This week, Gabrielle Cavassa’s time-traveling sound, Cinder Well’s dark and contemporary folk, and Yiddish Gospel music from The Klezmatics. Plus Latin sounds from David Byrne and Arturo Sandoval.
This week, Gabrielle Cavassa’s time-traveling sound, Cinder Well’s dark and contemporary folk, and Yiddish Gospel music from The Klezmatics. Plus Latin sounds from David Byrne and Arturo Sandoval.
Photo of Gabrielle Cavassa, courtesy of Blue Note Records
David Byrne’s Mexican Collaboration
David Byrne has released “¿Cuál Es La Razón?” – a new version of “What Is The Reaso For It?” from his latest LP, What Is The Sky? The song features vocals by the sterling Mexican singer Natalie Lafourcade, and production by the suddenly ubiquitous Mexican Institute of Sound (aka Camilo Lara). Lafourcade takes the place of Paramore’s Hayley Williams, who sings on the LP version, adding a bilingual element to the song. Lara replaces the original’s propulsive rock beat with a more languorous cumbia rhythm, ups the horn quotient, and generally gives the piece a more tropical vibe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ6F-_K41U4
A New Voice With A Vintage Sound: Gabrielle Cavassa
Jazz singer Gabrielle Cavassa’s new album Diavola features an outstanding lineup of musicians, including sax player and co-producer Joshua Redman, who introduced her to a wider audience by putting her on his 2023 album where are we. (After Redman’s manager heard her singing at a wedding.) Cavassa offers an intriguing mix of standards, a couple of originals, and a few Italian songs. The familiar “Prisoner Of Love” is a highlight, with Cavassa sounding like she was transported back to 1960 to make this warm, intimate recording. With the redoubtable Jeff Parker on guitar, veteran Larry Grenadier on bass, Brian Blade on drums and Paul Cornish on piano, the arrangements and instrumental performances on this album were always going to be first rate; the question is whether Cavassa, in her Blue Note Records debut, could measure up, and the answer is a resounding “you did NOT just ask that question.” Her phrasing has a slow and effortless swing, and she often seems to be settling into a note rather than simply singing through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwMrArPILYo
Cinder Well Previews Her New LP
https://www.wnyc.org/story/experimental-doom-folk-cinder-well-studio/
I’ve been a big fan of [Cinder Well] – the so-called “doom folk” project of singer and multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker – for a fair few years now. She seems to have an inexhaustible supply of melodies that appear to be simple and folk-like, almost as if you’d heard them before, as well as lyrics that make mundane things (a church, an abandoned building, the weather) seem fraught with hidden, darker meanings. This week she announced a new LP, called A Blooming Body, coming out on July 17, and accompanied the announcement with the release of the leadoff track, “While The Womb Screams Silently.” The title refers to the film Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, about a woman being forced into a marriage, and the song, Baker writes, “is about listening to your inner knowing, which often screams loudly but is ignored for the sake of conforming.” Unlike much of her previous work, this is based not on her guitar playing but on a repeating, almost minimalist-style piano figure. This eventually picks up violin accompaniment (also Baker), and then a more expansive, almost orchestral sound, including some overdubbing of her raw, reedy vocals – an unusual touch which we hear more of in this new set of songs. “How do we know when it’s finished?” she keeps asking, until at the end she admits “at some point we just… stop.”
Arturo Sandoval Still “Sounds Good”
The iconic Cuban-American trumpeter and bandleader Arturo Sandoval has just released a new album called Sangú, an intentional malapropism of “sounds good!” – which apparently Sandoval said frequently during the recording sessions, and the title track suggests he was right to do so. The album as a whole has a horn-forward sound that seem to look back to 70s funk, and possibly even early 60s exotica. The title track “Sangú” is a seamless blend of Latin jazz and Nigerian Afrobeat, with the horns speaking the language of Tito Puente and Fela Kuti. There’s a break in the action where the Cuban guitar-like instrument known as the tres makes an appearance, and when the full band comes back in, whatever distance there is between Cuba and Nigeria seems to disappear.
The Klezmatics’s Yiddish Gospel Anthem
https://youtu.be/fz8TtVvEkXU?si=F\_TTixrlTMXg3ngo
The Klezmatics were at the forefront of the revival of klezmer music here in New York in the 80s, and from the beginning this band presented klezmer, or “Jewish soul music” as some have called it, as part of the broader cultural tapestry of the city. So jazz, rock, psychedelia, Latin music and protest songs have been part of the Klezmatics’ musical language. Their new album is called We Were Made For These Times, which seems like a rejoinder to Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys classic “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”; and its languages include Yiddish, Spanish, and English. These are songs that acknowledge dark times but insist on powering through. Guests include Argentine singer Sofia Rei, Colombian ensemble La Manga, the Crimean guitarist Enver Ismailov, and on a couple of key songs, Joshua Nelson and the Lavender Light Gospel Choir. The title track is one of them, growing into a defiantly joyful, ecumenical song about the power of community and resistance.