Twelve New and Upcoming Records Worth Your Time

I go hunting once again for new and upcoming music I think you'll love

The most daunting yet rewarding pieces I write for Listening Sessions are my periodic round-ups of new and upcoming albums I think you will enjoy. I attack the work with zeal. So far this year, I have listened to over 325 albums of new music. For the below essay recommending 12 of them, I auditioned approximately 100 records. I think I’ve found something for just about everyone and I hope you will let me know what your favourites are by dropping a comment.

Next up is an essay I’ve wanted to write for about two years. It’s a counterpoint to something I wrote in the very early days of Listening Sessions: a celebration of the records Elvis Presley made in Nashville from 1960 to 1964 (read it here). It will be a look at the records Elvis made for his movies during the same time. This music is the most potent example, I think, of the compromises that the singer made throughout the career; in a sense, they represent the greatest betrayal of Elvis’ promise. But while some of the movie music from this period is not great, the ratio of good to bad is not as wide as many would believe (the gulf became far more marked as the sixties progressed). While my thoughts on this music are no doubt skewed by the fact that it’s some of the earliest music I was exposed to, I will wrestle with it honestly and resist simple conclusions to come up with what I hope will be a thoroughly unique essay.

I will be spending a little more time on it than I typically do here so I'll next be in touch in two weeks on August 2 as opposed to the usual ten days. Until then, may good listening be with you all!

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Twelve New and Upcoming Records Worth Your Time
By: Robert C. Gilbert

It’s been about two months since I’ve done a round-up of new and upcoming albums that have caught my fancy, and that I’d like to share with you. Even though it is summertime (and not always happily for me, the novelty of hot, humid weather quickly wears thin), the listening has not exactly been easy. Voracious is more like it. Since my last round-up (read it here as well as my other new-music dispatches of the year here and here), I’ve listened to about 100 new albums in order to try to find the most interesting and thrilling to recommend to you. Here are the 12 that really stood out.

Bluegrass bassist Shelby Means’ self-titled debut (Shelby Means Bluegrass) as a solo performer, out since the end of May, is one of several albums I would choose to soundtrack this year’s summer. There is a family feel to the recording, not only in terms of the nostalgia of the sweet ‘5 String Wake-Up Call’ for example, but also in its sound which approximates everyone joining in, either with an instrument or voice or both, in harmonious accord. Other delights, such as the gender bend of the infectious ‘Farm Girl’ and more meditative fare like ‘Fisherman’s Daughter,’ ‘Elephant at the Zoo’ and the concluding ‘Joy’ make Shelby Means, both the artist and the album, someone and something I am glad to be acquainted with. I expect you may feel the same.

Another album for this summer, but far different in feel, is the newest from HAIM, I quit (Columbia). This is the sound of summer in the city, living independently and not giving a fig what the herd thinks. There are paeans to being unattached (‘Relationships’) and marching to the beat of your own drummer (‘Gone’). That resonates, if not specifically but generally, in how the Haim sisters are unapologetically themselves. The music is almost always danceable—dig the groove on ‘Lucky Stars’—pulsing with a kind of desperation that often is only felt amid the heat of July. I quit is addictive listening.

But, summer is also a time of easing off the accelerator of life. If it’s not time for a vacation, it’s at least time to sit outside and read or play cards or observe the night sky around a fire. I think that’s why I have been mildly obsessed over the last little while with collecting the records of harpist Mary Lattimore. I have five so far, including her collaboration from last year with accordionist Walt McClements, Rain on the Road, full of cyclical motions of sound. In April, McClements released his latest, On a Painted Ocean (Western Vinyl) and it similarly bathes the listener in beautiful sound. There’s a particular sonority to the accordion, far away from the oom-pah-pah of polka, that McClements teases out of the instrument that is both relaxing and a portal for dreaming. I find today’s experimental ambient music exciting, both in its aversion to traditional compositional form and in its quest to find quiet in an environment increasingly surrounded by noise.

One would not include organist Anna Lapwood among the artists in the contemporary ambient scene, but her sophomore album, Firedove (Sony Classical), released at the end of May, has the same sense of spaciousness. Recorded over one night at Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, the album is often very quiet. I had to, on occasion, strain my ears in order to hear the music. That effort adds to its spectral quality. Melodies seem to appear out of thin air and even as the repertoire veers way outside of the classical repertoire—there’s works here by Alan Menken, Hans Zimmer, Robbie Williams and Bob Dylan—Firedove is a dreamy, often miraculous listen. A bonus is a guest appearance by saxophonist Jess Gillam on Rachel Portman’s ‘Flight.’

Similarly spectral is Chicago singer-songwriter Jessica Risker’s long-awaited new recording, Calendar Year (Island House Recordings), arriving on August 1. Here, the feel is layered psychedelia with an acid-folk foundation. Risker’s voice is light and haunting—dreamy too—and rests easy against the album’s floating soundscapes. Intimate songs like ‘RHOJP (Real Housewives of Jefferson Park)’ and ‘Diamonds in the Snow’ with a wonderful flute part played by Marie Jacobson balance against the ambitious ‘City Hours’ with its throbbing beat that vanishes into a layered resolution full of synths and strings. Comparison of Risker to both Jessica Pratt and Jennifer Castle are apt. On ‘He’s Gone,’ with its strings that sound like a mellotron, there is a trace of the Moody Blues in their late sixties glory.

