New music

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This article was published 02/03/2017 (3118 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

POP / ROCK

Mobina Galore
Feeling Disconnected (New Damage Records)

A Tele through a Marshall. An insistent, propulsive backbeat. Raw-throated rage, insistent melodies and “woah-woah” backing vocals. Winnipeg guitar-drums duo Mobina Galore offers up all the sonic characteristics of SoCal punk but, as with any band in any genre, it’s what they do with the raw material that enables them to stand head and shoulders above everybody else.

The litmus test for any band is songs. There are 10 listed tracks on Feeling Disconnected, the band’s second album and full-length debut for Toronto’s New Damage (an 11th song, Fourth of July, is hidden at the end of Better Days) and each one invokes an intense, fully realized mini-world, enveloping listeners in their professions and confessions of love, disappointment, excitement, despair, thrills and angst.

Singer/guitarist Jenna Priestner and drummer Marcia Hanson are primal forces, combining catchy melodies with relentless energy that will grab you by the heart, force you to dance and sing and only release you at record’s end, spent and grinning.

Play this album loud and often. Then catch the band live. ★★★★

DOWNLOAD: Suffer, Losing Time, Spend My Day

— John Kendle

 

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POP & ROCK

Chicano Batman
Freedom is Free (ATO Records)

Every now and then we are fortunate enough to discover a band that reshapes our musical viewpoints just a little. With their third full-lengther, Los Angeles quartet Chicano Batman, despite the sort of silly monicker, has created an unpretentious gem with the excellent Freedom Is Free.

These proud Latino men thread together dozens of interesting and vintage influences into their silky, quasi-psychedelic musical tapestry, to the point where they create something downright new. The album opens with the stoned soul groover Passed You By, lifted to blue-sky heights of sweetness via leader Bardo Martinez’ gorgeous falsetto, a loose rhythm and impeccably reverbed guitar. Friendship (Is a Small Boat in a Storm) pushes you gently into a musical time machine back to the 1970s, when just about every song on AM radio made you smile and want to dance, if only just a little.

The imaginative differences in this album begin with the bubbly Angel Child and its jazzy mid-track break. This song takes a little a long way and is reminiscent of the late Frank Zappa’s Ruben and the Jets Pachuco/doo-wop musical cross-pollination period. The Taker Story displays Martinez’ lyrical astuteness with a story about the artificial belief that “man is the end result of evolution,” set to a grainy, soundtrack-worthy arrangement.

The album’s majesty is made complete with the fabulous use of funky wah-wah guitar, scratchy vintage organ screeches and fuzzy bass coolness; it almost transcends genre. Listen often and be set free. ★★★★

DOWNLOAD: Friendship (Is a Small Boat in a Storm), Flecha al Soul

— Jeff Monk

 

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JAZZ

Theo Bleckmann
Elegy (ECM)

German singer/composer Theo Bleckmann has a fascinating and varied biography. His work straddles classical, jazz and new age genres, and as a singer he has been part of the vocal ensemble of composer Meredith Monk, whose music was a major part of this year’s WSO New Music Festival.

On this new album, he offers words and vocalese on original and well-known tunes with a fine group of jazz folks, including Ben Monder on guitar, John Hollenbeck on drums, Shai Maestro on piano and Chris Tordini on bass; guitarist Monder in particular is gaining huge recognition these days as a wonderful assist to numerous new releases. The mood here is generally reflective, as the album title would imply. Bleckmann offers his clean, vibrato-less voice to the instrumental arrangements, as in the title track, and the group is totally in sync with the mood of the album.

One truly unexpected track is the usually rollicking opening song from the Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It’s called Comedy Tonight and is sung here as a slow dirge in total denial of the lyrics. Somehow it seems to work in the context of this album.

Bleckmann works seamlessly here as a member of the group rather than seeking the spotlight as the vocal leader. Elegy holds up well to repeated listenings. ★★★★1/2

DOWNLOAD: Elegy, Fields

— Keith Black

 

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CLASSICAL

Emmanuelle Bertrand, Cello
Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No.1 — Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3 (Harmonia Mundi)

French cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand turns her bow to Saint-Saens’ Cello Concerto No. 1, regarded by many among the finest solo cello works of its kind.

Bertrand brings graceful lyricism to each of its three inter-connected sections that flow as one continuous movement, with her tone even throughout all registers, whether plumbing sonic depths or scaling the loftiest heights. Switzerland’s Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, led by James Gaffigan, provides an able partner, matching her note for note throughout the work, with its more transparent second movement, Allegretto con moto, particularly compelling.

Also included are two cello sonatas, with Bertrand now joined by her longtime collaborator, pianist Pascal Amoyel. Sonata for Cello and Piano, No. 2, Op. 123 in F major showcases the soloist’s chameleonic versatility as she morphs between the fiery tarantella rhythms of its second movement, Scherzo con Variazioni, and the limpid poeticism of the following Romanza.

Not least of all, the album also features the inaugural recording of the composer’s Sonata for Cello and Piano No.3 in D major, published posthumously. Bertrand’s conviction brings the only surviving two movements of the chamber work’s original four to life, with its Andante Sostenuto coming to a gentle, albeit unsettling end. ★★★★

— Holly Harris