"Chicha Roja" off of La Yegros' latest album "Magnetismo."; Credit: SoundwayRecords (via YouTube)
If you love new music, but you don't have the time to keep up with what's hip and new, we've got the perfect segment for you: Tuesday Reviewsday.Every week our music experts bring in their top picks, which we promise, will keep you and your musical tastes relevant. This week music journalist Steve Hochman joins host A Martinez in the studio to talk about his selections.
Artist: Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real
Album: "Something Real"
Songs: "Surprise," "Something Real"
While his dad was readying his new album of Gershwin songs, Lukas Nelson and his band were out on the road with another American musical titan — and Willie’s FarmAid co-founder — Neil Young. As you’d think, while the elder Nelson’s legacy is present (Lukas’ voice carries some of the same earthy/ethereal blend), the music here runs much closer to that of the Canadian rocker.
But younger Nelson and crew (which includes his brother Michael) bring in their own influences and perspectives for what in places is almost Southern prog-grunge — opening song "Surprise" is kind of a combo plate of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pearl Jam and Rush. That’s more of a compliment than you might think. In other places there are touches of Jimi Hendrix in stinging guitar lines, and perhaps some Black Sabbath and Cream in the charging riffs.
The title song takes more of a classic Texas boogie-rock, a little ZZ Top chug. But with third song "Set Me Down On a Cloud" there’s a country ballad root — you could easily hear it in the voice of either Willie or Neil. But in the voice of Lukas, the ache of such lines as "Set me down on a cloud with my soul turned inside out" is plenty, uh, real.
Young does, in fact, guest on one song, the closing "San Francisco" — yes, the 1967 Scott McKenzie "be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" hippie ode, here given rocked-up treatment. While that might seem incongruous, the album was recorded in San Francisco, in the William Westerfield Mansion, once home to Janis Joplin, not to mention some exiled Russian royalists in an earlier generation. Music royalty, Russian royalty, perfect for an album that rocks, uh, royally.
Artist: La Yegros
Album: "Magnetismo"
Songs: "Magnetismo," "Chicha Roja"
Mariana Yegros takes her title as "The Queen of Nu Cumbia" seriously, and really ups the ante with the combination of pulsing electric beats and Argentine folk roots on her second album, "Magnetismo." As the title implies, this is a powerful attraction of seeming opposites, brought together in a tight bond. Also an exciting one, accordion lines bounding along studily insistent bass.
Yegros lives in both Paris and Buenos Aires, with family origins in the rain forests of northeast Argentina. All of that comes into play, wound together by producer Gaby Kerpel (aka Argentine innovator King Coya). The balance always seems perfect, whether leaning more to the Euro-clubby side (the thumping title song) or to the folky side (the burbly "Chicha Roja"), never gimmicky or cheesy.
Guest spots from Argentine titan Gustavo Santaolalla (best known, perhaps, as composer of the "Brokeback Mountain" score and, recently, the "Jane the Virgin" theme music), Brazilian Girls’ Sabina Sciubba and the African band Lindingo enhance the lively sounds. All in all it’s a compelling — and fun — invitation to the thriving electo-cumbia scene, from an artist putting her own stamp on it while transcending any scene or genre. Regal.
Artist: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
Album: "The Abyssinian Mass"
Songs: "Processional: We Are On Our Way," "Recessional: The Glory Train"
Never mind what it says on the calendar, or the name of this reviews segment. Today is Sunday. And we’re going to church. Well, via Lincoln Center, home of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, directed by Wynton Marsalis. In 2008, Marsalis was commissioned to write a jazz service celebrating the bicentennial of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. Marsalis is nothing if not ambitious, and the result was a full two-hour program involving a big band, 70-member choir, guest vocal soloist Damien Sneed and a sermonizing preacher, all presenting gospel optimism, scripture (both Old and New Testaments represented), social commentary and historical/cultural sweep. Oh, and it swings.
Well, it had better. If anything could get the sometimes-stiff Marsalis to loosen up, it would be Baptist gospel. To be fair, Marsalis has long ago shed much of the formality that shackled some of his early works, without losing his respect for history and scholarly acumen for the forms. And in the course of this massive… mass, he brings in generations of lively jazz, blues and various church styles, all crafted to give the musicians and singers a platform from which to launch into bursts of unbridled spirit.
Meanwhile, the spiritual matters endemic to the work is spiked with contemporary concerns, pleas not just to look toward heaven but to move into the world with love, understanding and a will to work for change, to make heaven on Earth, if you will. A sermon by the Reverend Dr.Calvin O. Butts III , in three parts interwoven with joyous musical interludes and punctuations, is an inspiring highlight, and perhaps an antidote to the vitriol running through so much of our political discourse this election year.
As such, Marsalis’ mass slots well alongside such modern works as Leonard Bernstein’s rock-jazz-classical "Mass," Mary Lou Williams’ jazz mass and the Sophocles re-setting "The Gospel at Colonus" (which featured the Blind Boys of Alabama, not to mention the Abyssinian Baptist Church’s choir, in its original 1980s staging) for innovative and powerful renewals of the form. This 2-CD audio plus DVD documentary captures the fervor and fire of the monumental 2013 tour of the work, the bristling energy evident in every note — as roof-raising at home as it must have been in the church.
