Best Of The Month July 2020

What's up party people! I realize probably nobody is reading this right now but if you are! Thanks for the attention, Cheers.

Lianne La Havas -- Lianne La Havas

[Warner]

A couple years ago when I was first really getting into music I was eagerly listening to everything I could. I really dug Radiohead because of their mysterious blend of so many foreign sounds to me. My favorite Radiohead song then that still stands as one of my favorites today was “Weird Fishes” on In Rainbows. In my search on YouTube for live sets is when I discovered a live cover of the song by Lianne La Havas at Glastonbury I’m 2013 and My God, did it blow me away. Her take on the song broke from the kinetic energy of the original and directly took more from neo-soul, trading in Radiohead’s fluttering guitar arpeggios for milky smooth electric pianos. And her voice replaced the boyish muttering from Thom Yorke for buttery smooth soul vocals.

In July 2020, La Havas released her third record, five years after her sophomore simply titled Lianne La Havas. This record is much more raw and underproduced than the last few records, not to say it’s any bad but it’s stripped back tone is notably different than the feel of Blood in 2015. Most of the tracks were recorded live and this approach puts a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of her band which excels in spades.

On funky samba-inspired single “Can’t Fight”, the shuffling drums guide this groovy coffee shop beat that is lead by La Havas’s percussive guitar rips. The use of strumming muted strings in her music is very much a unique part of her style, and lets her join in on the pulse of the song. La Havas’s gentle guitar strumming guides most of the dynamics, present on this song and “Paper Thin” where her Hendrix-esque approach to guitar elevates her vocals and the song as a whole.

“Green Papaya” is an intimate song that mostly isolates La Havas and her guitar for this dreamlike ballad on holding a relationship together. Her incredibly expressive voice stands to be the most beautiful aspect of this album. Her wide register and warbly vibrato is so tangible and makes every track feel so personal even in this raw of an album. “Please Don’t Make Me Cry” features a chorus wailing in pain with “Please don’t make me cryyyyyyyyyy, oh my baby!”

“Seven Times” stands out as her most pained song on the album, breaking from the lovesick attitude of the earlier songs and taking on confrontation. La Havas reevaluates her relationship with her partner singing: “You made promises that you won't be keeping. Oh, you can't spend my love, I'm living for free now, What used to be means nothing to me now”. The song’s chorus: “All night and day, all night and day, I cry and pray” maintains groovy and emotional, even with a bit of a flute freakout at the end.

And finally, her studio cover of “Weird Fishes” makes it onto the record as the most explosive and cathartic track. The chugging beat guides the beat until those signature Rhodes piano keys purvey every inch of the eq spectrum. La Havas’s performance is more intimate than ever and the low vocal melody pushes the limits of her low register invoking this scratchiness only present on this song. As the song builds, La Havas adds backup vocals and curious succinct bass notes envelop the listener until the break in the middle. After La Havas sings of the weird fishes eating her, the beat comes back bigger than ever with distorted guitar arpeggios and this huge ride-heavy drum beat. Angelic backup vocals accompany La Havas as she takes you to the deepest pits of the ocean finally to “hit the bottom and escape”. My favorite cover of my favorite Radiohead song still sends chills down my spine every time I hear it.

Lianne La Havas’s third is aptly self-titled, showing her and her band in their most raw form along with their best group of tracks yet.

Listen To: “Weird Fishes”, “Can’t Fight”

RIYL: Radiohead, Laura Mvula, Emily King

Kamaal Williams -- Wu Hen

[Black Focus]

New age jazz keyboardist Kamaal Williams is back with his sophomore record Wu Hen continues his streak of brilliantly fusing tones of smooth jazz and post-bop with electronica, hip hop, pop, and funk. The tracklist of Wu Hen is dynamic, lively, and catchy, showing Williams’ ever growing versatility and skill as a band leader into his best work yet.

Williams released his debut solo record The Return in 2018, referencing a break after his groundbreaking collaborative record with jazz drummer Yussef Dayes. Both records displayed great levels of versatility and proficiency on Williams’ part, as a keyboardist who subtle playing style was so visual and warm. And on both records, the chemistry between Williams, Dates, and the rest of the band was always explosive, reminiscent of some seasoned hard-bop quartet in the sixties.

On Wu Hen, Williams is back with more combusting energy, more genre fusion, and more charisma than ever. Almost every track on the album explores a unique idea in a different genre. “One More Time” is this spritely energetic song with a blocky synth that guides the song over some wild drum ‘n’ bass drumming. The final leg of track drops the synth and replaces the space with heavily phasered electric organs that pours through the beat like water in a fountain until flowing right into “1989” which turns the smooth jazz vibes to the max. This track features smooth subtle sax licks and funky bass jabs, contrasting the intimacy with these living, breathing synths and viscous electric pianos.

