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gabriels – angels and queens part I
Anohni and Billie Holiday seem, in a brilliant scientific experiment, to have been welded together and strategically placed inside Jacob Lusk. The charismatic, warm instrumentation from Ari Balouzian and Ryan Hope coats the extraordinary vocals like a weighted blanket. Rather than shifting errantly, the tracks glide between flight paths in motions so smooth they’d force […]
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labi siffre – crying, laughing, loving, lying (1972)
Beyond his beloved-by-producers take on funk, Labi Siffre was unusually skilled at creating subtle folk ballads. On C,L, L, L his high-pitched, drifting vocals, which have since inhabited Robin Pecknold, coalesced with serene acoustics. Each component is wrapped in his earnest songwriting—-the rushes of emotion bloom and plateau with deep sweetness. In spite of some […]
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ron sexsmith – ron sexsmith (1995)
What is artistic confidence? Probably writing an album of saccharine songs, singing them with frail Canadian vocals, and somehow sounding wholly sincere and completely natural. Ron Sexsmith is a great songwriter. Similar to Nick Lowe, another great, Sexsmith expresses emotions and situations in a frank, guileless tone that also breathes out unreplicable kinks. There are […]
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aaron martin – the end of medicine (soundtrack)
This is the soundtrack to a documentary on factory farming and disease. In the face of crippling tragedy, its triumph is in staying rooted to the reality of its subject. Any shadow of hope is reduced to a slice of the sun creeping through the factory window and briefly implying an outside world. The magnificence […]
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deize tigrona – foi eu que fiz
Coke. Guns. Booty. Beats. No, that’s not Michael Gove’s shopping list. It’s how Alex Bellos once distilled funk carioca. Deize Tigrona takes the last two , hurls them into direct lyrics, and lets them wobble above floor-shaking energy. Her drive is the most intensely arresting aspect of Foi Eu Que Fiz. Tigrona straps to her […]
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