The Spice And Salsa Of Summer sounds

Starring

Darling West, Infinity Song, Kaito, Mark Fry, The Rah Band, Skeleten, Tunde Adebimpe

The Front Runners

Woods : Darling West

There’s a lot of unpleasantness in the world at the moment. Not just the big stuff between countries, but in day to day encounters too. Darling West don’t have the answer to that, but they do set an example in this short album of how to step aside and reboot.

If that sounds a little too mindful for some tastes, maybe even a touch cloying, it’s not. This is the sound of people in love with their music, breaking away from all the noisy paraphernalia around it and rediscovering the essence of what’s important. Here you’ll find songs and short ambient instrumentals, suffused with the joys of nature and of decompressing and rebooting. 

Initially I felt uncertain about the ambient pieces. The whole album comes in at just 25 minutes, and I was greedy for as many of their songs as I could get. Fortunately they don’t put a foot wrong at any stage of the album structure and sequencing, and maintain the gorgeous quality of all the pieces..

Their songs are delicate and unhurried, a sweeter,quieter and more melodic take on Kings of Convenience. They have wonderful choruses nestling in a folk sensibility. They settle in your heart like the best songs of The Innocence Mission. Together Mari and Tor Kreken are gentle voices travelling through the ether. Tor harmonises beautifully, while Mari’s voice soothes and is allowed to flutter like a butterfly in sunlight.

Above all, this feels like a kind album to be treasured.

Taster Track : Off To The Woods.

Metamorphosis Complete : Infinity Song

Radio 6 had this as one of their records of the year for 2024. Wow! Good choice!! Infinity Song take sublime, sugar coated pop to a whole new level.

Infinity Song are four siblings from America. They may have appeared on the scene like an overnight sensation, but they’ve been perfecting their craft for nearly twenty years. It shows in every aspect of their songs - in the acapella opening to ‘I Want you Back’, in the multipart vocals and harmonies that characterise their songs and in the confidence to take  the most surprising risks and leaps of faith.

Take ‘Comedy’. Building fake laughter into songs is always a risk. Infinity Song take that risk and then double and treble down on it so that it becomes the centrepoint of the song and you can’t imagine it any other way. It has the bravado and bravura of an act like Queen or the Last Dinner Party. It’s as inventive in its way as it would be if Kate Bush, Talking Heads or Prince had specialised in the catchiest pop imaginable.

And make no mistake. Infinity Song show, on songs like ‘I Want You Back’, ‘Lotus’, ‘Metamorphosis’ and ‘Pink Sky’ that they’ve perfected earworm laden sugar coated pop. They look like a soul / gospel group. Those influences are there, but then influences from every decade are overflowing in the mix. How can this be so perfect, so joyful even in its saddest moments? Is there a better three lines to capture the essence of pop than these from ‘Lotus’?

“But now I know what a fool I’ve been

Baby please

Don’t make me wise again”

If this sounds too much, rest easy. There’s a pepper coating to songs such as ‘Hater’s Anthem’, a dash of vinegar in the deluded mania of ‘More Beautiful’. 

In the midst of their own, brilliant songs, they cover Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’. It’s a familiar choice that they coat in spontaneity and improvisation, dressing it up to make it their own. Despite its excellent pedigree, and their wonderful enhancements this is nowhere close to the best thing on the album. That’s a sign of the standards they reach with their own songs.

This is an album that races by leaving you aching to hear everything else they have ever done. It’s a record of the year - any year, any decade. Let your eyes well up, smile and give thanks all at once.

Taster Track : I Want You Back

Not On The Radar : Mark Fry

There are times when labelling a musician as belonging to a musical category is unhelpful and misleading. Look up Mark Fry online and you’re likely to see his music described as psychedelic folk. For everyone attracted to the two elements of that description, two more will be put off. Fry’s beautiful songs are for everyone.

It’s easy, but lazy to label this as folk just because it’s mainly acoustic. It’s no more folk than, say, James Grant, Clifford T. Ward or, and I’ll be returning to this person, Leonard Cohen. These are love songs about life, and they’re shared with a poet’s imagination and a painter’s eye. He’s 72, but his voice holds strong. A little worn and weary perhaps but just enough to lend his songs character and vouch for his experience.

