Album of the week
SUFJAN STEVENS, BRYCE DESSNER, NICO MUHLY, JAMES MCALISTER
Planetarium
4AD
Art does not necessarily happen the way we think art happens. After being given a commission to unveil a new work at the Muziekgebouw Eindhoven concert hall, in Holland, Nico Muhly enlisted the psych-folkster Sufjan Stevens, the National’s Bryce Dessner and Stevens’s drummer of choice, James McAlister. Together they began work on a suite of songs inspired by the majesty of the universe — a subject they had long wanted to write about. Except, no. In fact, they began work on a series of random musical ideas with no particular theme, which they sent back and forth; and, needing a way of telling these fragments apart, they opted to name them after the planets. Then, one day, Stevens — charged with writing the lyrics — thought: “Well, OK, might as well make it about the planets, then.” And thus Planetarium was born. The album merges classical structure with ambient and prog-rock sounds, and with Stevens’s voice, a mixture that is both unusual and (perhaps thanks to the anchoring effect of the familiar vocals) entirely accessible. Saturn is thumping beats and vocodered vocals. Uranus hovers in weightless prettiness. Sun is ominous yet strangely calm. Earth gets the most attention, 15 minutes that veer easily from beauty to discord. Just like the real thing. ME
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THE SECRET SISTERS
You Don’t Own Me Anymore
New West
Struggling musicians should take heart from this. Dropped by their label and bankrupt, Laura and Lydia Rogers, from Alabama, resorted to crowdfunding to get their project off the ground. The results make it all worthwhile. The Everlys-influenced harmonies are as soulful as ever, there isn’t a dud on the defiant playlist, and they add a simmering cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s Kathy’s Song. CD
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PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND
So It Is
Legacy
How do you like your New Orleans rhythms? Woody Allen’s Royal Albert Hall gig on July 2 will be one for traditionalists (and celeb-spotters). The venerable Preservation Hall guys, on the other hand, are continually reinventing themselves. There’s an exuberant dose of funk and Afro-Latin riffs here — you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were listening to one of the younger Big Easy outfits. Superb. CD
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PIXX
The Age of Anxiety
4AD
St Vincent-like in its thrilling, if nerve-jangling, unpredictability, Pixx’s music throws rough-hewn analogue textures, gurgling electronica, motorik beats and alternately crystalline and blank-eyed vocals about millennial alienation and disconnection into the blender, delivering one of the year’s best debuts so far. Hannah Rodgers’s touch is both light and super-heavy, the killer melodies of tracks such as Your Delight and Romance emerging from the Stereolab sonic murk and dragging you deeper and deeper down. Brilliant. DC
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LONDON GRAMMAR
Truth Is a Beautiful Thing
Ministry of Sound
I have seen people almost come to blows over London Grammar. Some adore the trio’s finely wrought electro-soul and Hannah Reid’s extraordinarily pure voice. Others find it calculatingly inoffensive and, in its reliance on mushy lyrics and atmospherics, aggressively bland. I can’t see this second album bridging that divide. Me, I love songs such as Rooting for You and Big Picture: they’re suffused with beauty, resignation and regret. This album won’t frighten the horses, but I’m not sure that’s its aim. DC
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HALSEY
Hopeless Fountain Kingdom
Virgin/EMI
Gone are the clunky sixth-form- poetry lyrics that made New Jersey’s Halsey a hit with the Tumblr generation. Since hitting the top of the US charts last year on the Chainsmokers’ Closer, the 22-year-old has polished her electro-pop with the aid of an A-team that includes the Weeknd, Benny Blanco, Sia and Greg Kurstin. She could be Ellie Goulding-gone-R&B on Now or Never and the moody Eyes Closed, while Walls Could Talk has her reminiscing, Ed Sheeran style, over sampled strings. LV
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ULRIKA SPACEK
Modern English Decoration
Tough Love
Not only do Ulrika Spacek have a pleasing affection for the album form, they chose to record this one not by tracking loads of songs then debating a running order, but by recording track one, finishing it, then recording track two, finishing it, then recording track three. The precision of this approach is reflected in this bunch of twentysomethings’ three-guitar (count ’em) attack, where riffs are layered to haunting effect. Hazy vocals and insistent drums complete the picture on a gentle grower. ME
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Rebirth of the week
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM CHRISTINE MCVIE
East West
In which four-fifths of Fleetwood Mac convene to make an album (Stevie Nicks is missing), while removing the pressure that comes with actually calling it a Fleetwood Mac album — the clever sods. Coming at this new record as a sort of side project, the listener is surprised by the quality of In My World, Sleeping Around the Corner and On with the Show — three tracks that could easily fit on one of the band’s classic CDs. Though the standard isn’t maintained, Buckingham/McVie proves an interesting permutation. ME
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Must-have reissue
IGGY POP
Lust for Life
UMC
Reissued as part of a coloured vinyl package that also contains The Idiot and TV Eye Live, this 1977 classic was Pop’s third studio collaboration with David Bowie, who regularly stepped in during that decade to steer the singer away from drugs into making great music. More forward-looking than The Idiot, Lust for Life still sounds both box fresh and fabulously sleazy, with Bowie drawing from Pop some of his most insouciant performances and assembling a crack band to accompany his utterly distinctive vocal swagger. DC
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Breaking act
ANGELO DE AUGUSTINE
Who is he? A singer-songwriter from California whose voice is a sonic spit for those of Elliott Smith and Euros Childs, late of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. Signed to Sufjan Stevens’s label, Asthmatic Kitty, De Augustine has previewed his new album, Swim Inside the Moon, with two tracks — Truly Gone and Crazy, Stoned & Gone — that showcase the extraordinary beauty and fragility of his songs. There are echoes of Smith in the spare, lo-fi arrangements and tremulous vocals; and of White Album-era John Lennon, too. The most powerful takeaway, however, is of an artist dedicated to a particular muse and suffering considerably for his art.
When’s the music out? Swim Inside the Moon will be released on August 25; angelodeaugustine.com. DC
Hottest tracks
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Lion Babe: Hit the Ceiling It didn’t quite happen for the NYC duo first time round, but this summery, sinuous alt-R&B keeper could be the track to change that.
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Noah Cyrus: I’m Stuck Another collaboration with Labrinth, and another bonkers but brilliant skewed-pop smash. Bring on the album.
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Malory: Rapture From the Anglo-South African’s debut EP, this is a fraught, unashamedly Big Music belter about the agony and ecstasy of love. DC
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