VINYL OF THE MONTH
London Afrobeat Collective Esengo (Canopy)
For the past almost two years, Maggie Rogers has taken an unexpectedly special place in my heart and musical tastes. Upon reviewing her previous album, Surrender, because of the difference in style and sound to my usual tastes I was caught completely off guard.
Combined with just as unforeseen changes in my personal life, Surrender was an unfounded delight that chimed completely at that point in time. Now it’s not just an album, but a time capsule of those summer months of 2022.
Perfecting Ernest Hemingway’s advice that “a writer should create living people; people not characters”, In Lieu of Flowers sees Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties’ Dan Campbell invite fans back into the fictional universe of open-wound Aaron in a way that is so intimate and descriptive, you can’t help but hurt for him.
There are few ways of describing the music of The Dead South – progressive bluegrass is my favourite because it's so meaningless to so many. By which I mean it doesn't matter what the genre, it's just good music, and that's all you need to know.
Having carried herself to the front rank of young British singer-songwriters with her debut album, 2021’s The Eternal Rocks Beneath, Birmingham-born Katherine Priddy carries her muse from the eternal and mythological poetry of that album for a more centered, experiential sense of time as captured in the back and forth rhythms of The Pendulum Swing.
Critically acclaimed in the US, singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz has won four Grammies during the course of her career. Born in Texas, spending most of her adult life in New York, her seventh album was created in her new hometown of Nashville, with an all-star cast of country-flavoured session musicians and producer Daniel Tashian.
Native Sons joyfully reframed musical styles of the past for the present. Even so, the freshness and oomph of The Long Ryders’ debut album meant revivalism was sidestepped. Originally issued in October 1984, it was a landmark in helping to nurture what would later be habitually defined as Americana. The word had been around, but Native Sons was pivotal to it gaining traction.
With this her third album, Bronx-born-singer-songwriter Lizzie No promises “an apocalyptic journey from exile to liberation” – a bold promise. Halfsies is certainly an album of musical contrasts: on the one hand the freneticism of “Getaway Car” or “Lagunitas”, on the other the gentle, delicate beauty of “Mourning Dove Waltz” or “The Heartbreak Store”.
From folk to rock and back again, this is a beguiling album that’s tough and tender and full of sly humour. Listening to it, you can see why the audience at last year’s Celtic Connections was won over.
It is no surprise that the phrase “Witch Hunt” is Donald Trump’s favoured term to describe his legal travails. Leaving aside its connotations of a malevolent state going after an innocent victim whilst in the throes of a self-serving moral panic, it plays into a founding psychodrama of the USA - the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
My CD player died some time ago, that is to say it sticks or skips whatever I do to clean it. Dismantling the fancy stack in which it sits and installing a replacement is a hassle, but even so it would once have been unthinkable that I could survive without a CD player. I still have a deck, and vinyl, and my computer has pretty good speakers. Even so the fact that I’ve not replaced it must say something about my interest, or lack of, in new releases, though exploring on Spotify sometimes throws up something new and exciting.