New music

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This article was published 23/06/2022 (1537 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

JAZZ

Jocelyn Gould
Golden Hour (Independent)

Jocelyn Gould’s new album, which she debuted last Sunday during the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival, shows off the Winnipegger’s guitar and vocal skills beautifully.

With her are some impressive colleagues – Rodney Whitaker on bass, Quincy Davis on drums, and life partner (and fellow Juno Award winner) Will Bonness on piano. Winnipeg saxophonist Jon Gordon also sits in on three tracks with great effect.

Gould’s guitar at times is reminiscent of classical jazz guitarists such as Joe Pass or Wes Montgomery; smooth and always gently swinging. On several of her originals such as Gemini, Tides Are Turning or the title track, there is a more current feel in the changes and solos.

Her voice is small but lends itself well especially to her vocalise riffs as on Serendipity. Her version of the jazz classic Cottage For Sale has a lovely, intense feeling while Horizons offers a fine mix of involvement from the whole band.

The tune Serendipity shows how Gould and Bonness are totally in sync.

Recording artists who cover old standards like Lover Come Back To Me or Sweet Lorraine had better have some new interpretations and Gould’s versions don’t disappoint.

Recorded here in Winnipeg, I hope this will enhance even further the local appreciation for the wonderful talent we have in the city. There is an assurance to this music that speaks to our true place in the Canadian jazz world. This is an enjoyable session from end to end. Here’s hoping the Gould/Bonness home will need an extra room to show off the Junos. ★★★½ out of five

STREAM THESE: Golden Hour, Tides Are Turning

— Keith Black

 

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POP & ROCK

Foals
Life Is Yours (Warner Records)

Indie-pop art rockers Foals gave us more than enough to process with their last offering. Now they seem to want us to dance. And dance we must.

The upbeat, funky and always brilliantly layered, 11-track Life Is Yours captures a band between clouds, the perfect slice of summer fun. Look no further than 2001, an infectious track of disco-smeared funk, and 2AM, a propulsive ode to not going home alone.

In 2019, the British band gave us not one but two albums in its Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost double album, separated by seven months. It was complex, socially conscious stuff, with exits buried underground, dead foxes, burning hedges and rain. Now the sun is out. “I’ve packed my bags/I’ve found new ground,” frontman Yannis Philippakis sings.

Escapism may be the word as Foals look back on parties and recreational drug-fuelled gatherings, a clear reaction to lockdowns and isolation. “’I’ve been waiting all day inside/Waiting for a summer sky/When we run wild,” Philippakis sings.

Having shed two members, Foals – now a three-piece with multi-instrumentalist Philippakis, drummer Jack Bevan and guitarist and keyboardist Jimmy Smith — oddly don’t sound like they’ve lost 40 per cent of their sound. They’ve tapped several different producers this time and a varied, addictive take on the upbeat has been achieved.

The second half is positively dance-hall psychedelic, with Wild Green a synth-led ode to spring, and The Sound almost veering into dubstep. Under the Radar has Philippakis’s voice heavily synthesized in an ’80s new wave song skeleton and ends with his falsetto soaring.

The shimmering Crest of the Waves sounds like it was birthed in a ray of sunshine. Philippakis says he’s waiting in the warm waves of the Caribbean, and isn’t it time we paddled out to meet him? ★★★★ out of five

STREAM THESE: 2001, Crest of the Waves

— Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press

 

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METAL

Iconic
Second Skin (Frontiers)

Like all good cooks from their country, the folks at Italian record label Frontiers know the secret to great cooking lies in experimenting: Tossing a pinch of this with a spoon of that and adding a shake of something else.

The label specializes in one-off project albums mixing and matching heavy metal artists from disparate backgrounds to write and record new music together.

Sometimes, like a bad risotto, the whole thing needs to be tossed in the trash. Other times, however, they hit on a tasty combination, and they’ve put together a good one in Iconic.

Iconic features Stryper singer and guitarist Michael Sweet; guitarist Joel Hoekstra (Whitesnake, Trans-Siberian Orchestra); legendary metal drummer Tommy Aldridge (Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne, among many others) and bassist Marco Mendoza (Black Star Riders, Ted Nugent, Dead Daisies).

The one drawback to this project is its failure to make more use of Sweet’s one-of-a-kind voice, which is instantly recognizable, and still as strong and soaring as it was in the early ’80s when Stryper were MTV darlings.

The band was assembled to showcase up-and-coming vocalist Nathan James, a husky, blues-influenced singer who sounds more than a bit like Jeff Scott Soto, guitar legend Yngwie Malmsteen’s singer in the early 1980s.

And while songs such as Fast As You Can, in which he trades lead vocals with Sweet, and Nowhere To Run are solid old-school metal tracks, I could do with more Sweet vocals, at least a 50-50 split. ★★★½ out of five

STREAM THESE: Nowhere to Run, Fast As You Can

— Wayne Parry, The Associated Press

 

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CLASSICAL

Gustavo Gimeno and Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg
Igor Stravinsky: L’Oiseau de feu, Apollon Musagète (Harmonia Mundi)

The Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, led by Spanish maestro Gustavo Gimeno, performs two of Igor Stravinsky’s seminal ballet scores in its sophomore release, allowing listeners to compare and contrast their radically different compositional styles.

First up is L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird), penned for Sergei Diahilev by Stravinsky, who in 1910 was a young, unknown composer for the Ballet Russes in Paris. It was inspired by Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it holds for its owner.

Gimeno, who also serves as music director for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, leads the players through the composer’s highly textural score; each of its 21 sections bristling with taut energy and infused with requisite drama. The conductor’s innate sense of pacing is fully displayed throughout, with highlights including an ethereal Apparition des treize princesses enchantees followed by the more playful Jeu des princesses avec les pommes d’or: Scherzo, as well as a driving Carillon Feerique, apparition des monstres-gardiens de Kachtchei et capture d’Ivan Tsarevitch.

The ballet’s famous Danse infernale de tous les subjets de Kachtchei does not disappoint, as its diabolical thematic material is crisply tossed between individual sections of the orchestra, including bold brass and percussion accents of its highly syncopated rhythms.

Apollon musagète, better known as simply Apollo is from 1928 and is similarly composed in two tableaux, providing contrast with its polar opposite, neo-classical ethos that balances the firestorms of the first album offering.

Several highlights include a halting Variation de Calliope (l’Alexandrin), and Variation de Terpsichore, both delivered with sensitive restraint, as well as a more luminous Pas de deux (Apollon et Terpsichore), signalling even greater things to come from this iconic, brilliant musical genius of the early 20th century. ★★★★ out of five

STREAM THIS: Danse infernale de tous les subjets de Kachtchei

— Holly Harris