Semipop Life: Let’s fly, let’s fly away

Azuka Moweta, XG, Thomas Anderson, Hemlocke Springs, and more!

Azuka Moweta and His Anioma Brothers Band of Africa: Kenechukwu

An improvement on the excellent Nwanne Bu Ife and the unnoticed-by-everyone (including me) Ekobe Global, and the most fulfilled album of the current Colombian-bankrolled highlife revival. Despite a lineup expanded to include a backing chorus and a horn section, there’s no change to the basic structure—get in a groove, decorate it with Igbo-Ekobe percussion, stay there for seven minutes or so—and no hint of Afrobeat(s). But the grooves themselves are more interesting, starting with the haunting minor melody of “Uwa Bu Onye Zusia”. The title track follows with a subtle (!) treble keyboard over the twin guitar interplay. Moweta’s a prepossessing singer, and his backing chorus has the volume to compete with him over who can praise the Creator louder. “Izu Nwanne Ka” mixes dinky keyb arpeggios with an instrument I can’t identify (it’s all over Ekobe Global as well) keeping up the highlife tradition of not worrying about Western standards of being in tune. Shiny guitar tones and Mikky’s blunted trumpet combine particularly pleasingly while Moweta shouts out Bogotá on “Ndi Di Mma”. The guitar might be even better on the instrumental “Ogalanya Sound System”, with vibrato coming on and off and the same high note hit down the middle again and again. Timeless, yet very clear about location.

Grade: A (“Ndi Di Mma”, “Kenechukwu”, “Ogalanya Sound System”)

XG: The Core

The initialism of this English-language Korea-based J-pop group that’s had some success in East Asia (and New Zealand) used to stand for Xtraordinary Girls until member Cocona came out as transmasc nonbinary—which the rest of the group appeared absolutely unperturbed by—whereupon they changed it to Xtraordinary Genes, which is ideologically worse but it’s the solidarity that counts. The effort shows in the continual improvement of their rapping: there are three credible MCs, and their lyricists give them enough to work with. On “Gala”, Cocona’s verse is one of the more thrilling pop moments of the last year; meanwhile, the girls claim “I just turned the Met Gala into an X Gala”, which beats Bezos, as long as they don’t mean that X. (I told you “Xtraordinary Genes” was worse.) On the more straightforward floor-filler “Hypnotize”, the singing’s to the fore, and you bet they have the training and production assistance to pull off fast harmonies, not to mention an Avril song, “O.R.B (Obviously Reads Bro)”—they do love those initialisms—in which Maya’s message of gender-inclusiveness is “I’m calling you girls my bradas”. A more important message: “If you don’t like it, fuck you.”

Grade: A (“Gala”, “O.R.B (Obviously Reads Bro)”, “Hypnotize”)

Thomas Anderson: Letters from the Hermit Kingdom

The title befits music turned inward even by his lo-fi standards. There are a couple of rockers—“So Long, Dummy” should please the kids longing for character pieces about sub-Edgar Bergen ventriloquists—but mainly he wants you to be alone with his thoughts. So this relies on the words, and boy are there words, some in French and Spanish (“lo siento por mi pobre español”, he apologizes), though he declines to attempt Korean on “Pyongyang Blue”. Anderson has lines for hard times: “I’m overdrawn from the bank of sleep”, begins track two’s funereal hoedown. Like most Boomers left of Hitler, he’s disappointed and somewhat apologetic about the bubble-car free future we’re stuck in; I doubt he ever got to fly the Concorde or make love to JFK, yet he mourns the Cash, Hope, and Jobs these possibilities represented. Well, there’s still hope, however ironic: in a song that starts with said Kennedy’s corpse, Anderson sings like a rejected choirboy that there are brighter days ahead, since “you can play games on your phone ’til you fall over dead”. If he can help me beat Super Meat Boy before then, my lines are open.

