What happens when you bring the work of two geniuses together in a Californian concert hall? This past weekend, the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall was graced with a titillating Stephen Sondheim/Andrew Lloyd Webber concert.
Whether you are a musical veteran or a novice looking for “A Little Night Music”, Pacific Symphony once again provides a delightful program. With the help of versatile veterans Scarlett Strallen, Debbie Gravitte and Hugh Panaro, “An Evening of Stephen Sondheim & Andrew Lloyd Webber” brings great show tunes to a coastal audience.
Vocalists Strallen, Gravitte, and Panaro are dynamic, charming hosts. Having been informed by the Tony Award winning Gravitte that Sondheim and Webber share a birthday, the threesome performs contrasting classics from both composers. Act One, dedicated to Stephen Sondheim, is its own variety show. Panaro, a debonair tenor with the most appearances as the Phantom, sings with equal skill the part of the little orphan boy in Sweeney Todd and of the cold yet passionate George Seurat. (These immediately following one another.) Strallen and Gravitte, both stunning and talented prima donnas, possess the same chameleon-like power. Whether it’s an operatic ballad or a high-speed piece of folly, their years of experience are plainly seen and heard.
The second act, quite obviously intended as the grand finale, is promised to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. Our vocalists, once again, show their passion for songs that they and fellow musical fans know like the backs of their hands. However, the unquestionable star of both acts is the small but mighty Pacific Symphony. Strallen, having worked with countless orchestras across the world, declared Pacific Symphony one of the best. And rightly so! Every instrument was played with passionate insistence.
The air is filled with rapture; there is the distinct impression that the arches that domed the concert hall are, themselves, smiling. Conducted by the widely and famously employed Richard Kaufman, Pacific Symphony lifts its vocalists and sets hearts to pounding with its own supplementary medleys.
Among an audience young and old, whose appreciation could be gleaned from an immediate applause, there can be no cause for unhappiness. The only complaint this reviewer can make was that she longed for more! More Sondheim songs, more Webber whimsy – but that would stipulate a three hour show. Perhaps, instead, the West Coast may favor similar celebrations in future.
We must support the local arts at every opportunity, especially those that highlight the wit and majesty of the greats. Pacific Symphony has instituted a tradition of introductory entertainment, capable of inspiring the next generation. They have expertly planted Sondheim and Webber in their community; I hope they, and more local symphonies, continue to do so.
Earl Sweatshirt, Feet of Clay: Announced just yesterday, Earl Sweatshirt has dropped a surprise album called Feet of Clay via Warner Records and Earl’s own label, Tan Cressida. Following last year’s critically acclaimed Some Rap Songs, the artist’s latest is mostly self-produced and features guest spots from Charlotte rapper MAVI and Haitian-American rapper Mach-Hommy, as well as guest production from the Alchemist and Ovrkast. “FOC is a collection of observations and feelings recorded during the death throes of a crumbling empire,” Earl explained in a statement.
A Winged Victory for the Sullen, The Undivided Five: The duo consisting of Stars of the Lid’s Adam Wiltzie and pianist Dustin O’Halloran are back with their fifth album, fittingly titled The Undivided Five, out now via Ninja Tune. Their first since their score for the 2017 film Iris, the record was inspired by many events, including the death of a close friend, the birth of Dustin O’Halloran’s first child, as well as the works of Swedish abstract artist Hilma af Klint. The album’s theme has been described as “a profound realisation of life, death, the afterlife, and the spaces in between”, while the title is also a reference to the songs being “centered around the harmonic perfect fifth”, “the five senses” and “the divine interval”, according to a statement.
Turnover, Altogether: Virginia band Turnover have released their fourth studio album, Altogether. The follow-up to 2017’s Good Nature sees the band “keep[ing] in mind the beauty of writing ‘popular music,'” Austin Getz explained in a statement. “By that I mean music for people who don’t have the time to delve into the niches and find fringe artists, music for those of us who are busy with work or our families or whatever problems might be around. Music is real magic that can change people’s days and lives, and the more people listening and loving, the better.”
Michael Kiwanuka, Kiwanuka: Originally slated for release last week, this is singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka’s sophomore LP following 2016’s critically acclaimed Love & Hate. “The last album came from an introspective place and felt like therapy, I guess,” he explains in statement. “This one is more about feeling comfortable in who I am and asking what I want to say. Like, how could I be bold and challenge myself and the listener? It is about self-acceptance in a more triumphant rather than melancholy way. It’s an album that explores what it means to be a human being today.”
“Peace will come in time,” Nick Cave repeats on the opening track of his seventeenth studio album with the Bad Seeds. If 2016’s Skeleton Tree was about dealing with grief in the immediate aftermath of the death of his teenage son, Ghosteen is about the long healing process that follows. Skeleton Tree was mostly written before the tragic incident and recorded after it, so grief hung over the album like a dark cloud. But the skies seem to have cleared on Ghosteen, and the Bad Seeds’ ethereal synths and transcendent vocal harmonies allow us to ascend to the heavens along with Cave, a sailor in a galleon ship, a “long lonely rider across the sky” searching for hope. As in Skeleton Tree, Cave still uses allegory and figurative language to deal with his own trauma — the opening track is a song about Elvis Presley, for example — but overall, he confronts his loss in a remarkably direct manner. Death is no longer a character in this era of Cave’s career, but something profoundly real. And yet it is also a spirit — what Cave calls Ghosteen — “I am within you, you are within me/ I am beside you, you are beside me,” he intones on ‘Ghosteen Speaks’. But a few tracks later reality strikes him: “I am here and you are where you are.” Sonically, the mood of the album is meditative, spare, and often serene, and it is that, if anything, that gives the listener some kind of assurance that peace will come when Cave sings the final lines of the album. It is implied that ultimately solace will arrive not in the form of some kind of metaphysical spirit but perhaps through collective grief: “For we are not alone it seems,” Cave sings on ‘Galleon Ship’: “So many riders in the sky.”
