New music

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This article was published 08/08/2020 (2048 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

POP / ROCK

Alanis Morissette

Such Pretty Forks in the Road (Epiphany Music)

The piano is back. The voice is back. The angst is back.

A genre onto herself, Alanis Morissette comes out in force with her ninth studio album Such Pretty Forks In the Road, where she untangles some of the thornier moments of her life since we’ve last heard from her in 2012. Postpartum depression, check. Management embezzlement, check. Music industry fatigue, check. Joy of motherhood, check.

Morissette’s creative companion, the piano, takes us on a journey that’s sometimes dramatic, sometimes sombre, sometimes playful, sometimes wistful. But it’s the electric guitar riffs that add a sheen of nostalgia; Ablaze and Sandbox Love have that sound that perfectly encapsulates a CW show from the mid-aughts.

Smiling puts the rictus on the church organ and pulls off a ballad with a twist of register that rocks your rocks off. Reasons I Drink has that Billy Joel lilt but more acerbic lyrics about surviving in the music industry for so long, while the harried and troubled piano on Reckoning channels empowering anger. Diagnosis hits a nerve with its raw lyrics about struggling with postnatal depression.

Despite its unassuming musicality, the 11-track Such Pretty Forks In the Road dazzles with its simple comfort charms. ★★★★ out of 5

Stream these: Smiling, Diagnosis

— Cristina Jaleru, Associated Press

Poprock

Fontaines D.C.

A Hero’s Death (Partisan Records)

“To offer more of the same or not to offer more of the same?” That is the question that dogs all artists who achieve great acclaim with their debut albums. For Fontaines D.C., a guitar-driven, post-punk quintet from Dublin, success was more notional than it was material. But the band’s first record, Dogrel, was certainly auspicious, a snarling yet romantic depiction of Dublin life that was nominated for the U.K.’s Mercury Prize on the back of Grian Chatten’s sneering vocals and the group’s energetic, uptempo stomps.

Thoughtful fellows all (the five members met at music college), these Fontaines have chosen not to rely on the tried and true on A Hero’s Death. Singer/lyricist Chatten has said mining Dublin and its ghosts for more material was never an option and he wasn’t about to write a clichéd album about the rigours and excesses of being a touring band.

This means A Hero’s Life is largely a collection of internal musings and observations, often set to slower tempos and haunting atmospheric soundscapes, making it an earnest, almost bleak album that zeroes in on the doubt and anxiety that comes with one’s early to mid-20s (and before the ethical compromises that follow). Opener I Don’t Belong is a mid-tempo declaration of intent (“I don’t belong to anyone.”) while second track Love is the Main Thing sees Chatten adopt a crooner’s baritone while producer Dan Carey dials up the reverb and lets the band create a turbulent swirl. Other tracks that stick out are Oh Such a Spring, a reflection on the passage of time and Televised Mind, on which the band channels Joy Division and while Chatten goes on a disaffected rant about the struggle to find meaning in a splintered, spoon-fed world.

Such an expansion of sound and focus might have been out of reach for a lesser band, but Chatten and his mates — guitarists Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connell, bassist Conor Deegan and drummer Tom Coll — sound as though they’re still well in control even as they grasp for something grander and greater. As such, these heroes will certainly live to fight another day. ★★★★ out of five

Stream these: I Don’t Belong; Televised Mind; A Hero’s Death

— John Kendle

JAZZ

Quinsin Nachoff

Pivotal Arc (Whirlwind)

Here’s another fascinating album that makes purists (jazz and classical) head for the headache medicine. A reader last week questioned me about the crossover reality between “jazz” and “classical” music. This is absolutely another one for her consideration. Canadian saxophonist Quinsin Nachoff has recorded some of the best in hard-edged contemporary experimental jazz. As with a number of current jazz musicians, he is now defining experimental in new ways. This album bends the conventional thinking of what is jazz by adding violinist Nathalie Bonin, the Molinari String Quartet and a wind ensemble to the basic jazz quartet of Nachoff with Mark Helias bass, Satochi Takieshi drums and vibraphonist Michael Davidson. Nachoff’s compositions here are a three-movement Violin Concerto, a four-movement String Quartet as well as an extended title track. It has been described as “fearlessly innovative.”

Always rhythmic and with high energy, the Violin Concerto shows off Bonin as totally comfortable in a jazz/classical blend. With the long form writing she is impressive throughout; I especially loved the Third Movement. The balladic Second Movement is described in the notes as “when Berg meets Ellington.” While melodically grounded, the music is dissonant with shifting moods that fit the solo passages wonderfully. Nachoff and Bonin have apparently worked together on previous projects, so their comfort with diverse styles is no surprise.

The String Quartet offers, if anything, more intensity with the added string component. It maintains the compositional diversity of the Concerto while offering less obvious foundation of the jazz quartet. Nachoff himself is heard quite sparingly here.

The final track, Pivotal Arc, gives more room for Nachoff and the jazz quartet with backing from the strings and winds, as opposed to the main compositions. The overall impact of the album is to confirm that specific definitions are pointless. This is simply good music that for convenience is listed in the jazz category. Enjoy. ★★★★1/2 out of five

Stream these: Violin Concerto Movement Three, String Quartet Movement One

— Keith Black

CLASSICAL

Stéphanie d’Oustrac

Portraits de la Folie

The award-winning Amarillis ensemble led by artistic director/oboist/recorder player Heloise Gaillard explore the emblematic character of Folly, closely twinned with Love, and a compelling presence on the 17th and 18th century operatic stage. The album wisely balances short vocal works, including recitatives and arias sung by France’s Stéphanie d’Oustrac, to instrumental numbers ranging from gavottes, sinfonie and even a concerto, with the latter becoming effective, musical palate cleansers. The total 21 tracks also showcase a noteworthy variety of composers, from the lesser-known Reinhard Keiser, Marin Marais and Johann David Heinichen to Baroque pillars Handel and Purcell.

Billed as a “sightseeing excursion,” listeners are taken on a journey through Folly’s various passions and emotional states, with stops along the way including witnessing her skills as a seductress during André Campra’s Fêtes vénitiennes, or “surrendering to the pleasures of love” in Greek mythological-based opera Semele composed by André Cardinal Destouches and Marais. A highlight is Purcell’s From silent shades and the Elysian groves, a.k.a. Bess of Bedlam, referring to London’s asylum for the insane, in which Folly shows her more fickle side, and brought to life with d’Oustrac’s impressive lower range and idiomatic Baroque ornamentation. That same composer’s From Rosy bow’rs, composed shortly before his death in 1695, offers a rich tapestry of contrasting textures and timbral colours. Handel’s Italian cantata Ah! Crudel nel pianto mio unfolds as an amorous lament, with Folly herself finally given the last word in Detouches’ Le Carnaval et la Folie, as she sings, “There can be no happy moments when Love is lacking and Folly is absent,” an eternal message some might argue as relevant today as when first uttered in 1703. ★★★1/2 out of five

Stream this: Purcell’s From silent shades and the Elysian groves

— Holly Harris