow, Like, whatever it is they do do it there. We have been doing the RZ roundup for a while so there’s an archive too.