New music May 19

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This article was published 19/05/2022 (1569 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FOLK

Jenny Berkel
These Are the Sounds Left from Leaving (Outside Music)

Quietly, patiently and purposefully, Jenny Berkel has become an exemplary and essential folk singer-songwriter over the past decade. The peripatetic musician, who grew up in southwest Ontario, has lived in Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and the south shore of Nova Scotia since she released her debut album Here on a Wire, which was recorded and produced in Winnipeg by Matt Peters of Royal Canoe. Her second full-length record, 2016’s Pale Moon Kid, was produced by and recorded with the prolific Daniel Romano and his band.

Berkel is also a published poet and recently completed a master’s degree in English literature and creative writing at the University of Western Ontario, which explains how and why it’s taken so long to release her third full album (the pandemic’s disruption no doubt played a part, too). In interviews, she has said her songs are poems she needs to physically feel, and that’s certainly how the 10 songs on These Are the Sounds… should be considered — as poetic constructions worked into the constraints of melody, metre and lyrical phrasing, then embellished by the mood of their musical settings.

As such, this is a beautiful piece of work. Co-producing for the first time, with Dan Edmonds and Ryan Boldt (the Deep Dark Woods), and with string arrangements by Colin Nealis, Berkel recorded these songs live off the floor at the Sugar Shack in London, Ont. In the immediacy of that situation, Berkel, Edmonds, Boldt, guests Kacy and Clayton and drummer/percussionist Marshall Bureau created a fluid environment, which infuses the album with ethereal connectedness, even when she’s bringing her expressive alto to bear seemingly disparate songs about the disconnected, fractious discord of the modern world (as on Kaleidoscope, or Here Comes the Morning, the record’s solo, acoustic closing tune), the purple lies of a past lover (Lavender City) or lamenting her own anxieties and those of others (You Think You’re Like the Rain, Just Like a River, Song of Yourself). ★★★★1/2 out of five

Stream these: Kaleidoscope, Lavender City, Song of Yourself

— John Kendle

 

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METAL

Halestorm
Back From the Dead (Atlantic)

Lzzy Hale, the lead singer and guitarist for the Pennsylvania heavy metal band Halestorm, is that rare breed of wild child whose path you cross at your own peril, and her aggressiveness soaks through her music.

The band’s new album, Back From the Dead, is not for the faint of heart, or anyone with even a trace of a headache: it’s a full-on sonic assault of screams, wailing guitars, pounding drums and booming bass.

And yet Hale manages to pull it off with a deft songwriting touch and a surprising sense of melody that belies the bombast.

The title track is the band’s likely concert opener on this summer’s tour, and begins with a roar (as many of Hale’s songs do). She’s got a great scream, and she’s not afraid to use it, multiple times, on most songs.

Yet she actually has a beautiful singing voice that can tend to get overlooked amid the shrieks. The ballads Terrible Things and Raise Your Horns feature her tender, sultry vocals that are 180 degrees from many of her other vocals, particularly those on Wicked Ways.

The Steeple is an infectious anthem/ode to the fans, a made-for-the-concert-hall sing-along with lines like “This is my church, and these are my people.”

And try as I might not to see it, Hale looks a LOT like Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider on cover of an album that will definitely be in the running for the best hard rock/metal album of the year. ★★★★ out of five

STREAM THESE: Terrible Things, The Steeple

— Wayne Parry, The Associated Press

 

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JAZZ

Yelena Eckemoff
I Am a Stranger in This World (L&H Productions)

Spirituality expressed in jazz is nothing new. From the Coltranes to Brubeck, Ellington, Charles Lloyd and many others, jazz folks have used their musicality to share their deepest spiritual feelings.

Yelena Eckemoff is a classically trained pianist who converted to Christianity in her native Russia and brought her love of jazz and her faith to the United States some years ago. Since moving to the States she has carved out a powerful career as pianist and composer in various configurations. A strong undercurrent has been to write compositions perhaps more and more regularly that reflect her fascination with the Psalms.

I Am a Stranger in This World is a two-CD release that continues that project. With a stellar cast of trumpeter Ralph Alessi, bassist Drew Gress, guitarist Adam Rogers and drummer Nasheet Waits , it adds violinist Christian Howes, guitarist Ben Monder and drummer Joey Baron on some tracks. Each track references a specific Psalm, with a wide range of moods and styles. Several tracks are straight-up blues, or complex with quite edgy dissonances.

The tunes are excellent; Eckemoff says her melodies that come from the words of the Psalms “are the best melodies I create.” The opening track, As Chaff Before the Wind (Ps. 35) is 12 minutes of laying the groundwork for the album. There is intensity and beauty in much of this music, and if one didn’t know the concept, the music would stand on its own solidly in the contemporary jazz groove. I Shall Not Want (Ps. 23) is a great blues number, while Keep Not Your Silence (Ps. 83) has exceptional solos by Alessi and Rogers. Wine of Assessment (Ps. 60) moves into very edgy moments, as do a number of other tracks, always with control and meaning.

While the concept might be a major turnoff for some, this is fine jazz at both the spiritual and “secular” level. Highly recommended. ★★★1/2 out of five

STREAM THESE: I Am a Stranger in This World (Ps. 119 Gimel), I Shall Not Want

— Keith Black

 

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CLASSICAL

NEO
Oda Voltersvik piano (Rubicon)

Everything old is new again as Norwegian pianist Oda Voltersvik treats listeners to a recital progam showing how neo-classical forms were incorporated into 20th-century repertoire.

The award-winning artist, who is equally known for her chamber music performances, immediately displays her sensitive artistry in Scriabin’s Fantasie in B Minor, Op. 28, with expansive sweeps across her keyboard.

It’s near impossible not to be attracted to any of Prokofiev’s idiosyncratic works and Piano Sonata No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 14 teems with the Soviet-era composer’s unique harmonic structures and percussive rhythms. Volersvik shows a natural affinity for the artist’s spiky music; she’s at her best during its second movement, a wild Scherzo: Allegro Moderato, or the finale, Vivace, performed with crisp attack and fuelled by driving ostinato figures. She also demonstrates her ability to turn on a dime to instil more playfulness into several transitional sections that provide welcome sonic relief, with the Andante movement showing her more expressive side.

Shostakovich’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor, Op. 61 further displays her technical prowess, first heard in its opening Allegretto. Its Largo central movement showcases her eloquent phrasing and carefully nuanced tonal palette before leading to its plaintive Moderato con moto.

Finally, Sofia Gubaidulina’s Chaconne bookends Voltersvik’s program with even more knotty textures and ear-cleaning dissonances (the composer’s wholly contemporary music was criticized by the Soviet regime during the early 1960s as being “irresponsible). The album itself might arguably have featured more stylistically contrasting works that would provide better balance and repose: as is, the listener is urged to buckle up for an often intense ride into the densely compact music of the 20th century. ★★★1/2 out of five

STREAM THIS: Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 14, Scherzo: Allegro Moderato

— Holly Harris