Fry writes direct and simple songs such as ‘Only Love’ and ‘Big Red Sun’ with classic, timeless melodies. He shares his thoughts, wisdom and feelings with the air of a man returning home after decades away. He has distilled his experiences to their essence to convey both the man he has become and, perhaps, the man he could have been. A song like ‘Not On The Radar’ is conversational, with a quietly confident twinkle in its tone. Elsewhere, as on ‘Daybreak’, there’s an air of tired melancholy, a feeling that he’s starting to look his final years in the eye. Rest assured though. It’s never maudlin.

Mark Fry captures in music the tone of a letter written by Leonard Cohen to his muse, Marianne, shortly after her death and a little before his own. Like this album, it’s beautiful and moving and honest.

Well Marianne, it's come to this time

when we are really so old and our bodies

are falling apart and I think I will follow

you very soon. Know that I am so close

behind you that if you stretch out your

hand, I think you can reach mine. And

you know that I've always loved you for

your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't

need to say anything more about that

because you know all about that. But

now, I just want to wish you a very good

journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless

love, see you down the road.

This is, simply, an album of wonderful songwriting.

Taster Track : Only Love

The Chasing Pack

Collection : Kaito

Brian Eno, who invented ambient music, said it should be “as ignorable as it is interesting.”  That’s like saying a garden spade can be as useless as it is useful. No it can’t. It has to do its job, and the same is true of ambient music. What I’m looking for from ambient music is a kind of deep calm that unclutters the mind and sets me up for the day.

And that’s where the dilemma lies. How can you sit back and immerses yourself fully if you’re having to pay close attention to it? 

During the five minutes of ‘A Life That Can Only Be Dream Now’ I deliberately switched off from reviewing. Lying back, I drifted in and out of random thoughts, occasionally startled by tinkling and unexpected notes. On that level this ambient collection works. The downside is that it sails too close at times to the kind of music that plays in a spa’s treatment room and no-one goes to a spa for the music. 

Kaito’s music floats by pleasantly, but it’s not memorable. It doesn’t need to be. This album aims for summer memories. It’s close enough without hitting a perfect bullseye. It’s more successful at creating a sense of outdoor purity, of wide open spaces free from traffic and its pollution.

‘Silent Cloud (Beat Version)’ leads you into Kaito’s world like a friendly receptionist. ‘A Call From The Ground’ swells gently  to form huge emotional embraces. ‘Summer Mood’ balances a sound that is light and unconcerned but, somehow, loaded with a meaningful significance that is never explained. ‘Silent Sky’ feels more purposeful with its hopping bass line. ‘Summer Sketch (Floating Through Space In A Dream)’ is on the border of ambient and chill, and the most successful track here.

This is a pleasant sounding album that gives you time and space to think without requiring anything in return.

Taster Track : Summer Sketch (Floating Through Space In A Dream)’ 

Mystery : The Rah Band

The Rah Band? Didn’t they have a hit with ‘The Crunch’ back in the 70s, sounding like a glammed up version of Mud? Yes they did, but it turned out that there was more to them than met the ear. 

They weren’t a band, really. They were Richard Anthony Hewson, the man who arranged the strings on the Beatles’ ‘The Long and Winding Road’, worked with the likes of The Bee Gees, Supertramp, Diana Ross, Leo Sayer and Fleetwood Mac and produced Toyah, Five Star and, um, Shakin’ Stevens. He’s a man who has a fair claim to be the sound of 70s and 80s chart pop. And it seems that his personal preference was for synthesised jazz funk.  

It’s 40 years since he released this album. Would I have rushed out to buy it on first release? Almost certainly not. The lead single ‘Clouds Across The Moon’ is the standout track, reaching No 6 in the charts although it passed me by. It’s a wonderful slice of 80s cheese, the kind of music to make housework less of a chore, for having friends round and to get you in the mood for going out. It has its moments elsewhere but gradually fades into the background found as filler on pre ‘Now…’ compilations.