Calendar Year is the kind of recording that doesn’t merely seek to replicate the wonders of days gone by. It advances them. I hope it gets some notice once it is released.

I had initially been hipped to Risker (in addition to being a musician, she is a licensed therapist and hosts a podcast dedicated to music therapy) after she subscribed to my Substack (thank you, Jessica!). Soon after, her publicist got in touch with me about her new album (thanks as well, Colin!). For getting acquainted with Phabies, a group based out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, I have Kevin Alexander’s interview with the group’s leader, Laura Hobson, in his invaluable Substack, On Record, to thank. With Dobson, the group’s lead vocalist and songwriter as well as guitarist and keyboardist, in Phabies is Andrew Deters on guitar, Max McKinnon on keyboards, Garrett Stier on bass and vocals, and Joshua Halicki on drums.

Their latest album, The Curse of Caring (self-released), which came out in mid-June, is full of indie pop of the highest craft. The hooks of ‘I Care for You,’ especially on the chorus, find a counterweight with the more reflective ‘Green Cement’ and the blend of Dobson’s voice—an assured instrument that digs into the beat like Linda Ronstadt in her prime—with Steir’s—deeper and resonant. The Curse of Caring is an album I like more with each listen.

The urge to check out the new album by Madison McFerrin came from a recent piece by the esteemed Nelson George (read it here). SCORPIO (Mad McFerrin Music) has been out since the end of June. Within a compact 36 minutes, it ranges over a lot of territory. At the centre is the kind of soul that remains resilient—the lineage of Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway to Minnie Riperton and Erykah Badu and the Soulquarians and beyond. On the margins are the jazz harmonics of ‘Heartbreak,’ the indie pop meets James Brown funk of ‘Spent’ and the weightlessness of ‘Lesser.’ It all confirms that McFerrin is that most daring kind of artist: the synthesist. She takes it all in and blends it into her own.

Vocalist Allan Harris is someone I hadn’t heard of until his new album, The Poetry of Jazz: Live at Blue LLama (Blue LLama Recordings), just out on July 11, came across my desk. That’s not surprising these days, sadly. There’s an undercurrent of music being made all around us yet not heard. Harris’ approach as a singer: full of warmth, gentle yet rich, is well suited for both song and poem of which this recording, live from the Blue LLama club in Ann Arbor, Michigan, features both. Harris, who is also a guitarist and songwriter, is joined by John Di Martino on piano, Jay White on bass, Sylvia Cuenca on drums and, most interestingly, Alan Grabner on violin, who adds an exquisite touch to the group's sound.

The repertoire is a mix of the familiar: ‘Desafinado,’ ‘Charade’ and ‘The Midnight Sun,’ with originals by Harris. The verses selected are all recognizable: Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken,’ Langston Hughes’ ‘Weary Blues’ and several of Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example. The highlights of the album may be the pairing of Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ with Harris’ ‘Autumn,’ a wonderful ode to the season, and Harris moving from Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise’ to ‘Sea Line Woman.’

Ultimately, The Poetry of Live: Live at Blue LLama is introspective. Two other albums that have recently come my way are also inwardly focused. Drummer Curtis Nowosad’s I Am Doing My Best (La Reserve) is characterized by him as comprising “music for healing in an increasingly demanding world.” The album is split between expansive, funky jams powered by guitarist Andrew Renfoe and songs sung by Joanna Majoko with occasional help by Joey Landreth. It is the latter that make the biggest impression. Written by Nowosad with either Majoko or Landreth or both, they are songs of the struggle to be a better person and how that work—it is indeed work—is not borne alone. In other words, they reassure that we are all in this together.

These kind of empowering thoughts are also woven within Kind Words (self-released), just out, from jazz singer Raquel Marina, who got in touch with me earlier in the year about it. As I’ve written other times when musicians have shared their music with me, I’m glad Marina got in touch. It may take a while to get accustomed to the unadorned tone of her voice, but once it clicks, it strikes deeply with its purity. She is joined by Kae Murphy on trumpet, Julien Bradley-Combs on guitar, Reuven Grajner on piano and Chris Adriaanse on bass (on ‘My Bohemian Hour,’ my favourite on the album, vocalist Alyssa Giammaria guests). They all further that purity. Kind Words is a gentle, uplifting work.

Pure as well is guitarist Hayden Pedigo’s I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away (Mexican Summer). As cosmic as may be expected by someone who has played with Jenny Lewis and Devendra Banhart, the album’s instrumentals keep the horizon as wide and as far as the eye can see. To put it another way, Pedigo’s music is countrified John Fahey or ambient back-porch country. It’s deeply interesting and thoroughly unique.

A good chaser for it is World on Fire (Xenon), a spellbinding collection by singer and guitarist Reed Turchi, that came out on the last Friday of May. Focused on Turchi’s voice singing and guitar playing a collection of old-time blues and spiritual numbers, the album is about as direct a statement of going back to the basics as I’ve heard in a long time. It’s the culmination of a tumultuous few years in which Turchi got divorced, was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and ditched Nashville for New York. There’s no showboating or histrionics, just honest, mesmerizing musicmaking. World on Fire is likely to be enshrined as one of my favourite albums of this year.