Blood Harmony Vol. 14: Fall Mix 2021
Hello and Happy Fall! Let’s listen to some music! Yes, I recently learned how to embed things!
Starlight by Yola, Stand for Myself, Easy Eye Sound, 2021.
I’m going to let Pitchfork take this one and quote Maura Johnson’s review of the album: “The Bristol-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s second album isn’t defined by genre as much as it is by Yola’s indomitable spirit.” Agreed!
Temple by Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, Temple, Ribbon Music, 2020.
This band just broke up! This saddens me. Temple is a very cool album and this is a moving track about Thao’s mom, Nhan, a Vietnamese refugee who came to the States in the early 1970s.
I lost my city in the light of day
Thick smoke
Helicopter blades
Heaven and earth I've never moved so fast
You'll never know the fear your mama has
I know your father can't call anymore
He never meant to be a man of war
But we found freedom what will you do now
Bury the burden baby make us proudSynthmania Rock by Georgia Anne Muldrow, VWETO III, FORESEEN Entertainment, 2021.
Georgia Anne Muldrow is a genius. This song gives me major Herbie Hancock vibes. Here she is: “VWETO III is intended for movement. It’s to be played when you birth yourself back outside after a long introspective period to get the things you need. It intends for you to be your own superhero and wants to be your theme for power.”
Point and Kill by Little Simz and Obongjayar, Sometimes I Might Be An Introvert, AGE101 Music, 2021.
Little Simz is a brilliant British-Nigerian rapper and this album kicks ass. She pairs up with Nigerian artist Obongjayar on this track. It’s amazing.
Donne Moi by KOKOKO!, KOKOKO!, Transgressive Records, 2021.
Direct from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it’s the KOKOKO! collective. They call their sound “tekno kintueni” or “zagué” in Lingala, the lingua franca of the DRC, a sound they say is inspired by the everyday sounds around town. I believe “Donne Moi” means “give me” in French.
Boomerang by Yebba, Dawn, RCA Records, 2021.
Straight out of Arkansas, it’s a wonderful debut album by a singer who’s been around for a few years, singing with A Tribe Called Quest and Drake. Her name is “Abbey” spelled backwards. Mark Ronson produced this album. Yebba and Ronson’s mutual obsession with D’Angelo’s Voodoo led them to recruit a bunch of the musicians who worked on it. The album takes its name from the singer’s mom who committed suicide 2016. In Sheldon Pearce’s review for the New Yorker, he states “Her debut album…named for both her mom and a symbol of a new beginning, probes the hurt of being left behind and the release of finding a path forward through music.”
Sho Nuff by Leon Bridges, Gold Diggers Sound, Columbia Records, 2021.
This is straight up baby-making music from Texas soul/R&B singer Bridges.
Stay Alive by Mustafa, When Smoke Rises, Regent Park Songs, 2021.
Mustafa is a Toronto-based poet, filmmaker, activist and singer. When Smoke Rises is his first full-length album as a solo artist (he was formerly a member of the rap collective Halal Gang). This is a beautiful and heartbreaking song about loss and grief. From the Rolling Stone review by Mankaprr Conteh:
The more you listen to Mustafa, you begin to realize that the juxtaposition of the gritty street life he depicts and the gentle music he makes shouldn’t be much of a juxtaposition at all. Half of the singer-songwriter’s debut project, When Smoke Rises, has been released as singles, with music videos capturing the brick and concrete exteriors of Toronto’s Regent Park housing project, where he was born and raised. In the video for “Stay Alive,” a searing portrait of his community and his commitment to it, black and brown men in chains and hoodies make elaborate hand gestures to the camera as Mustafa pleads for their survival. He offers himself to them to ensure it. “Just put down that bottle, tell me your sorrows,” he sings. “I care about you fam.” His folk-inflected music, tender and calm, and these videos, serene and defiant, honor his neighborhood with the softness so often absent in attitudes and policy towards poor people.
good wife by Kacey Musgraves, star-crossed, UMG Recordings, 2021.
Kacey Musgraves’s last album, Slow Burn, was a beautiful document of a new relationship full of love and excitement. star-crossed is a very good album about the end of that relationship. “good wife” is many things at once: an accounting of the emotional labor of a long-term relationship, a lament/recognition that it’s ending, a prayer to somehow be able to save it and a catchy tune.
Like I Used To by Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olson, Single, Jagjaguwar, 2021.
Van Etten and Olson turn on their inner Springsteen(s) and let it rock. Turn it up!
Other Things:
I went to a concert last week! It was AWESOME. I saw Cimafunk, an AfroCuban funk band. There were five percussionists, 2 guitarists, an incredibly charismatic lead singer and two ladies who were both the background singers and the horn section (trombone and sax). It was the last night on their U.S. tour and they were incredible. At one point, everyone save one percussionist stopped playing so the rest of the band could do a Motown shuffle together which ended in the horn section having a solo-off while one of the percussionists did the running man and the lead singer scatted over the whole thing like Louis Armstrong. I learned the Spanish term for encore (otra!). If they come to your town, run don’t walk to get tickets.