First out of the bag this week is One Deep River, which features 12 unhurriedly elegant new songs from Mark Knopfler, and his warm Geordie vocal tone, his poetic storytelling lyrics and deft, richly melodic guitar playing are all present and correct and as dazzling as ever. One Deep River offers an unstoppable flow of future Knopfler classics, with his customarily learned lyrics and refined guitar textures. They draw on a lifetime of genre-crossing ingredients and influences in blues, folk, rock and beyond; and, as usual, they reveal their charms with unhurried grace and depth.
Blue Öyster Cult is set to captivate fans with Ghost Stories, a collection of reimagined and newly completed songs. These musical treasures, long considered ‘lost gems’ by Blue Öyster Cultists, were originally recorded between 1978 and 1983, except for one track, 2016’s ‘If I Fell’. Also included is the only known studio recording of their concert classic, the MC5 cover ‘Kick Out the Jams’. Some of the material is from sessions in which they were workshopping material for an album, some is from performance rehearsals. All were recorded in the hopes that someday they’d see the light of day.
English Teacher’s lead singer, Lily Fontaine, says of the band’s debut album, This Could Be Texas: “I want this album to feel like you’ve gone to space, and it turns out it’s almost identical to Doncaster. It’s about in-betweens, it’s about home, and it’s about Desire Paths.” In several songs, Fontaine reflects on growing up as a mixed-race individual in a place, she says, “where many didn’t have any tolerance towards people who are different” in a post-Brexit landscape.
Sometimes you have to move backwards to move forwards. Just ask punk cultural commentators Bodega, whose new album sees them carve a new future from fuzz-soaked, consumerism-skewering shards of their past. Our Brand Could Be YR Life is something the band have been wanting to do for years – a collection of catchy indie-rock ruminations, first written eight years ago, on the slow creep of corporate-think into youth culture. Our Brand Could Be YR Life’s 15 tracks explore indie-rock subgenres, self-critique and everything in between. “I think it’s our best-sounding record to date,” says Hozie, “It’s got dance-punk. There’s some shoegaze on there. There’s slacker rock on there. There’s psychedelic rock on this side as well.”
With time, we come to understand how the joy of connection is mirrored by the void of loss, how the constancy of love is matched only by the impermanence of life, the simple idea that we could not create light if we did not risk the dark – we’d never need to. So it is with Metz, a band once known for blowing out eardrums with songs of joyous rage who have, over their past few records, begun exploring ways to turn abrasiveness into atmospherics. The evolution of their sound towards Up On Gravity Hill is not only a reflection of the maturing of the band themselves but also of a changed world that demands nuance and compassion to comprehend and to survive.
Our release of the week comes from contemporary jazz icon Shabaka, who has put down the saxophone – the instrument he has become synonymous with in ensembles such as The Comet Is Coming and Sons of Kemet – in favour of the flute for his first full-length album under his own name. Expanding off his meditative 2022 EP Afrikan Culture, the album Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace is a deeply moving suite of primarily instrumental music. The listening experience is reflective and contemplative, with passages flowing from one musical concept to the next, encouraging deep attention that rewards the listener with throughlines and motifs throughout the record. Shabaka has enlisted key artists such as Andre 3000, Lianne La Havas, Moses Sumney, Floating Points and more to help build this all-encompassing aural landscape.
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