But here’s the thing. As a form of time travel it’s hard to beat. From a distance you can hear the sound of school discos. It’s not loud or edgy enough for clubs as we know them now. Listen closely and you’ll realise it was never meant for a teen audience. It was a call to an older audience, impatient to find the right partner and settle down. 

‘Mystery’ is a throwback to a more innocent time, the music of choice for the sensible girl next door. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and that helps it to sound attractively dated. 

Lose yourself in a reverie of past friends and good times.

Taster Track : Clouds Across The Moon

Mentalized : Skeleten

What you see with Skeleten is not quite what you get when you listen to him. Look at the artwork for this album. It’s a blurred but identifiably human figure, full of strain like an endurance athlete who’s reached and gone through his limits to become something not quite as human as he was. His music though is very human, railing against the constraints and describing, in ‘Deep Scene’ a more disturbing picture of “the real coming home”.

A little dark then? Yes, but it doesn’t feel that way. For example, there’s a relaxed vibe to ‘These People’ that is jolted as you hear that “These people……. Are just like humans.” The songs are strangely unsettling though. They’re like the memory of a nightmare that hasn’t come true but has left a residual anxiety. Skeleten is the quiet voice in your head that you want to ignore, but can’t. His songs are a presence that doesn’t dominate, but you ignore them at your peril.

The songs are kept accessible and enjoyable by the palpable pleasure he takes from providing insistent rhythms and persistent momentum. He moves towards crowd lifting chants in songs such as ‘Viagra’ and ‘Deep Scene’. His bass and vocal lines keep you listening to the songs, leaving you vulnerable to the content of the lyrics. They’re not intense or anguished, but they are a nagging presence reminding you that there are clouds on every horizon that aren’t easy to avoid.

This is electronic dance music with added thought, borrowed from feelings that would be at home in a post punk audience. It’s a throwback to bands that saw an opportunity around the turn of the millennium to take atmosphere and musical interest into the clubs, bands like Thievery Corporation and Fragile State. Coincidentally it’s funny how they both have names that capture the nature of Skeleten’s sound well.

Skeleten provides top quality, thought provoking electronica that makes for a completely satisfying listening experience.

Taster Track : Deep Scene

Three Black Boltz : Tunde Adebimpe

Recently I watched the latest film in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, ‘Sonic 3’. Recommended by Arthur, my five year old grandson, he retains an encyclopedic memory of everything that happens in that film. That’s the beginning of his personal cinematic memory bank. In 25 years time, he may not admit it, but his response to a certain kind of film will draw on how he felt about Sonic’s adventures. The film is surprisingly enjoyable too, mixing up familiar story elements from across the decades into something fresh, colourful and new. 

Why am I telling you this? It’s not because I’m stuck for words. Well, not just that. It’s because Tunde Adebimpe has tapped into the equivalent musical archive to make ‘Three Black Boltz’ and it has the same fast paced, hugely entertaining results.

For those unfamiliar with the world of Sonic, I’ll liken this to a soundtrack for the Marvel Comics Universe franchise and, particularly, Nick Fury as played by Samuel L Jackson. This is music with the fizzing comic book swagger of ‘Magnetic’ and ‘Pinstruck’, the romcom tenderness of ‘ILY’ and the larger than life presence of ‘Ate The Moon’.

Smiles of recognition meet open mouthed admiration as he dives deep into pop’s box of tricks, using them audaciously and imaginatively. It’s as accessible as you could hope and full of surprises. No sooner do you sit back to enjoy the 21st century glam of ‘Magnetic’ than you’re hit by the acapella break in ‘Pinstack’, the human beatbox of ‘Drop’ or the appearance of slide guitar in ‘God Knows’. Just as you’re settling down to a more than fine indie rock album, you’ll find the synth pop of ‘The Moat’, the restrained pop emoting of ‘ILY’ and you’ll be heading down the club to find ‘Somebody New’.

Nothing in this album feels like a misstep. All of it feels like the right component in the right place at the right time. This is an album to refresh  your musical memories for years to come.

Taster Track : Magnetic

As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.

The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7EjHZr5_M3m0Zn5LEu_F3fMm&si=OhQF-ZPaBjUn4VMT