Artist: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Album: Phantom Island Label: KGLW Link: kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com Style: Pop/Rock, Alternative & Indie
This Australian band started out in 2010 and released their first album in 2012. Since then, they have produced a discography whose profusion is matched only by its eclecticism. Between studio albums, concerts and compilations, they now have more than fifty LPs to their name. While maintaining an eye on progressive and psychedelic music, the artists move from jazz to rock, electro to heavy metal, folk to soul, all with great artistic success. This variation in styles, while not necessarily comfortable for the listener, makes them one of the most interesting bands of recent years.
Illustrated with a cover reminiscent of the work of M. C. Escher, Phantom Island is their first real foray into symphonic music. The tracks on this album have been rearranged by Chad Kelly, conductor and friend of Stu Mackenzie, the band’s leader. The first two tracks follow in the footsteps of the previous album with a profusion of sound, a touch of psychedelia and almost funk-like brass reminiscent of Frank Zappa. After a ballad with bucolic accents, the rest of the album moves towards pop-rock and even folk, strongly tinged with a psychedelia that cannot deny its kinship with 1970s pop culture.
The combo had already accustomed us to their generous interweaving of instrumental lines. For this album, they have taken it a step further by adding a string and wind section. Still analog in essence, a dense sound is combined with additional resonances compared to the rest of the band’s output. However, despite fewer improvisational compositions, regular listeners won’t be thrown off, as the album retains the creative momentum characteristic of its artists. Acoustic instruments are rarely overshadowed by electric ones, and the lead vocals never take precedence over the accompaniment.
Artist : Jenny Hval Album : Iris Silver Mist Label : 4AD Link : https://jennyhval.com/ Style: Pop, Alternative & Indie
The Norwegian Jenny Hval takes us into a world of delicate, luminous light, with a sophisticated pop style and many strings to her bow. Her new album Iris Silver Mist is filled with layers of sound as light as perfume.
While still a teenager, she played lead vocals in a gothic metal band and studied writing in Melbourne, which led her first to write newspaper articles, then to publish short stories and novels. Back in Norway, she produced her own music, initially under the name Rockettothesky, then under her own name. At the same time, she was involved in the Lost Girl project. In her albums, the theme of sensory memory is often evoked and used to remind listeners of sensations already experienced.
On Iris Silver Mist (deliberately named after a perfume), Jenny Hval tells us about the emotions that her sense of smell can bring back when she detects familiar scents. To achieve this, she employs an airy pop style, full of weightless atmospheres, sometimes verging on the ambient, but always with a charming underpinning. With her seductive, high-pitched vocals and her carefully crafted sonic entanglements, she gives us a sense of height to better apprehend her rich, personal musical landscape, all in a calm rhythm where each element has time to blossom.
In addition to the instruments traditionally found in pop and folk music, there are soft electronica sounds, with a few hints of field recordings that are even more appreciable when listened to through headphones. These components are not scattered, and the sensation is not one of collage or superimposition, but rather of evolution, as in the olfactory notes of a perfume that we detect more and more. The rhythm remains gentle, while the caressing layers of sound draw you into this weightless world.
Artist : Ezra Furman Album : Goodbye Small Head Label : Bella Union Link : https://ezrafurman.com/ Style : Pop/Rock, Rock, Alternatif & Indie
After igniting the Sex Education soundtrack over four seasons, Erza Furman returns with Goodbye Small Head, a tenth pop rock album full of emotion and confessed fragility.
Chicago-born Erza Furman came out of the closet four years ago, and in the space of a dozen albums, initially with the band The Harpoons, she has become an important figure in the queer community. This success stems in part from the themes addressed in her songs, around questions of identity, and the impact that mental disorders on people she may have encounter in her family, but also quite simply from the quality of her compositions. She has gained even greater notoriety since composing the soundtrack for the aforementioned Netflix series.
