Jordan Rakei - Wallflower - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Spencer Radcliffe and Everyone Else's Hot Spring is a treatise on being present. It's something sun bleached and clothbound, forever warmed on the dashboard, Incha sequel of sorts,Inch Radcliffe says, referring to 2017's Enjoy The Great Outdoors. And they're heading back out with him, Everyone Else is, Radcliffe's trustworthy companions Ben Austin (cello), Grant Engstrom (lead guitar), Tina Scarpello (vocals), and Jack Schemenauer (percussion), with the addition of Pat Lyons playing the pedal steel guitar. Recorded by the band and handed off to JJ Golden, to safely wedge the message in the wire, a modern day telegraph affair. Hot Spring gives us space to see where we are, to clean up with a sound that is cleanly consistent in itself, coming back on some familiar-enough seeming things as the landscapes and seasons have moved past and with everyone. The album's outlandish and wonderful art was illustrated by Anwar Mahdi and serves as the perfect companion piece to the ten dizzying and blissful songs contained therein.

Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer, and songwriter Jordan Rakei is back with his fourth studio album. What We Call Life is his most vulnerable and intimate album to date, lyrically and sonically. While the heart of the record will be familiar to fans of his neo-soul and hip-hop-infused work, here Rakei dives deeper into his sound world, merging electronic with acoustic, and rugged grooves with ambient atmospheres, to create something richer, more detailed, and more textural than before. Recommended if you like Arlo Parks, Hiatus Kaiyote, Loyle Carner and Tom Misch.

The more hopeful 'sunrise' to 2018's critically acclaimed Slow Sundown, Horse finds Tallinn, Estonia's Holy Motors acknowledging the Americana and rockabilly strands of their musical DNA without sacrificing any of the otherworldly mystique that keeps them from neatly conforming to the shoegaze and dreampop labels often applied to their music.From the album's opening moments, songs like InchCountry Church,Inch with it's major key and classic rhythm and blues guitarline, and InchMidnight Cowboy,Inch which sounds like a lost Buddy Holly 45 played at 33 rpm, make it clear that Horse - even if it may not accomplish the impossible task of demystifying this band of ex-Soviet cowboys - will at least show you that there's more to them than the near-impenetrable darkness of their work to date may suggest. While tracks like InchTroubleInch and InchEndless NightInch gravitate towards the ethereal production and existential subject matter of prior releases, repeat listens will reveal the same complex compositions and humanity that are much more a hallmark of Horse's eight songs.As a whole, Horse stands as a warmer, more human counterpoint to 2018's celestial Slow Sundown. As to which of the two entries better approximates Holy Motors' natural set point, only time will tell.