Grade: A MINUS (“Brighter Days”, “Did You See the Concorde Fly”, “Ciudad de Mexico”)

Hemlocke Springs: The Apple Tree Under the Sea

The portentous intro tells you who she is: a born-in-’98 who idolizes the Eighties. Since that decade’s image of glitz and sheen continues to befuddle those of us in the provinces at the time, I’m glad her stated reluctance to default to the “Phil Collins drum” has resulted in some variety (sometimes there are Prince drums!) Now that I’m used to how she sings, I hear how expressive and impressive her octave- and genre-straddling is on “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Ankles”; more so is her commitment to every line of the song. What’s absent is a commitment to a distinctive worldview. Even her soul-baring can come across as wishy-washy (“Sometimes I think I should avoid/The simpleness of filling holes with opioids”—sometimes, girl?) She steps up towards the end, culminating with the epic “Be the Girl!” (five and a half minutes is like a triple LP to TikTok), on which without solving her commitment problem, she eliminates some things she can’t be anymore while giving us an uplifting key change on the outro. You can guess which drums she used on that one.

Grade: A MINUS (“Be the Girl!”, “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Ankles”, “Set Me Free”)

Zanja All Stars: Cuban Jam Session Volume 2

A large group led by trumpeter Julito Padrón, who’s played with everyone from the Septeto Nacional to Irakere to various Buena Vista configurations, explores Cuban music, jazz, and their substantial intersection on these 2017 sessions unreleased until December. From the opening “Cabe E”, the accumulated skill is apparent, with excellent sax and piano overpowered by María Victoria Rodríguez, the pick of an impressive vocal rotation. The rhythm players, featuring among others Los Van Van’s late timbalist Changuito, are just as adept. “Palo Mayimbe”, recorded by Celia Cruz in the ’50s, is a highlight, emphasizing the Afro side of Afro-Cuban while permitting brass flourishes. “Melódia Oriental”, a Peruchín comp with a catchy if not very oriental descent, features fine solo work from pianist Rolando Luna and some good guitar. There are Cannonball Adderley and Gil Evans heads, but I find the group more valuable trying out son variants like “Puntéame Bien El Tres”, on which the rhythm section really seduces. To finish, “Vandalo” takes on what I think is Angolan semba, showing which way their space-time cone is pointed.

Grade: A MINUS (“Melodía Oriental”, “Palo Mayimbe”, “Cabo E”)

Jason Moran x Trondheim Jazz Orchestra: Go to Your North

All the big Nordijazz names are here: Eirik Hegdal! Josefin Runsteen! Hans Hulbækmo! Getting his name on the cover is Ole Morten Vågan, who adapts Moran’s compositions—plus Jaki Byard’s “Out Front”, plus a Brahms intermezzo—for a group of fourteen. Wit abounds; on the opening “Foot Under Foot”, Vågan’s bass makes then turn on a Eurodime, with saxes of all sizes filling the spectrum before parting for Moran to tinkle. “Spoken in Two” sets off more patiently, with vocalizer Sofia Jernberg coloring the descending patterns and Hegdal providing superfluous beauty on soprano. The album flits between these poles, on balance leaning towards medium-sparse, letting small subsets express themselves on each track—the strings on “Wind”, the winds plus electrotrickery on the “Ringing My Phone” trilogy. The long “Skitter In” features a low-register honkfest before Jernberg’s ululations take over (it’s her culture, or one of them.) Moran quotes Toni Morrison, but Black-is-a-rainbow is better illustrated when Moran and Jernberg redecorate the aforementioned Brahms. Peder Simonsen’s tuba shows he, for one, has understood.

