Outsideleft Week in Music: Bar Time

James Xerxes Fussell, a careful folkie with a precise, subdued delivery who I also suspect is a bit churchy, is not the first person I'd think of to interpret the pastoral romance of fractured songbird/gay icon/avant-garde disco cellist Arthur Russell but it is beautiful and natural and the kind of thing that breeze stops to hear on its way across the pasture.  JXF's album When I'm Called is a similar wonder, so that's what I get for pigeonholing. He should do "It's Raining Men" next.

If Sarah Mary Chadwick's piano heartbreakers get any more stripped down and direct, they will be distributed by Kill Rock Stars as instructions to go fuck yourself keyed into the passenger door of your Corolla. A fella could only be so lucky. The forthcoming album from which this wisps will appear as a similar message written in lipstick on a dive bar mirror or perhaps just as tire ruts in your yard.

Oh well. Wara is a very beautiful and spare piece from Malian griot legends Trio Da Kali. In the past they've recorded with the Kronos Quartet and featured on FIFA22 which I don't know, I would hope that means they never have to work again. Although here they are kind of hard at it. Good ending too.

I Wanted Fun is the second single from Brooklyn's stellar queer femme punk band SHAGGO. What's not to love? The messed up bass guitar, the instinctive grasp of punk melody. And of course what makes them so brilliant is this is no joke. They might be a little more fun that say Big Joanie, a little less apparently likely to drift off in conversation than say, L7, and way less fun thankfully than you know that cheery SoCal pop punksters. So they have all that. And way more besides. I wanted fun, you made it weird is like a page ripped from Constance Debré's autofiction. Not even neatly torn either. This is great.

Drippy in the extreme.  Maybe it's just me, but this sort of anodyne dribble leaves me completely cold.

This review is inn recognition of their excellent band name. So many bands saddle themselves with an idiotic moniker that belies the lack of creativity and/or message. Here, they put the power in power ballad and gravy in gravitas. I hope they get a lot of money from whoever soundtracks the Avengers movies, letting Time and the Hunter echo around those plot holes and long meaningful stares.

Palindrones are an electronic music duo from London, performing what you might call Industrial Synthpop, or even a form of Punk Trance, if there is such a thing.  Like all Trance singles, it is build on a four-to-the floor beat and formulaic synth jitters and pulses. However, this doesn't stand out from any other Trance track I have heard, meaning once it had finished I would find it impossible to pick this, or Palindromes, out from the crowd.  Originality goes a long way in the music world.  Take note, pop pickers!

Elijah jamal asani's LP 'as long as I long to memorise your sky' will be out later in the year and here's the first sighting of that. Composed while he was the Grand Canyon's artist in residence no less. What you hear is what you see extending to your own horizons when in quite reflection. Here is the time and the space, Elijah suggests, to slow down and to embrace another way. There is a new rarely spoken virtue here. It is wholly beautiful.

Vicki Peterson of the Bangles is now in the enviable position of being to play music just for the love of it again. This lovely single sees her working as a duo with her partner John Cowsill. 'Come To Me' is a delicate slice of Americana, which builds up to a surprisingly muscular chorus. Peterson's voice is still a remarkably instrument, and harmonises excellently with Cowsill's. Like the other tracks on their forthcoming album Long After The Fire, it was written by John's late brothers Barry and Bill Cowsill. Keeping it in the family clearly adds to the warmth and intimacy of the recording. Lovely stuff.

Lady Wray's new single from Big Crown is the Best For Us. In title and dominion. It's a big fat stab at singing and soulplay joy. Oh Wow! Can we address past difficulties with music? I like that Lady Wray ably aided by the incomparable Leon Michels would try. With Homer Steinweiss on the drums it's a bit of cavalcade of all stars and sounds like it.

I would've immediately bought this on Bandcamp for $1 US had it actually been the cover of Toni Basil's "Mickey" it wants to be. Great video!

This came out back in January but is timeless in its Left Banke/Kinks/Belle and Sebastian understated grandeur. Spence Cullum's Coin Collection - never a more perfect band name - has been a charming travelling companion these last few years, but this Robert Wyatt cover may be his most affecting track yet.

Simply we don't feature the totally cool Anderson. Paak enough in these pages. At the height of the summer, and it is always summer somewhere this would be getting me back on the bottle and not acting my age. Such a great chunk of funk pop.

'Los Angeles - From The Ashes’ is a slightly gruelling 75 song long compilation of post-punk, alternative rock, EBM and darkwave tracks released in support of those affected by the recent fires in Los Angeles. A collaboration between several different labels, and issued via Bandcamp at a price of just $10, you can't knock them for this.  75 songs is, of course, way too much for any compilation.  Barely a third of the way into it, I was already wilting and had to stop for air.  Best to take it in steps I think!  Among the 75 participating artists are long established names such as Stabbing Westward, Red Lory Yellow Lorry, Chris Connelly, Black Nail Cabaret, Mesh, Psyclon Nine - many of whom have featured in Outsideleft previously, alongside others less familiar to me such as Dogtable and  Beborn Beton and newer acts like Night Ritualz.  It works well as a theme, if a bit of a mix, and for $10 no one can really complain.

Pianist, Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson come together again for their third LP together, Bone Bells. Revered iconoclastic modernists, Courvoisier has been hailed as “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise” by The New York Times, while Halvorson has been called “the most future-seeking guitarist working right now” by NPR.  We'd previously wow'd at Sylvie Courvoisier's Rites of Spring and Bone Bells stretches, endears and engrosses. This is lovely in its audacity.

Tim London listens to forced expat musician Inturist and considers the bigger picture, here.

Jonathan Thornton's review last week of Steve Wilson's latest album 'The Overview' prompted me to hunt this out.  Although Porcupine Tree are usually described as Prog, that term carries far too much Rick Wakeman-esque baggage.  If this is Prog, then so are Radiohead, Muse and any number of other bands that Porcupine Tree can hold their heads  up as high as. Pleased to say I did have an exclusive chat with Steven in April last year about his Bass Communion side project, at his request. 

To say that the Au Pairs were influential, a brilliant live act, with pointedly jagged lyrics and equally jagged guitar work, driven along by pulsing bass lines, is obvious.  So choosing to showcase their 1980 single of the same name is a given.  Although they split up in 1983, thankfully before they became burnt out from the effort of being angry and righteous all the time, singer Lesley Woods has since re-emerged, and Paul Foad works as a guitar tutor, helping a fresh generation to write guitar lines that could slice concrete.