This week, returns for Robert Plant and Africa Express, plus Kronos Quartet leads a parade of stars in a Bob Dylan cover. Also, notable debut LPs from Disiniblud and Vines.
Robert Plant Returns with a New Band and a New LP On the Way
Robert Plant’s post-Zeppelin career has been a fascinating one, as he’s pursued musical interests that have seen him exploring folk music from the British Isles, West Africa, and the Near East, as well as his celebrated collaboration with Americana hero Alison Krauss. Now he’s announced a new album with a new group of collaborators; it’ll be called Saving Grace and comes out on September 26. It’s an album of covers, some going back to early blues by Memphis Minnie or Blind Willie Johnson, and some much more recent. Plant has long been a fan of the Minnesota duo Low and has covered their songs before, and the single, out now, from the forthcoming album is a version of that band’s “Everyone’s Song.” Low’s original is a stomping, fuzzed-out rocker, but it does have what sounds like the world’s largest Arab drum (or oil can) thumping in the background. So Plant has taken that as a license to reinvent the song as a kind of Near-Eastern-tinged flight of psychedelia, and at certain moments, like the line “tearing everyone apart,” he seems to do just that to the song – breaking it apart briefly before the band reasserts its trippy groove.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfcRe8NyFjE&list=RDtfcRe8NyFjE&start_radio=1
Kronos Quartet and A Starry Cast Cover Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
Wednesday was the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test – the first explosion of a nuclear weapon; not coincidentally, it was also the date of the Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a gathering of Nobel prize winners and nuclear scientists who wanted to sound the alarm at the possibility of nuclear war in an unstable world. They also had music on their minds, and approached the Kronos Quartet about putting together an all-star communal reworking of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Well, that’s the sort of thing that Kronos founder/violinist David Harrington has excelled at over the past fifty years, and he duly obliged, going through the group’s digital rolodex and convening Iggy Pop, Allison Russell, Willie Nelson, Indian legend Asha Bhosle, Laurie Anderson, and many others to create this epic 8-minute-plus version of Dylan’s cautionary, perhaps prophetic, song. The singers generally appear in pairs, while Kronos maintain an oscillating string quartet waltz beneath them, aided by members of Belle & Sebastian, Deerhoof, and the Patti Smith Group.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyH70zymBz4
Stars of Rock and African Pop Come Together – In Mexico
Africa Express is the community of musicians co-founded by Damon Albarn, lead singer of the Britpop band Blur, in 2006. Originally based in Mali, the project has, over the years, explored African music throughout the diaspora, but now, for the first time, the rotating cast of characters has come to North America. Africa Express presents... Bahidorá is the name of the two-record set that includes the Africa Express crew, playing their mix of traditional West African and contemporary Western instruments, the gleaming indie pop of Britain’s Django Django, indie New York scenesters like Nick Zinner and Joan As Police Woman, and Mexican luminaries like the Mexican Institute of Sound, the punk marimba band Son Rompe Pera, and the trans activist/singer Luisa Almaguer. It’s a fun, creative, energetic collection, and just before it ends, there is a wonderful cover of The Smiths song “Panic,” the song known for its phrase “hang the DJ,” which inspired an episode of the TV series Black Mirror. The Africa Express version is called “Panico (Cuelga al DJ),” and will come as no surprise to fans of Camilo Lara, who basically is the Mexican Institute of Sound, since he has produced a whole concert of Spanish-language, Mexican-themed covers of songs by The Smiths and their lead singer Morrissey.
https://open.spotify.com/track/7w4d3aTydpafZhWxIHcKdz?si=6c1d44091ad347c2
Disiniblud Is All About Transformation (And Not Getting Sued)
Rachika Nayar gained attention for her records that used her electric guitar as a sound source for her inventive computer music compositions. Nina Keith first came to our attention with her album Maranasati 19111, an electroacoustic chamber music project that incorporated uncanny sound effects and field recordings. Now, these two have formed a duo called Disiniblud – pronounced “Disney blood” although they’re not crazy enough to actually spell it that way. Their self-titled debut album is all about transformation; like other trans artists (ANOHNI in particular comes to mind), that theme has worked on both a personal and a musical level for both, and the song “It’s Change” is a fine example. It starts off as an effervescent, slightly lysergic celebration of transformation, with guest voices (including the distinctive ethereal singing of Julianna Barwick) and lots of altered sounds, before calming down somewhat and settling into an off-kilter piece of art-pop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_1q0pnLkA4&list=RDQ_1q0pnLkA4&start_radio=1
Hermanos Gutierrez Get “Elegantly Wasted” With Leon Bridges
Hermanos Gutierrez, the Ecuadorian-Swiss guitar duo of Estevan and Alejandro Gutierrez, have been making fans and influencing people with their atmospheric instrumental works that suggest the American Southwest, spaghetti westerns, David Lynch-style Americana, and occasional touches of psychedelia. But now, for the first time, they’ve released an English-language song, and since neither brother sings, they enlisted their friend Leon Bridges, the popular Texas soul/R&B singer. It’s a happy combination, since all three musicians share a love for vintage 60s/70s sounds, and the song “Elegantly Wasted,” indulges in a little classic “wah-wah” guitar and finds Bridges at his most soulful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24uC02FZBCY&list=RD24uC02FZBCY&start_radio=1
The Melancholy Grandeur of Vines
Vines is a music project from the New York composer and multi-instrumentalist Cassie Wieland. She creates atmospheric, uncategorizable songs out of layers of synthesizers, subtle percussion, occasional strings, and her own voice, usually electronically processed. Wieland unveiled her Vines project in 2023 with an EP called “Birthday Party,” a collection of moody, intimate songs that was no one’s idea of party music. Now she’s released the first Vines LP, called I’ll be here, and it too is full of darkly compelling, haunted songs, like this one called “Evicted.” The lyrics are short and simple: “Am I getting sick, Or am I over it/Am I being born, Or just evicted.” But as Wieland’s slightly altered vocals repeat those lines, the keyboard accompaniment grows to include the mournful trudge of drums, fragmentary piano, and a sweeping, post-rock finale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPc-hb2LC1w&list=RDtPc-hb2LC1w&start_radio=1