All Mirrors is without a doubt Angel Olsen’s widest project in scope, and perhaps also one of her wildest. The follow-up to 2016’s excellent and guitar-heavy My Woman finds the singer-songwriter employing more synths and a lush 12-piece string section that often gives dramatic weight to the album. But it’s obvious that at their core, these compositions are the result of deep personal introspection. Indeed, as with her previous albums, she started working on the album almost entirely alone, focusing on stripped-back songwriting. It’s only after its completion that Olsen recorded a second version of the album, with orchestral arrangements from Ben Babbitt and Jherek Bischoff. On All Mirrors, she confronts the realization that concepts of identity and romance that we reflect upon can be nothing but illusions. “How time has revealed how/ Little we know us,” she sings on ‘Spring’. Elsewhere, she confronts heartbreak with a dark sense of humour: “You just wanted to forget/ That your heart was full of shit.” Regardless of the instrumentation that surrounds her – whether it is the imposing strings on ‘Impasse’ or the quietly atmospheric, late-night-jazz melodies of ‘Endgame’, Olsen’s vocal presence is breathtakingly compelling, finding power in both intensity and vulnerability. Despite its presentation – in this version at least – All Mirrors is one of Olsen’s most personal records, and nothing short of a revelation.
Following an album as boundary-pushing and masterful as 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition is no easy feat. But certainly, no-one anticipated a rapper as left-field and cutting edge as Danny Brown to follow that up by collaborating with legendary A Tribe Called Quest producer Q-Tip, who’s known for a somewhat more accessible sound. While uknowwhatimsaying
One of the main challenges of releasing two albums in the same year is being able to differentiate between the two so that it doesn’t just feel like a double album. The fact that Big Thief have managed to follow up U.F.O.F with an almost equally strong project — one whose sonic landscape feels complementary yet unique in its own right
Eccentric singer-songwriter Richard Dawson upgrades his sound on 2020, trading in acoustic, archaic folk for a more appropriately contemporary and sometimes futuristic approach. With catchy tracks like ‘Two Halves’ and ‘Jogging’, it might have been Dawson’s most surprisingly accessible record yet, if it weren’t for the inventive experimentation that’s scattered throughout. Take the daring opener, ‘Civil Servant’, for example, which is driven by a mind-numbing chord progression that’s reminiscent of Swans circa To Be Kind, which Dawson infuses with his brand of melodic songwriting and poetically acerbic lyricism. On ‘Jogging’, thrash metal guitars coalesce with pop structures and a robotic voice repeating “jogging”, painting a dizzying portrait of anxiety. “I know I must be paranoid/ But every time I get the bus/I feel the many pairs of eyes/ Weighing up my person surreptitiously,” he sings. The songs here cleverly address the everyday struggles of the working man: one of the highlights on the album is the 10-minute ‘Fulfillment Centre’, about the terrible working conditions in an Amazon warehouse: “I am desperate for the toilet/ But if I go, I’ll miss my targets/ All I can do is pee in a bottle/ They treat us like animals here.” And yet the track ends with a line that showcases Dawson’s bitter sense of humour: “There has to be more to life than killing yourself to survive/ One day, I’m going to run my own cafe.” 2020 is a bold left-turn for Dawson that sees him going forward without losing any of the admirable qualities that put him on the map.
clipping.’s There Existed an Addiction to Blood is the Halloween-themed album you didn’t know you needed. The experimental hip-hop group have come through with a spine-chilling, blood-curdling third album, inspired by classic 70s horror movies. Rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Stipes pay homage to the tropes, imagery, and sounds of the genre while also inventively repurposing them to create something original. Lead single ‘Nothing is Safe’ perfectly sets the mood by utilizing a John Carpenter-esque instrumental as Diggs raps about cops raiding a trap house. The horror escalates on ‘He Dead’, an eerie, beatless cut with an Ed Balloon feature that twists the standard werewolf narrative to evoke real fears of police brutality and racial profiling: “Fire escape to the roof, stay low, stay low, stay low/ When they screamin’ out murder, they lookin’ for you/ They always lookin’ for you, why the fuck they always looking for you?”.
London-by-way-of-Singapore producer Nat Ćmiel delivers a refreshingly modern mix of cyber-pop, ambient, and dream pop, updating the video-game inspired sounds of Crystal Castles with a healthy dose of shoegaze. Taking her name from a Final Fantasy character, “a seeress, burdened with the power of prophecy”, yeule is, in her own words, a “multiverse entity”, a “dissociate self”. She is part of the new wave of innovative producers who creatively explore our personal relationship with the endless abyss of the internet. “Wasted in a cyber dimension/ Pour my heart into simulation/ Digital in reciprocation/ I’m staring at the screen that you live in,” she sings on the catchiest track on Serotonin II. There’s a lot of unexpected introspection here too, with Ćmiel using the persona of yeule as a means to delve into her own mental state, the depths of the digital cosmos colliding with those of her own subconscious. “She says that there are voices in her head/ She talks to them but she knows they are dead,” she sings on ‘Pocky Boy’, while on the closer ‘Veil of Darkness’, yeule employs a surprisingly chaotic wall of synths, which crumble for a moment as she sings: “When the world I live in/ Has me wounded within/ So I’ll sleep‚ oh‚ I’ll sleep.” Dreamy, nocturnal, and warm, yeule’s debut is cyber-pop with a personality.
