Essential Tracks This Week: Wednesday, Tom Skinner, and more
With the Labor Day weekend behind us, we’ve now officially entered the fall release season. And folks? There’s a flood of music coming. Hope you’re ready for it. And somehow, more new records continue to be announced. We’re not even sure we’re ready for it, but it’s coming, regardless. And this week, we’ve got a six pack of great new songs, including an eight-minute indie/shoegaze epic, the debut single from a dynamite jazz drummer, and some eerie autumnal drones. Dive in to the best songs of the week.
Plus, listen to our ongoing 2022 Essential Tracks playlist.
Wednesday – “Bull Believer”
Asheville, North Carolina’s Wednesday just announced their signing with Dead Oceans, which in recent years has become a powerhouse indie label with a roster of heavyweights (Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers), which puts the group in good company. And from the sounds of their first new single through Dead Oceans, “Bull Believer,” they don’t appear to be holding anything back. An eight-minute epic that essentially feels like two distinct halves of a monster whole, “Bull Believer” briefly evokes the muted melancholy of early Cat Power before erupting into a searing noise pop/shoegaze anthem big on squealing guitars and emotional catharsis. It undergoes an epic arc from there, easing back into quieter moments of reflection before erupting into a thunderous coda marked by Karly Hartzman’s yelps and screams. It’s a hell of a journey.
Out now via Dead Oceans
Beth Orton – “Fractals”
Beth Orton made our list of the most anticipated albums of the fall based on early singles like “Weather Alive,” which find the singer/songwriter exploring some more atmospheric, hypnotic spaces, with occasional forays into jazz. On “Fractals,” that includes a couple of big names in contemporary jazz—saxophonist Alabaster DePlume and drummer Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet, The Smile). This is by far the single from Weather Alive with the deepest funk, swirling and grooving into a kind of pulsing euphoria. While Orton has taken detours into intricate folk and ambient pop, she’s always been at home in the presence of a track with movement and verve, as evident from her collaborations with Chemical Brothers. And here, she delivers something that feels both animated and joyful.
From Weather Alive, out September 23 via Partisan
Tom Skinner – “Bishara”
British drummer Tom Skinner’s been having a productive year—that’s actually underselling it quite a bit. He made his debut with Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead as The Smile on A Light for Attracting Attention, performed on Alabaster DePlume’s GOLD, and played his final (for now?) shows with Sons of Kemet. He’s even on this best songs of the week list, twice! With his upcoming debut Voices of Bishara, Skinner takes over as bandleader, though some of the personnel might be familiar to listeners, particularly saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, who lends an intense and powerful lead performance on the first new song released from the album, “Bishara.” It’s less driven by groove than Kemet, however, instead coursing with spiritual fire. A breathtaking introduction to what promises to be a special album.
From Voices of Bishara, out November 4 via International Anthem/Nonesuch/Brownswood
Persher – “Man With the Magic Soap”
Persher is a duo comprising Arthur Kayzer, aka Pariah, and Jaimie Roberts, aka Blawan, both of whom also comprise the industrial techno partnership Karenn. Persher fits in comfortably with the two producers’ innovative, outsider electronic music, but darker, meaner, heavier, nastier. “Man With the Magic Soap,” their debut single, is more noise rock than anything, pulsing with menacingly dirty basslines and vile, guttural growls. This isn’t dance music by any measure of the imagination, at least not the kind of dancing you might do in any kind of social engagement. Maybe to conjure up a demon, though…
From Man With the Magic Soap, out October 21 via Thrill Jockey
Charles Stepney – “Black Gold”
Charles Stepney’s posthumous collection of home recorded instrumentals, Step on Step, sees release today via International Anthem, offering a glimpse into the solo work of the producer behind stunning records by Minnie Riperton, Terry Callier and Earth, Wind and Fire. “Black Gold” dropped earlier this week, a piece that leans further into a kind of cinematic jazz and intricate overlapping lines of piano. An early sketch of sorts for The New Rotary Connection’s “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun,” Stepney’s demo is less funk, less rock, more spindly and complex—it’s in 10/8 time rather than the full-band version’s 4/4, for instance. But it’s mesmerizing through and through, a rare moment in which a stripped-down demo somehow only reveals deeper layers to unravel.
From Step on Step, out now via International Anthem
Sarah Davachi – “Hall of Mirrors”
Sarah Davachi’s music takes time to absorb. The ambient composer thrives on slowly unfolding compositions that make their journey with patience and a delicate attention to the textures and resonances that she and her collaborators create. By that measure, “Hall of Mirrors,” the opening track on her new 90-minute album Two Sisters, is relatively immediate and even concise at just six minutes long, and just as immediate are the chills it induces, its vibrating carillon bell tones, performed by Tiffany Ng, echoing through a fog of resonant drone that feels wonderfully appropriate for the creeping of autumn. By the standard set throughout the rest of Two Sisters, “Hall of Mirrors” is less climactic, perhaps, but there’s a stunning eeriness in its simplicity, an ominously beautiful beginning to a similarly ominously beautiful album worth spending the season to soak in.
From Two Sisters, out now via Late Music
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