Liz Hogg, Liz Hogg

by Raquel Pinheiro

Liz Hogg is American guitar player and composer Liz Hogg's first album. It was recorded between 2009 and 2018. Its ten songs are, at first, simple and straightforward. As one listens to them over and over again, a multitude of layers appears. Small filaments that drive and connect the ideas started by Liz, most of them as kernels, later turned into a fully constructed, complex song.

The album songs were recorded in succession with Liz using every instrument and piece of equipment she owns to manufacture them, ranging from ten guitars (electrical and acoustic), six different types of keyboards, an assortment of pedals and amps, a cello, maracas and even a sitar.

All those instruments and equipment are merged into an external shell, rendering it almost impossibles to realize each song took so many different things to come to be. There are odd sounds, trepidation, moments of relative or complete peace, haunting vocals and a general sense of strangeness.

Liz Hogg, the album, displays a set of songs ranging from beauty with dashes of frantic, Ridge, to more quiet and conventional All Concealment Is Treachery. Monastery is a mostly instrumental piece of experimentalism with vocal background murmurs used as one more instrument.

This Is Trash has cool breaks, Sexy Fisherman starts and ends as catchy and happy and turns more linear and somber in the middle, I.L.M., has diverse ambiences, tones and changes probably making it the most strange song of the album, while Forgive Me is another mostly standard song.

Liz Hogg is an interesting album full of contrasts, changing moods, often in the same song. It is filled with a compelling spectrum of sounds and vocals that make it a fascinating intricacy of possibilities.

(Mouca, 2018)

Francisco Oliveira - On The Act Of Reminding

by Raquel Pinheiro

On The Act Of Reminding is Francisco Oliveira’s debut solo record. Oliveira is a member of Terebentina, Holoscene 85' and Deepbreathers. This record couldn’t be further from Terebentina’s in your face tumultuous, assaulting chaos of sudden stops and frantic noisy delirious emotions. Although it is closer to some of Holoscene 85’ works, but in a stripped down fashion.

Magical simplicity at its best is what is on offer in On The Act Of Reminding. The album was recorded and produced by Francisco Oliveira that mostly used an old upright piano from his grandmother’s house that has not been played or tuned in over 20 years. Its five instrumental themes are ethereal, evoking northern mystical forests, placid streams and the wilderness.

However, those are not Francisco’s evocations/memories. To him, the old piano recalls his cousins, uncles and his grandmother. To me, the piano also has family connotations: the music room of the house of one of my maternal grandmother’s cousins by the sea, with its two upright pianos – tuned and much played, and the room’s view into a magnificent garden.

Autumnal beauty could describe On The Act Of Reminding even if it was released in July. It is a timeless and seasonless record, in which the untuned piano is used sparsely and with restrain, at times with the same key(s) looped to construct precious musical gems that Luiza Lima’s violin subtly punctuates or exalts. All five themes, numbered /1 to /5 are enchanted, making it hard to pick favourites. /3 more rich tones and fullness and /4 mechanical/industrial penchant stand out, but my absolute preference goes to /5 classic gentle beauty.   

(Edições Fauve, 2018)

John Coltrane - Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album

by Raquel Pinheiro

How come a fifty five years old, previously unreleased album, is better than pretty much everything being currently released? And that is to say a lot. There has been no shortage of excellent, some even great jazz records, as well as of any other genre of late.
The simply answer may be there is only one John Coltrane and the musicians of his Classic Quartet -  Jimmy Garrison (double bass), Elvin Jones (drums), McCoy Tyner (piano) were amazing, if not extraordinary, ones.

Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album story is the stuff of tales and myths. Forever thought lost, the master tape was destroyed by Impulse Recordings because they needed storage space. Coltrane had given his wife, Juanita Naima, a recording of the tracks. For years, those too were missing. Until her family found them and gave them back to Impulse. The tapes were in good enough state, and, this time, the album was released.

Recorded March 6, 1963 at Van Gelder Studios, New Jersey, Both Directions At Once is exactly that. There are two directions in the record, one towards what was (or is) and one towards what is to come. The songs are superb, from Impressions to Untitled Original 11386 to Slow Blues or Villa, it is rather difficult, if not impossible, to single out one. Having to, I would say Original 11386 gets to be it. There is something in its breaks, freeness, melody, and general groove that make shine even brighter than all the other brilliant pieces in the album.

