New music from Olivia Rodrigo, Super Duty Tough Work, Mark Turner Quartet, Samuel Hasselhorn

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This article was published 15/09/2023 (784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

POP

Olivia Rodrigo

Guts (Geffen)

When Olivia Rodrigo has big, messy feelings to process, she tends to do it behind the wheel.

That’s where the singer-songwriter set Drivers License, the instant-smash breakup ballad that two years ago vaulted her to A-list pop stardom with a quadruple-platinum debut and a Grammy Award for best new artist.

And now it’s where she finds herself in Making the Bed, a hazy lament that arrives halfway through her knockout of a second album, Guts. “Every night I wake up from this one recurring dream / I’m driving through the city and the brakes go out on me,” she sings, her voice trembling with regret against the twang of a reverbed electric guitar.

Guts is the inevitable what-hath-fame-wrought album from a 20-year-old who was already pondering the wages of celebrity on 2021’s Sour. But its enormous success invited an entirely different level of scrutiny, such that Rodrigo opens the 12-songs-in-39-minutes Guts with All-American Bitch, an alternately wistful and punky song about the impossible balancing act she feels compelled to pull off as a woman entering young adulthood in the spotlight.

Guts also showcases a sense of humour; the album really comes alive at its funniest, as in Get Him Back! and Bad Idea Right?, Gen Z dating satires that shift from naturalistic to screwball, faux-earnest to deadpan.

There’s more rock here, too. Working again with producer Dan Nigro, Rodrigo pulls from emo, new wave, shoegaze, even Beastie Boys-style rap-rock, switching up guitar tones and drum sounds to give each track a distinct signature. ★★★★★ out of out of five

STREAM THESE: All-American Bitch, Get Him Back!

— Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times

HIP HOP

Super Duty Tough Work

Paradigm Shift (Next Door Records)

When Super Duty Tough Work’s 2019 Studies in Grey EP was named to the long list of records up for consideration for the 2020 Polaris Prize, it marked the first time a Winnipeg hip-hop act had achieved this sort of recognition. Righteously so, as SDTW’s blend of jazz-infused live instrumentation and erudite, radical lyricism is a seductively powerful concoction.

Of course, any footholds gained from the Polaris exposure were practically undone by the global pandemic, so it could be said that Super Duty got to clean its slate before launching Paradigm Shift, its 10-song, full-length debut.

It’s fitting, then, that the album’s first track is Mission Statement, a bold spit from MC Brendan Grey, which, in the grand tradition of hip hop, bigs up SDTW as a much-needed “change of pace,” calls out other artists for not doing the reading on Black and colonial history, and points out that “Black radical tradition stay in my veins.” (Grey’s real surname is Kinley, his parents and grandparents were educators and activists and he’s a cousin of pianist Winifred Atwell, a 1950s U.K. pop star, and Kwame Ture, one of the stalwarts of the U.S. Civil Rights movement.)

The members of SDTW aren’t shy about being political, but they’re also prodigiously talented musicians. Behind Grey, the core group of bassist Ashley Au, saxophonist Olivier Macharia, keyboardist/vocalist Marisolle Negash, guitarist Gabriela Ocejo and drummer Kevin Waters creates heady, ethereal grooves, melodies, countermelodies and staccato percussive breaks intercut with swirling synthesizer atmospherics and all manner of esoteric skronks, squawks and static — a slice-and-dice pastiche that (cliché alert) comes together seamlessly and emulates the vibe of early ’90s artists such as Digable Planets or A Tribe Called Quest, indulges a taste of U.K. drum ’n’ bass and also manages to incorporate speech and film samples.

It’s heady stuff, this mix of hip hop esthetics, anti-colonial politics (check out Guillotine Dreams, Grey’s Lament or Dirty Hands) and exceptional musicality. There’s a lot to explore here. Enjoy the ride. ★★★★1/2 out of five

STREAM THESE: Mission Statement, Grey’s Lament (Grandmotherland), Molotov Cocktails at Brunch (A Love Song).

— John Kendle

JAZZ

Mark Turner Quartet

Live At The Village Vanguard (Giant Step Arts)

Saxophonist Mark Turner is a visionary and restless explorer of new directions. His wonderful tone on saxophone is always delivered with complete confidence.

While Turner is not a newcomer in any sense, this two-CD release is his first live album as leader. When one accomplishes this event at New York’s legendary Village Vanguard, it speaks volumes about his preparedness for the gig. His quartet here has Jason Palmer on trumpet, Joe Martin on bass and Johnathan Pinson on drums. The songwriting is as impressive as the terrific playing. While not easily hummable, the tunes are tightly arranged with deceptively complex ensemble grooves with often quite extraordinary solos from all members.

Many of the tracks are more than 10 minutes, allowing time for expanded ideas. Turner never wavers from fascinating solos and Palmer’s trumpet flies over the band with ease. Bass and drums are stellar. The track Terminus, for example, runs over 12 minutes and has a unified and continually developing mood and sense of direction that is a common element throughout.

Brother Sister begins with Turner’s remarkable five-minute solo saxophone (there’s a slightly shorter intro to Wasteland) before the others join him in a melodic and sensitive tune that ends with a beautiful ensemble statement.

The tempo heats up on tracks such as Nigeria 2 and 1946, but the sense of direction never flags.

A word about the audience here. One suspects they were cautioned about excessive outbursts in view of the recording. In any event while not silent they are respectful and obviously appreciative of what they are hearing. ★★★★½ out of five

STREAM THESE: Terminus, Wasteland

— Keith Black

CLASSICAL

Samuel Hasselhorn

Ammiel Bushakevitz

Franz Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin (Harmonia Mundi)

Baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz bring to life Schubert’s masterful song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (The Fair Maid of the Mill). The artists have recently embarked on a five-year project with each album in their Schubert 200 Collection series marking the 200-year anniversary of their chosen repertoire, beginning with this work composed at the end of Schubert’s all-too-short life in 1823.

Based on Wilhelm Müller’s poetry of the same name, the cycle, composed of 20 German lieder, explores solitude, emotional strife and the despairing pain of unrequited love. Hasselhorn, with his robust vocals, crafts a compelling narrative in which the journeyman miller falls in love with the miller’s daughter, who rebuffs him for a hunter, before ultimately drowning himself in the babbling brook.

Highlights include No. 3 Halt!, with Bushakevitz’s imagistic tone painting effects evoking the turning of the mill wheel, and a deeply expressive No. 4 Danksagung an den Bach, in which the miller thanks the brook for leading him to his true love.

Others include No. 6 Der Neugierige, where the hero asks the brook if the maiden returns his affections, as well as Hasslehorn’s particularly biting delivery of No. 15 Eifersucht und Stolz as the miller confronts the maiden for her flirtatious ways.

The album ends with haunting finale No. 20 Des Baches Wiegenlied, in which the brook “sings” him to eternal rest. The singer’s limpid phrasing, underpinned by sensitive piano accompaniment, brings the ill-fated miller’s journey full circle. ★★★★ out of five

STREAM THESE: Des Müllers Blumen, Tränenregen, Des Baches Wiegenlied

— Holly Harris