Grade: A MINUS (“Foot Under Foot”, “Spoken in Two”, “Internezzo Op. 118 No. 2”)

Buck 65: Do Not Bend

The opener, “Effectively Wild”, reconstitutes and distorts the “Good Times” bassline to signal $1.65’s unfinished business with old school (no, Zoomers, that doesn’t mean $0.50.) Kristi Yamaguchi’s there too, for a similar reason and also for her triple lutz-triple trochee combination. After a brief campaign in the Kingdom of Low-End, Mr. CLXV returns to his Kingdom of Drums, substituting some adept beatboxing on the Biz Markie tribute. The rhyming, full of four-syllablers (“primitive sports”/“gives a report”/“Elizabeth Short”) and even fivers where as soon as you hear “he ate a cactus” you await the A-Team’s arrival, is as deft as the proprietary drum breaks, and he includes a punk waltz and the hyphen in Pee-Wee Herman’s phone number as cross-training. One could kvetch the words are just rhymes, rather than explorations of the human condition or baseball, unless I’m missing something. But if you want hits and no power, go first-ballot Joe Mauer. Oh wait, that’s a baseball one.

Grade: A MINUS (“The Buggedest”, “I Was Right All Along”, “Punk Gun”)

Saly Kouyaté: Mali Kelen

For those keeping track of griot lineages, this strong-voiced Kouyaté is Bassekou’s niece. “Ayan Dèmè” is one of several cuts on which she does the middle-aged Youssou trick of settling into a lower register that’s punctuated with a startling run up an octave or two. She can also dial things back and focus on rhythmic support of other Kouyatés, including prominently her father Andra, whose ngoni supplies competing virtuosity. They wrote the songs together; subjects, laid out on Bandcamp, include tolerance, marital fidelity, and motherhood as a gift. “Dounougna” (“Life moves through phases of speed and slowness, like the pace of a horse and that of a chameleon”) has the most interesting arrangement, with a harmonized intro followed by plenty of djembé. There’s a rap-reggae thing and quite a few guitar solos; she’s young enough that I don’t hold it against her. She has the talent for the international stage; if anything, she should show off more.

Grade: B PLUS (“Ayan Dèmè”, “Dounougna”, “Mandé Foli”)

Meg Okura Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble: Isaiah

Okura’s a Japanese-born conservatory-trained violinist (and erhuist) turned New York Jew, with a Substack of course. Her life history has resulted in impressive chops, displaying in a dazzling multistop passage on “Jubberish”. More often she stays lyrical, trusting her group for texture. The ensemble, ten pieces plus guests including Randy Brecker and Okura’s husband Sam Newsome, emphasizes treble and midrange melody while keeping the rhythm nimble. The playful “Rice Country”, written at Aaron Copland’s upstate house, recalls also Charles Ives’s methodology in its explicit borrowings from Yankee kidsong and “Take the A Train”, though if the main tune sounds more like “Loch Lomond” until pianist Brian Marsella takes it to the edges of the keyboard. The album’s back half is built around an adaptation of her mentor Michael Brecker’s “African Skies”, and if neither Asia nor Africa come through as clearly as America, that’s the nature of gumbo.

Grade: B PLUS (“Rice Country”, “Isaiah”, “Jubberish”)

Weed420: Esto no es un show

Both Chuck Eddy and Rate Your Music have given consistent praise to Venezuela’s worst-named electro-psych collage ensemble—can they both be wrong? Not completely: Weed420 (I feel dumb just typing that) innovate at coming up with noises no one’s hitherto thought to call music, and their “put it all in there” approach on this “live” hour introduces any number of high-low clashes which, since it’s the 2020s, never resolve. When “La guerra de los sexos” threatens to approach the sweep of Los Thuthanaka, they make sure to add squeaky distractions in case you were beginning to think their music could be used for something. The tracks are one swap from being in increasing order of length; you might be tempted to tap out once the 17-minute one settles, but you’d miss the mere 14-minute finale on which Juan Zamora adds ear-warping guitar. Musicianship: even the meme kids still appreciate it.

Grade: B PLUS (“La guerra de los sexos”, “Camisa ovjita blanca”, “Fotos varias”)