(Impulse Recordings)

Father John Misty – God’s Favourite Costumer

by Raquel Pinheiro

Father John Misty’s fourth album, God’s Favourite Costumer sees Josh Tillman carefully crafting ten songs full of self-deprecation, wit, madness, addiction with a nod to religious themes.

The former Fleet Foxes drummer captures his struggles with mental illness drugs and alcool, highlited in Mr. Tillman “And oh, just a reminder about our policy/Don’t leave your mattress in the rain if you sleep on the balcony… Mr. Tillman for the seventh time we have no knowledge of a film that is being shot/outside Those aren't extras in a movie, they're our clientele/No, they aren’t running lines and they aren’t exactly thrilled/Would you like a regalo on the patio?/ Is there someone we can call? Perhaps you shouldn’t drink alone?”in God’s Favourite Customer: “Another night on the straight/All bug-eyed and babbling/Out on the corner of 7th and A/“I’m in the business of living”/Yeah, that’s something I’d say/All I need is a new friend/I’m only five blocks away…” and also in The Palace “It’s only been three weeks and a bag of speed from Jamie the PhD/She comes by the front desk to leave my transcript with her edits”

There is also space for a broken heart to pour out its hurt as in Just Dumb Enough To Try and Please Don’t Die. God’s Favourite Costumer has a fuller, but less intricate sound than I Love You Honeybear (2015), is more grandiose than Pure Comedy (2017), the songs’ orchestration and arrangements resembling, those of Fear Fun (2012). Father John Misty, the larger than life, excessive, womanizer, always on the verge of breaking, with death and grandeur looming close character invented by Tillman shines through the small stories told in God’s Favourite Costumer (no doubt Misty, if not the best costumer of The Almighty, is certainly one of the best. One has to wonder how, after four tales of his life the man is still alive.) and merges itself with Tillman’s real persona.

Personally, God’s Favourite Costumer ranks up there with Fear Fun, making it a favourite.

God’s Favourite Costumer is released June 1. Father John Misty is currently touring Europe:

         May: 28-30: Vicar Street, Dublin (ie)

         June: 01: Primavera Sound, Barcelona (sp)

                   02: This is Not A Love Song Festival, Nimes (fr)

                   03: We Love Green Festival, Paris (fr)

                   05: Palladium, Warsaw (pl)

                   07: Primavera Sound Festival, Porto (pt)

                   08: NorthSide Festival, Aarhus (dk)

                  10: Best Kept Secret Festival, Hilvarenbeek (nl)

                  12: Sentrum Scene, Oslo (no)

                  14: Bergenfest, Bergen (no)

       

 (Bella Union/PIAS – UK/Europe; Sup Pop- rest of the world)

The Sea and Cake - Any Day

by Raquel Pinheiro

Any Day is The Sea and Cake first album in six years, written and recorded after bass player Eric Claridge left the band. Now a trio: Sam Prekop (vocals, guitar), Archer Prewitt (guitar, piano, vocals) and John McEntire (percussion, drums) - live Doug McCombs (Brokeback Eleventh Dream Day, Tortoise) plays bass.

Claridge may no longer be part of the band, but The Sea and Cake sound remains recognizable, even if in Any Day synthesizers were hardly used, guitar and organs being favoured. There is also a sunny, light, summery tone and lightness that is not always found in their albums, some of them more winter leaning.

A good example is the title track, a delicious pop song, highlighted by Paul Von Mertens’ flute and clarinet, punctuated by Nick Macri’s double-bass. Another the rosy bubble gum flavoured I Should Care. These Falling Arms, in the same vein as the title track one more piece of happy warmness. Archer Prewitt’s voice is pure delight in these three songs.

However, summer can, at times, have rainy, grey or chilly days. So does Any Day. Into Rain is like walking under gentle falling water on the seaside when the sun is setting; Occurs a misty Atlantic early morning and Paper Widown the portrait of someone watching the beach and sea because a storm broke and inside is cozy and warm.

The Sea and Cake probably never had an album that would define their name so well. Any Day has sea and cake in equal doses, making it a gentle, refined pop album splashed with ambient tones that provides a rich imagetic canvas.