Williams pulls off another perfect segue between “Big Rick” and “Save Me”. The former brings the focus back to the jazzy lounge with this shrill square synth that soars like a bird over wahwahing electro piano keys. The rhythm section, not only on this track but the whole record, holds everything together like glue but switches seamlessly from styles of swaggering pop, hard-bop Jazz, and impressionist grooves. “Save Me” immediately follows but proceeds in a different direction that “Big Rick” and pulls out this swaggering funk beat the struts and swaggers over this descending chord progression that both embodies and transcends the term “jazz funk”. This grainy envelope synth swelters and wahs waves through caves of weathered darkness and unknown paths.

Some of the best cuts here like “Save Me” are the ones that displays new angles of Kamaal Williams we never imagined. The only true vocal cut here “Hold On” makes for an extraordinary cool down moment. The kaleidoscopic melody layered with the duwop backup vocals offer a much more intimate feel, wrapped with the string synths and holding the electric piano to feel like a warm hug.

For me though, “Pigalle” takes the cake on Wu Hen. The rushing energy exudes firepower with a late sixties hard bop groove complete with wild Tony Williams-esque drumming and splintering saxophone lines. A skipping bassline bounces back and forth following the sax player as he plays down dark corridors of sound and swelling rises. All the while Williams’ consistent but resilient piano chords holds the whole circus together. The shift in the second leg to a much more chill pace to make way for the piano really displays the cohesion of the band. The bass slows the steady groove as the sputtering piano pounces and patters like a panther purveying its prey. The energy coming from each and all the performances combined makes for one of the most exciting songs I’ve heard all year.

Wu Hen shows Kamaal Williams at his greatest yet and offers one of the most reliable jazz experiences all year all while pushing the genre’s boundaries.

Listen To: “Pigalle”, “One More Time”

RIYL: Yussef Kamaal, Kamasi Washington, BADBADNOTGOOD

Imperial Triumphant -- Alphaville

[Century Media]

NY Experimental black metal trio Imperial Triumphant is back with their fifth studio album Alphaville which is the most experimental record yet. This time they brought the whole arsenal with a tracklist complete with a colorful rainbow of horrifying sounds and their tightest production yet.

It took me a while to realize the appeal to cold-blooded cacophonous metal records like this and I think there are a lot of common misconceptions on the genre. This album is intended to sound tortured and painful and you’re supposed to feel repulsed. There isn’t any magical layer or thing metalheads hear that you won’t. Accept it as it is. Part of the experience is the repulsion. I realized I “got it” when I said to myself “I vibe with it and I also don’t” and that’s what hooked me.

This album’s brilliance is in its fusions of genres beyond black metal with bits of jazz to paint a very specific aesthetic. Alphaville seeks to interpret and convey the injustices of capitalism, colonialism, and destruction through the twisted lens of idyllic futures from the Art Deco movement of the 20s. Gilded cornices in Roaring Twenties art mixed with the twisted sci-fi like Metropolis purvey the inspiration for most of this album. Buried under the layers of hellish distortion are these ideals.

The opener “Rotted Futures” opens with this extended feeling of panic on the horizon when the math rock comes in. The cohesive riff feels like a wailing alarm that won’t let up. Guitarist and vocalist Zachary Ezrin delivers guttural black metal inspired vocals that best describe the despaired and tortured vibe of the album’s whole message. Specifically, the opener is about the ever-declining state of human civilization and the despair we have for the future.

I’d say my favorite aspect about this album is the amazing cohesion between the band members. Their playing is very seasoned and shows great chemistry. This is expanded on even more in some of the bigger darker tracks where layered overdubs of all different kinds of percussion and backup vocals give a lot of depth to this speed metal trio.

“City Swine” is an exercise in dissonance as these jazzy Art Deco pianos ride the line between beautiful and chaotic. Every second-long break in the song is another moment for the band to scare you with a sudden jump scare. “Experiment” plays around with this spooky anticipation and is one of the most streamlined speed metal songs on record with typical song structure. This song is a true blue way for Imperial Triumphant to really just display their showmanship all way giving a head banging anthem.

Sometimes it’s hard to hear the technical ability buried until the enormous walls of hellish distortion but the raw talent is there. Drummer Kenny Grohowski really shows his skill in his 140 bpm blast beat kicks but in his segues between these sequences he plays these wild creative fills that fit within the chaos.

Atomic Age opens with this psychedelic barbershop quartet that brings the listener back to the fifties with a deceitful sense of security until the beat unexpectedly comes in. The dissonant sauntering beat marches forward as the singer grovels about hellish nuclear war imagery. While the intro brought you back to the happiness of the fifties, the rest of the song truly confronts the hellish paranoia of the Cold War. After a couple verses the instrumentation truly explodes with all these acoustic synths and percussion widening the range of the song. For the rest of the song, Imperial triumphant explores different vignettes of sound one or two minutes at a time, pushing the limits of the most disgusting and painful sounds of 2020.

This album is fantastic and shows some of the best experimental metal of the year all while staying intriguing and beautiful at points. If you’re a fan of metal and/or experimental jazz, this is definitely worth a listen. This was my first experience with Imperial Triumphant and I hope it can be yours too.

Listen To: “Atomic Age”

RIYL: Mastodon, Orbit Culture, Mayhem

-Benji

I don't claim to own the rights to any of these images, they go to their respective owners. This article has images I found on Google.