Erza Furman’s records combine the energy of her early punk days with a lyricism driven by string arrangements, that lend a warm flamboyance and extra intensity to her songs. Her voice, sometimes androgynous, sometimes rougher, is always full of emotion, reminiscent of PJ Harvey or Brett Anderson from Suede’s early days. The compositions are personal and varied, and show great inspiration throughout. They know how to maintain interest for the attentive listener, while keeping a unity that never confuses when changing tracks.
Erza Furman doesn’t seem to ask herself any questions when crafting her songs. Violins can be played alongside or after samples or drum machines, without fear of appearing overdone. The only thing that counts is the expression of emotion; far from formatted compositions, it’s easy to take pleasure in letting yourself be carried into the artist’s world. If, on the other hand, you choose to concentrate, you’ll be just as delighted by the sonic discoveries that give these tracks their distinctive character.
Deradoorian, while keeping modern pop rock as her central inspiration, doesn’t hesitate to mix seemingly antagonistic styles on her fourth album, Ready For Heaven.
California-born Angel Deradoorian began learning the violin and piano at the age of five. As her interest in music grew, she decided to leave school to devote herself fully to her passion. She moved to Brooklyn and, after a few experiments, in 2007 joined the indie rock band Dirty Projectors, which she left five years later with a view to devoting herself to more personal projects. She then became close to Animal Collective and released her first solo album in 2015, in addition to making a name for herself as part of the duo Decisive Pink.
On her fourth album, Deradoorian maps out the styles that inspire her. We can see that she follows her desires without trying to stick to any particular label, and that’s what makes this record so original. Despite its diversity, the record acquires an overall tonality that becomes more and more evident the more you listen to it. Without shying away from a clearly arty approach, the tracks move from the New York post-punk of the ’80s to the repetitive side of krautrock, the precursors of the electronics that also make their presence felt here. A few jazzy, industrial or reggae touches round off the soundtrack.
Clearly, the artist loves the studio and production. The musical lines are superimposed, giving coherence to an assembly of modules whose cohabitation might have seemed incongruous elsewhere. The clear guitar at the beginning can saturate elsewhere, the saxophone can go from languorous ambiences to heart-rending flights of fancy, as can the rhythms, sometimes almost hypnotic and at other times more danceable. Interestingly, the varied timbres maintain a general sound tinged with torpor, in line with the tensions perceived by the musician within our society.
Artiste : Car Seat Headrest Album : The Scholars Label : Matador Lien : https://www.carseatheadrest.com/ Style : Pop-Rock, Alternative
Car Seat Headrest offers The Scholars, a record with a narrative spread out in the manner of concept albums from the golden age of rock, the perfect pretext for unfurling their searching, gripping pop.
After all, Car Seat Headrest started out as Will Toledo’s own recordings, which he distributed via the Bandcamp website. Parts of the songs were recorded in the family car, hence the name of the project. After his studies, he moved to Seattle, and it was from this point on that we could speak of a band, with the arrival of other musicians. In 2015, the band signed with the renowned independent label Matador Records, for whom they recorded a handful of albums, which included Will Tuledo’s original tracks reworked for the occasion.
The Scholars adopts a narrative structure inherited from the concept albums of the 70s. From the outset, the band has operated in a pure pop-rock style that can best be described as classic, but with an element of momentum and a breadth full of lyricism that is evident on this album, where the compositions evolve in structures far removed from the sempiternal verse-chorus. In the more adventurous moments of their pop side, one is reminded of Animal Collective, who would have abandoned their electronic paraphernalia as well as their long studio work to leave more room for immediacy. All this without falling into the lo-fi of Will Toledo’s early solo recordings.
The voice, which alternates between strength and fragility, always full of emotion, is barely in the foreground, with the guitars, which can be acoustic and clear, or conversely full of saturation and more shadowy to accompany the narrative. Rhythm, too, plays an important role in shaping track structures and modulating tempo as they evolve. The production perfectly captures these different moods and, as a sign of its quality, will highlight different characteristics depending on whether you’re listening on speakers that favor a wide soundstage, or with headphones that are more faithful to detail.
