This week, a historic Broadway cast record, a reimagined gospel favorite, and “Proxy Music.” Plus, Colombian band Meridian Brothers, and outsider country from Orville Peck.
Fleetwood Mac Stereophonic Cast Album Released
Stereophonic is the Broadway play (a “play with music” rather than a musical) that recently made history when it received an unprecedented 13 Tony nominations, and its original cast album has just come out. The play follows a band making a record in the mid 1970s while trying not to implode. Anyone who was alive in the 70s, or knows someone who was, will immediately think of Fleetwood Mac and their fraught recording of the all-conquering Rumours– this despite playwright David Adjmi’s insistence that he was inspired by Led Zeppelin and other bands of the era. The songs that the band plays (live on the stage’s recording studio set) are by Will Butler, formerly of the Grammy-winning indie rock band Arcade Fire, and his songs give the game away: if there was a missing Fleetwood Mac album from that period, this would be what it sounded like. Opening track “Seven Roads” is a good case in point: Sarah Pidgeon and Tom Pecinka clearly evoke the singing of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and the clean electric guitar lines sound like Buckingham as well. Chris Stack plays Simon, the band’s drummer, and “Simon” has the same uncluttered, minimalist approach to drumming that Mick Fleetwood used to such great, if underappreciated, effect in his band. With Arcade Fire, Will Butler was part of a group that splashed big, bright emotional colors on the canvas; here, he’s toned things down just enough to make a series of convincing 70s pop-rock songs while still packing an expressive punch.
Davone Tines Offers A Stunning Version of “Let It Shine”
Most Americans know the song “Let It Shine,” also known as “This Little Light Of Mine.” It’s usually performed as a jubilant, uptempo piece of gospel music. But the version recorded by the great Paul Robeson in 1962 is slower, more considered – a prayer rather than a celebration. Now, Davone Tines has released a version of the song as the first single from his upcoming album, called simply Robeson. Credited to Davone Tines & The Truth (pianist John Bitoy and sound artist Khari Lucas), this version has the feel of a work song – its drumbeat a slow and steady thud, its implication that joy and community don’t just happen. Tines, a member of AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), is a singer of astonishing range and repertoire – he’s been starring in the Met Opera’s new production of John Adams’s El Nino, has recorded a simply wonderful version of Julius Eastman’s “Our Father,” and has put together a show that uses the structure of the Latin mass as a scaffold for songs about the Black experience. As this “Let It Shine” progresses, it adds more voices, and handclaps, and Tines begins to show off his remarkable ability to soar into heights that a so-called “bass-baritone” simply has no business being in.
Tines and company will premiere the Robeson project at New York’s Little Island from June 27 to 29; the album’s release date has yet to be announced.
Rufus Wainwright Sings For Linda Thompson
For years, the British folk singer and songwriter Linda Thompson has struggled with dysphonia, which has kept her from singing for long stretches of time. But she has continued writing songs, and on June 21st she will release a new album in which she taps various members of her musical family, friends, and colleagues to handle the vocal chores. It’s called Proxy Music, and just as brilliant as that title is the cover art, a parody of the cover of the first Roxy Music record with Linda Thompson’s face on the model’s body. The new single from the project is “Darling This Will Never Do,” sung by Rufus Wainwright. This tale of a May-December romance features one part of the couple telling the other “I knew your mother, your father too/darling this’ll never do.” (The genders aren’t clear, and Wainwright’s soft, high vocals aren’t giving anything away.) Little details like “in September, come what May…” show that Thompson’s songwriting chops are undiminished. With backing from some of New York’s downtown jazz veterans, the song sounds like it could’ve been written 80 or 90 years ago.
More Musical Misdirection From Meridian Brothers
Meridian Brothers is a Colombian band that delights in faking out its listeners. There are no brothers, and nobody named Meridian, in the group; their last album, they said, was a collection of covers from a long-lost salsa band. They were in fact new songs by Eblis Alvarez, who IS Meridian Brothers, although he puts a band together for live performances. Now we get the first single from the band’s next album, and it looks back to the mid-20th-century Congolese pop style known as soukous. The song is called “En el Caribe estoy triste” – in the Caribbean, I am sad. Although with its pointillist guitars and narcotized vocals, it doesn’t appear to be a particularly sad song.
Meridian Brothers will play at Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park on Friday, July 19.
Orville Peck Releases A Set of Duets
Country music outsider, gay icon, and masked musician Orville Peck is back, with a record called Stampede, Vol. 1, a set of duets with guests that range from Willie Nelson, 91, to Bu Cuaron, 20. The song “Chemical Sunset” is a duet with Allison Russell, a trudging parade over which a Dixieland-jazz session breaks out halfway through. For most of the song, the two singers, both with their distinctive voices, offer various ways of dealing with a world on fire, which basically boils down to the line “come and see me baby, it’s the end of days.”