The Sea and Cake play at Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisboa, on the 27th.

(Thrill Jockey, 2018)

Damien Jurado – The Horizon Just Laughed

by Raquel Pinheiro

The Horizon Just Laughed, Damien Jurado’ thirteenth album, following the trilogy composed by Maraqopa (2012), 2014 (Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son), Visions of Us On the Land (2016).

It is a less introspective, gloomy, and psychedelic album than his previous three. A more upbeat journey through the United States states and cities, with most addressed to a different woman. There is also space for writer Thomas Wolfe – Dear Thomas Wolf, Percy Faith and Ray Conniff, leaders of easy-listening orchestras and a few other characters in The Horizon Just Laughed eleven songs.

Choosing elegance, sophistication, and a dash of orchestration, without ever going too far, or allowing the songs to get lost in over- arrangements, so that is guitar and voice are always the guideline, Jurado’s manages what is probably his best album to date.

Impecable songs, pristine sound, song-writing craftsmanship at its best, and neat and clear production (in what is Jurado’s first self-production) in just under thirty five minutes of beauty, emotion, and well told, sang and played small stories make The Horizon Just Laughed a charming, enchanted album.

Filho da Mãe – Água-Má

by Raquel Pinheiro

Água-Má [another name for alforreca (jellyfish)] is Filho da Mãe’s fourth album. Like its predecessors, Palácio (Palace), Cabeça (Head) and Mergulho (Dive) it was recording in different locations. In this case between a recording studio, HAUS, in Lisboa, and Madeira, where Rui Carvalho spend a week during an artist-in-residence program working on his alter-ego’s record.  

As it is usual with Filho da Mãe, in Água-Má the guitar is a canvas, or a camera, for the images and paintings that are seen when listening to its themes. The literal translation of Água-Má is Mean Water. Couple it with a jellyfish and Madeira Islands, in the middle of the Atlantic, and it is not surprising water, and watery images of every sort, from gentle flow of streams to tumultuous waves crashing against shore, to the continuous simmering splash of a waterfall our mind and eyes.

Filho da Mãe weaves a thread of different intensities, running from the beach (Praia, the opening track), to home (Casa, the closing track), in a crescendo that, after endless adventures, ebbs with the arrival to safety. There are no voice or words or a character in Água-Má, but it wouldn’t be far-fetched to used it as a soundtrack to Ulysses’ Odyssey.

(Lovers & Lollypops, 2018)

Tasos Stamou - Musique con Créte

by Raquel Pinheiro

Greek born, London living, thirty something years old Tasos Stamou, an electroacoustic music composer and performer, and creator of alternative electronic music instruments – he likes to bend circuits and to hack hardware, and is as much at ease modifying toys or Casio keyboards. Tasos is also a researcher of ancient, traditional music.

Musique con Créte, Stamou’s new record, and his first proper composition work, he tends to release live recorded one, is the result of an artist residency of four weeks, in Heraklion, Crete, that started three years ago, with a follow up during two subsequent Summers. Tasos idea was to explore the music of this part of Greece he had not visited before, and to reconnect with some parts of his Greek heritage.

Stamou collected field recording, both in nature and urban environment, hosted studio sessions with local musicians, got tapes and records from old record shops, improvised, dismantleded traditional songs, and assembled a complex multi-layered sound collage that revisits local traditional music, coupling it with electronic and acoustic fabrics.

The result is a complex, strange, fascinating, at times minimalistic, at times folklore, other times quasi, if not fully, spiritual, palette of sounds and textures. Some instrumental, others vocalized/sang.

Some of Musique con Créte’s tracks have both a personal and ethnographic relevance, like when Tasos was invited by a friend to attend a Koura ceremony for a closed group of people and was able capture a rare Rizitiko song.

The record is a good mix of ancient, ethnographic music and concrete music methods - loops, down sampling, effects processing etc., allowing the listener to dive into, what for most is certainly an unknown musical world, that of Crete’s traditional music. The above mentioned Rizitiko, Vasiliki, Ballad of the Crippled Gipsy fall under the more traditional/ethnographic group, while A Call, The Arrival, or A Dance bring the electroacoustic and concrete music to the forefront.

(Discrepant Records, 2018)